“I think you just want to take me on more dates,” she laughs, and God, I hope I’m not that transparent. Because I do want to take her on more dates. I want to bring her home. I even want to introduce her to my fucking family, and she can’t know that, or she’ll think I’m a stalker for sure.
So I just flash her a big smile, and say, “I bet I could make more dates worth your while.”
I press a couple buttons, fiddle with a handful of settings, and then I get out of the car and walk around the front, opening the door on her side. I take her hand and help her out, and she’s so beautiful in the hot evening light, sun-kissed and happy. My dick, which dozed off during the impromptu session of Logan’s Zombie Classroom, wakes right up as she stretches and her tank top rides just above the low waist of her shorts, exposing a sliver of golden skin. God, those thighs with those surfing and hiking muscles, and those breasts, so full and high and perky all at once.
It hits me all of a sudden how young she is, only twenty-one, just barely out of girlhood. There’s something so fresh about her, so unsullied, and then I remember her sucking me off when she was eighteen, remember how I was thinking the same thing then too. That it should feel wrong to be almost a decade older, that it should be wrong for a man my age to cradle the face of a barely-legal girl and fill her mouth with my dick, but help me, sweet baby Jesus, the wrongness only made it better.
When I finally speak, my voice has a subtle rasp to it. “Devi,” I say, “won’t you say hi?”
Devi waves, a little shyly, which is perfect, and I turn the camera to face myself. “I’m Logan O’Toole, and I’m here tonight to take this cute girl on a date. We met a few years ago, doing a job together, and then we reconnected...where was it, Devi?”
She plays along. “At a party a few weeks ago. You jumped into the pool with all of your clothes on.”
“Well, I was drunk.”
“You were drunk. And then I told you about a constellation and you didn’t fall asleep, so I decided that you were a good guy. And I gave you my number.”
I like this version of our meeting. It doesn’t mention anything about Raven or about our aborted kiss; it makes it sound like we are just two normal people with normal jobs who go on dates in all the normal ways.
We banter back and forth as I unload the blankets and cooler out of the trunk, and then we search out a good spot with a view of the screen and a little privacy and no bees. (I’m allergic, but I don’t mention it to Devi; in my experience, the minute you mention you’re allergic to bees, people start mentally replaying that scene from My Girl, and that scene’s a bit of a boner-shrinker to be honest.)
I have her film me spreading out the blanket and arranging our cushions, and by then it’s time for the movie to start, so I turn off the camera for a little while.
“Would you like some champagne?” I ask.
“Yes, please.”
I dig out the champagne and get to work, and then I have one of those surreal moments, one of those moments that feels so perfectly scripted and blocked that it seems like a movie instead of real life. The pop of the cork and the dull clack of the plastic wine glasses that are mostly drowned out by the murmuring moviegoers and the wind ruffling through the palm trees and scrubby evergreens. The screen in front of us, where the black and white film shows a blond girl running down a dirt road to escape a suit-clad zombie. The brass-heavy soundtrack blaring through the speakers, and the evening breeze light and warm on our skin. Devi’s hand hovering in mid-air, paused in the act of reaching for her glass, her face tilted up to the screen and her eyes wide and her lips parted in total absorption.
I watch her watching the movie, a smile tugging at my lips. She gives a little yip of surprise when the zombie bangs against the window of the farmhouse the girl is hiding in, and then she follows that with a self-conscious laugh, glancing over at me in embarrassment.
“Don’t feel bad,” I say, handing her the plastic cup of champagne. “It’s only a fifty-year-old movie and you’re sitting in a sunshine-filled park with five hundred other people. Any sane person would be scared in your position.”
She sticks out her tongue at me, playful and inciting lust in me at the same time, because I remember exactly how that tongue felt on my cock.
“Careful sticking that tongue out there,” I mock-warn. “Somebody might try to put it to good use.”
She blows a raspberry at me and then turns her attention back to the movie screen, taking a drink of champagne. Within a few moments, she’s gasping at the jump-scares again, jump scares that are clumsy and old and haven’t actually scared people since 1968, if they scared them even them.
But Devi is completely caught up in the movie, gnawing on her lip as the main characters fortify the farmhouse, shuddering whenever a zombie shambles into view. I’ve seen this movie at least fifty times in my life, but watching it again with her is like watching it for the first time, and I remember seeing it as an eight-year-old boy late at night when my parents had friends over to play cards and had given me free rein in the basement with the VCR. I remember the fear, the anxiety, the constant assessment of whether or not I would survive if the zombies came and surrounded a house I was in.
“You know, all the blood effects were made out of chocolate syrup,” I offer.
She flaps her hand and makes a shushing noise. And then another sudden zombie attack happens on the screen and she jumps right into my side, her fingers like claws in my thigh. I wrap an arm around her shoulders, amused, and she gradually relaxes, but her hand stays on my leg and her head stays against my shoulder, the sun and cinnamon smell of her filling the air. She’s so intent on the movie, tension rippling through her back and arms, but I’m intent on her. On the way the fading sunlight catches in her honey-brown hair. On the way she fits so perfectly against my body, two halves of the yin and yang symbol slotted back together.