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“I can’t believe that you actually like to watch this stuff.” Sam hopes that she sounds more annoyed than nervous, though the latter emotion can’t be entirely blamed on the fact that she’s in the backseat of Kate Schmidt’s car, heading off to see a horror movie.
It probably has more to do with the fact that she’s in the backseat of Kate Schmidt’s car beside Deena Johnson.
Not that she’s ever been a fan of horror movies or ever been to see one willingly. But still…Deena Johnson. Close proximity. Tiny car.
“It’s the best,” Simon assures her from the front passenger seat, his arm hanging lazily out the window, fingers plucking at the summer evening breeze. “You’ll see. Literally a masterpiece.”
“A masterpiece,” Sam repeats, skeptical. When she glances toward Deena, the girl only shrugs, but there’s a grin on her face like she’s not about to contradict Simon. “Okay.”
Kate glances in the rearview mirror, rolling her eyes when she catches Sam’s gaze. “You might as well embrace it. Since these idiots have talked you into tagging along.” She gives Sam a pitying look. “And here I thought you were smarter than that.”
“Hey,” Simon protests, puffing out his chest like he doesn’t mind her words at all. “I am very persuasive.”
Kate rolls her eyes. “Uh, sure you are. I think we all know who’s doing the persuading around here…”
Deena kicks the back of Kate’s seat even as Sam can feel her cheeks heat up and she quickly glances out the window, praying that no one else has noticed this particular reaction. “Not cool,” Deena mumbles, giving the seat another kick for good measure. “Can you just keep your focus on the road, please?”
It seems like good advice, even for Sam, who is not currently in charge of operating a motor vehicle. Still, with her eyes glued to the road, she doesn’t risk looking at Deena and completely blowing her cool once again.
Or, worse…looking at Deena and discovering that her reaction to Kate’s words did not come from a place of embarrassment but annoyance at the very idea that Kate would dare imply that Deena Johnson might have anything resembling romantic feelings for one Sam Fraser.
With Deena, one can never know for sure.
In fact, Sam had been almost certain that tonight was a date. Almost. Certain. Until the car had pulled up in front of her house with both Kate and Simon inside. And then there’s the fact that Deena hasn’t said a single word to her since she’d stepped out of her house. So…maybe not a date at all.
Maybe Sam has just signed herself up to watch some ridiculously cheesy, gory, pointless slasher movie for no reason at all.
Kate laughs like she knows something no one else does, fidgeting with the radio station to change it off the weird heavy metal stuff Simon has been forcing them to listen to for the past several miles, putting on a top-40 station instead. While Janet Jackson belts through the car’s speakers, Sam glances toward Deena once more, trying to catch her attention now that the imminent danger of giving herself away with her flushed cheeks has passed. Deena is working her thumbnail between her teeth, eyes firmly glued to the back of Kate’s headrest.
“So…” Sam says when several more seconds pass without Deena acknowledging her existence. “You’ve seen this movie before, right?”
Deena nods, her gaze flicking briefly toward Sam. “A few times. Yeah.”
Not quite the conversation starter she was hoping for then. She doesn’t get it, truly. For the past few months, she and Deena have been hanging out nearly every day, even if their hangout sessions just involve having lunch together on the quad or Sam convincing Deena to drive her home after school. During those times, Deena seems to have no problem engaging in conversation. Laughing. Being witty. They are, Sam might even say, friends.
Hence the reason Sam thinks she’s even in this mess in the first place…Deena’s laugh. Deena’s smile. Deena’s stupid jokes.
None of which are on display at the moment.
An hour ago, she’d been tearing her closet apart for something she might possibly wear on date and now she’s running through the past forty-eight hours trying to figure out what she could’ve possibly said to Deena to make her decide she was better off pretending she’s never heard the name Sam Fraser before.
When they finally get to the theater, Sam couldn’t be more thrilled. Which is saying something considering what they’re here for. She might actually rather attend Camp Bloodbath than spend one more minute in that car, listening to Kate and Simon fight about every single song on the radio and Deena say nothing at all.
They aren’t the only people who have seemingly deemed this the perfect Saturday night activity, not if the crowded parking lot is any indication. There’s already a line outside of the ticket booth and a few people are dressed in costumes and t-shirts that Sam assumes have to do with the movie. She wrinkles her nose at the sight of one guy with a homemade facemask and what she hopes is a plastic machete. “What’s the movie about again?”
“Okay, so.” Simon grins, draping his arm across Sam’s shoulder as he leans closer to her. “Counselors go to set up a summer camp and bam!” Sam jumps as he claps his hands together in her face. “They all get murdered by some guy who went to camp there when he was a kid. But he got disfigured in a fire cracker accident. Very tragic.”
Sam grimaces, trying to step away from Simon without hurting his feelings. Not that he seems like the type to take anything personally. “Isn’t that kinda…you know…in bad taste?”
“I think he was just getting revenge for-”
“No, no.” Sam laughs, shaking her head. “I mean…didn’t that literally happen in Shadyside? All those kids got killed at summer camp…”
Simon waves her words away. “Nah, this is totally different,” he assures her. “Way more fun.”
Deena rolls her eyes, finally glancing toward Sam and acknowledging her existence. “Right. I’m sure all the dead Shadyside campers agree.”
Sam smiles, feeling slightly less like a clingy puppy as she steps back to join Deena toward the end of their line. “I don’t actually like movies like this,” she admits and she’s no closer toward Deena than she has been before, but, if she’s not mistaken, Deena shifts just slightly away from her, widening the space.
Yeah…she really needs to figure out what she did wrong.
“I’m…sure you’ll be fine,” Deena says, squinting as she looks up at the marquee. “It’s just a dumb 80s movie. It’s more stupid than scary.”
Sam shrugs, slipping her hands into the pockets of the jeans that she had settled on after spending twenty minutes debating the pros and cons of a dress. Then a skirt. Clearly…none of it mattered anyway. “If you say so.”
They get their tickets and then it’s back into yet another line for popcorn and drinks and yet another stretch of time where Deena seems far more interested in memorizing every part of the theater’s decor rather than risk accidentally letting her gaze settle on Sam. So, in turn, Sam just stares at the patterned carpet beneath her feet, praying she doesn’t do something horrifically embarrassing like cry before she can blame it on the movie.
More than anything, she feels like a complete idiot for imagining that, when Deena asked her if she wanted to go see the movie, that it was actually a date. Why would Deena Johnson want to ask her out on a date? Clearly, Deena Johnson doesn’t even want to be around her.
“Here,” Kate says, shoving a tub of popcorn into Deena’s hands once they finally free themselves from the line. “You and Sam can share. And if I’m feeling generous, I’ll share with Simon.”
“You love me,” Simon says, grinning as he tosses a piece of popcorn into his mouth. “It’s cute how you pretend not to.”
Kate just hands him both the popcorn and drink she’d bought, following him down the hallway toward theater eight. Sam brings up the rear, listening to the excited chatter surging around her without actually feeling like she’s part of it. She’s an idiot. A complete idiot. Getting all dressed up for Deena Johnson. Actually hoping…
Hoping what?
That they might hold hands in the dark, where no one else could see them? That maybe Deena would stop just before they got to Sam’s house, that she would pull Sam to her and kiss her while the neighborhood slept around them?
She knows exactly what Deena would say about this: see? This is what you get for hoping for something. Except, Sam had never imagined that would also apply to hoping for Deena herself.
Despite the crowded theater, they manage to find a row midway up that still has four seats connected together and Sam leads the way, sitting in the farthest one available. Simon starts to follow after her, jerking almost comically to a stop before he can take more than a few steps. “No, idiot,” Kate snaps, pulling him backward by the collar of his shirt. “You have to sit by me . Remember? ” She puts a smile on her face. “So we can share the popcorn,” she finishes sweetly.
Simon rubs at his neck while stepping aside to let Deena pass by him, not that she seems particularly thrilled by this directive. Still, Deena sits, slumping back in her seat. Sam swallows, flattening her palms against her thighs.
“Popcorn?” Deena holds out the bucket without looking at her, the closest they’ve come all night.
Sam shakes her head and Deena puts the popcorn bucket on her knee and that’s how they sit for the next fifteen minutes, until the lights go down and the theater erupts into an uncontained rowdy energy that honestly Sam does not know what to do with. At least with the movie starting and the lights off, the expectation of having a conversation completely disappears. Now Sam can pretend that Deena isn’t talking to her because she’s focused on the movie, not because she apparently hates Sam and wants to incinerate her with a smirk and arched eyebrow.
The movie opens with the brilliant technicolor blues and greens of a scenic wood before transitioning to the bright, unaware faces of the nubile young camp counselors. It really isn’t so terrible…in the sense that Sam isn’t immediately dumping out the popcorn in order to hide beneath the bucket or anything and Deena was certainly right about it being more stupid than scary. Even when the first characters get killed fifteen minutes in, Sam is rolling her eyes, glancing automatically toward Deena…who won’t peel her eyes away from the screen. The whispered comment Sam was about to make dies on the tip of her tongue and she slips a little lower down into her seat. Why does she even bother?
Unfortunately the movie starts to ratchet up in both ridiculousness and the gore factor and after the innocent blonde counselor gets murdered right after having sex with her douche-bag boyfriend, Sam reaches for the popcorn bucket, eager to have a distraction of any kind. Even if it comes in the form of stuffing herself so full of popcorn that she never wants to see another kernel in her life.
But, as luck -or perhaps the lack thereof, given her track record for the night- would have it, Sam reaches into the bucket just as Deena does, their fingers brushing together. The touch, however faint, of Deena’s skin against hers is like a jolt all the way from the top of her head down to her toes and Sam swears her heart stops beating for just a second, stuttering in her chest.
Deena looks at her and for a brief moment their eyes meet and Sam thinks maybe…maybe… Maybe she hasn’t been as far off about tonight as she’d thought. Maybe Deena does remember she exists after all. Maybe…maybe… Sam reaches out a finger, letting it link up with Deena’s.
And then Deena pulls her hand free with such enthusiasm that the popcorn bucket flips onto the ground, scattering across the floor. A few heads turn in their direction, including Kate’s and Simon’s, but Sam can’t hardly look at them, can’t look anywhere. And especially not at Deena. Who would, apparently, rather throw popcorn all over the floor than hold her hand.
“Sorry,” Sam mutters, getting to her feet. “Excuse me.” She mumbles this as she hurries past every person on their row, trying not to step on anyone’s feet or knock over any more popcorn, though both would be an acceptable casualty if it meant getting the hell out of this theater.
Outside the air is hot and sticky, clinging to her skin like the shame that Sam can feel tiptoeing its way across her, making her feel flush and uncomfortable in a way the temperature never could. She leans against the side of the theater, letting the brick press roughly through the blouse she’d finally decided upon, hoping that Deena might notice how it made her eyes stand out above the cheeks her mother had always called round though Sam knew what she meant was chubby. She’d become the sort of girl who looked at her reflection in the context of what other people might see when they looked at her, had become the sort of girl who thought about what one person in particular might see.
Not that it mattered. The blouse. Her stupid, round cheeks. None of it.
Sam exhales, wrapping her arms around herself like it’s cold enough to warrant such a gesture, but there’s no one around to see her, to question what she’s doing out there, bathed in the sticky orange glow of the parking lot lights when everyone else is inside, a dozen different worlds unfolding on a dozen different screens. And not a single one in which Sam’s ridiculous hopes for tonight make any sort of sense.
Maybe she wouldn’t care so much if she still felt like, after tonight, she and Deena would still be friends. After Deena’s regression back to her cold-shouldered bitch routine, Sam isn’t even sure she can say that.
“Sam. Hey.” Deena looks relieved as she rounds the corner, stopping short when she spots her. She pushes her hair back from her face, curls spilling past her hesitant features. “Listen I…sorry about the popcorn. I can get more. I just-”
Sam shakes her head, swallowing down the impulse to laugh. “I don’t really care about the popcorn, Deena.”
“Oh. Right.” Deena nods, hands in her pockets, shoulders rounded. “Okay.”
“I’ve been trying but I can’t figure it out,” Sam confesses because what better time to hash all this out than right here, all alone in a movie theater parking lot. “What did I do wrong?”
Deena looks baffled by her words but Sam can’t help but appreciate the fact that Deena is looking at her at all, which is certainly a step up. “What are you talking about? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Sam is certain her doubt shows plainly on her face. “Oh, okay. Is that why you haven’t talked to me all night? Why you won’t even look at me.”
The Deena that Sam had first started getting to know weeks ago was definitely better at hiding her emotions than this Deena is now. Or, at least, that Deena was better about lying. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay.” Sam rolls her eyes. “I must be imagining it then. Just like I was clearly imagining-”
Thankfully she stops herself before she can finish, feeling her cheeks redden at the horror of what she’d almost just said. The words sit lodged in the back of her throat, not forgotten but, thankfully, still kept inside where Sam knows they belong.
Unfortunately Deena does not seem to agree. “Imagining what?” She steps closer, finally shrinking the distance that seems to have only been growing steadily between them for the last hour.
“Nothing,” Sam says with a sigh. “Just…let’s just go back inside and watch the movie.”
Deena lifts an eyebrow. “You actually want to watch the movie?”
“No.” The word is short, clipped. But what she wants even less is to stand out here with Deena, to run the risk of explaining exactly why her brush off has stung so much.
“Didn’t think so.” Deena looks a little too pleased with herself for Sam’s benefit but even that smug expression makes her look beautiful and that’s really the root of all her problems isn’t it? Deena Johnson and her smile, her laugh, the way Sam imagines her touch would feel both like fire and a soothing balm. “So why don’t you tell me what you were going to say.”
Sam glares at her, her back still to the wall, acutely aware of just how much Deena has closed the distance between them. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a pain in the ass?”
Deena chuckles. “Um, yeah. You, in fact, just about every day.”
“Well I can’t be the only one,” Sam says sweetly.
Deena just shakes her head, a smile creeping across her lips.
“Why have you been ignoring me?” Sam asks because, looking at Deena now, she thinks she might actually get an answer, something real and not just a brushoff.
Deena presses her lips into a thin line and Sam can’t help but focus on them for just a moment, the flutter of something unexpected but not entirely unwelcome starting in the pit of her stomach when Deena’s tongue appears for just a moment between her lips. “I…I don’t know,” she says and there’s such a vulnerability to her features that Sam actually believes her words. “It just seemed…easier, I guess.”
“Easier? Than what?”
“I mean…” Deena gestures toward her like Sam is supposed to be able to interpret the answer in her gesture. “Shit. You look…beautiful. I just wasn’t expecting all…” Again, a wild wave of her hand but this time it makes Sam smile.
“You…” The flush is back in her cheeks. Sam can feel the heat as it spreads through her, making her heart race with a feverish sort of intensity. “You think I look beautiful?”
Deena just glares at her for a beat before rolling her eyes. “Sam. You are beautiful.”
It makes Sam step away from the wall, to close the final bit of distance between them, to put her hands against Deena’s face and pull her close enough to kiss. The surprise of it, the boldness, is almost as shocking as the feeling of Deena’s mouth against hers and Sam worries, for just a moment, that her knees might give in and she might just collapse, wobbly and unsteady, onto the sidewalk. Which would be a real shame, because it would surely involve pulling her lips away from Deena’s.
The response is almost immediate: Deena’s hands on her waist, the parting of her lips, the way she tugs Sam closer to her. It’s electric, her touch. The promise of it. The way that Sam feels the truth of her earlier words, that she really is beautiful here, in this moment.
Sam is breathless by the time Deena’s lips move away from hers but even still, the loss of them seems like an impossible tragedy. Deena swallows, studying Sam through her lashes. “ That’s why I couldn’t look at you.”
“Because you wanted to kiss me?”
Deena just nods and what Sam wants to say is well, kiss me again then but what comes out is, “That’s pretty stupid.”
Another nod. “I…I didn’t know if you wanted me to want to kiss you.”
Sam swallows, hooking her fingers through the belt loops of Deena’s pants, tugging her closer. “You could’ve asked.”
Deena moves closer, letting her lips brush against Sam’s. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
Sam nods because it feels impossible to imagine her brain functioning enough to command her to do anything else. Deena kisses her again, her body pressing Sam’s back against the wall once more and she groans when Deena’s lips move against her neck instead and it feels like fireworks.
“I’ve wanted to do this all night,” Deena says against the hollow of her throat and Sam thinks she nods or maybe she doesn’t but either way she whole-heartedly agrees with this sentiment. “You’re so beautiful, Sam.”
Sam presses her hand against the small of Deena’s back, skin hot against her palm, and she swears they’re sharing the same heartbeat in that moment.
They stay out there long enough for Sam’s lips to become swollen and bruised from the press of Deena’s mouth, for her to forget entirely what she’d ever been upset about. She feels like she’s having to reassemble herself piece by piece as she follows Deena back into the theater, trying to put herself back into the form of a girl who can do something else in this world other than kiss Deena Johnson. How is she supposed to be normal now that she knows that such a thing is an option?
The movie is still playing out, undoubtedly nearing its bloody climax given the amount of body parts Sam can see on the screen right now. They take their seats once more and Sam tries to arrange her features in what she imagines another version of herself might look like, a purely innocent and unbothered version of herself, as Kate leans past Simon to give them both the stare down, a knowing grin on her face. “You missed the part where they chop the guy up with the lawnmower.”
Deena shrugs, keeping her focus on the screen. “Oops.”
Kate throws a fistful of popcorn at her before settling back in her seat.
Sam frowns, leaning closer to Deena. “They really cut someone up with a lawnmower?”
“Yup.” Deena nods. “Pretty sick, actually.”
“I’m kinda glad we missed that…”
Deena just smiles, which makes it a little difficult for Sam to remember why she can’t just lean closer and kiss the underside of her jaw again.
Deena settles her elbow on the arm rest between them, hesitating for a moment before reaching for Sam’s hand and lacing their fingers together. Sam figures she’s probably not the only person in the theater grinning as the masked killer hacks someone’s limbs off with a machete but she’s okay with that.