Page 234 of Something Rad
Eventually, I decide to be the one to take charge of being smart, to take this slow. I raise my head, barely pressing my lips to her forehead before I pull back. I hold upTop Gunin front of Cooper, smiling down at her.
“Should we pop this sucker in?”
forty-nine
SARA
It’s been about thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes since Robbie strolled into Groovy Movie like he owned the place, armed with all of my favorite things. Thirty minutes since he had me sit down on the softest blanket I’ve maybe ever felt on the floor in the middle of an aisle of movie stocked shelves while he turned down the lights and hit play on the VHS player. Thirty minutes since we started watching the movie that makes me feel more emotions than I thought I was capable of. The one that I’ve only ever opened up to Robbie about why it means so much to me.
Thirty minutes of him sipping his Pepsi and me sipping my Jolt, both of us seemingly too fidgety to go for any of the snacks just yet.
I keep feeling Robbie’s eyes on the side of my face, but I keep my gaze forward on the projector screen, trying to hide the smile that pulls at my lips and the heat that grazes my cheeks every time I sense him watching me.
When a few minutes have passed without him looking my way, I decide to finally steal my own glance at him.
Robbie’s leaned back, his elbows bent as his palms rest flat against the blanket to support him. He’s discarded his jacket on the ground next to him, leaving him with only his dark t-shirt on top. I find myself ogling his tan forearms and the way the muscles and tendons strain within them as he holds himself up and wonder if it’s weird that I find them attractive.
I decide that it’s not.
Moving back to his face, I watch as the colors of the movie reflect in his focused eyes, showing every dimension within their depths. From this side angle, I can see his unfairly long sweeping eyelashes fluttering every time he blinks. I notice how his brow keeps furrowing and his lips keep twitching at the corners as he watches the current scene of Goose and Maverick attending their first day of training at TOPGUN, specifically the moment that Maverick realizes that the woman he was flirting with out the previous night is actually a civilian contractor for the Navy and one of his instructors.
I can’t help but smile at Robbie’s smile, becauseof coursehe would get a kick out of that.
As I continue to discreetly watch him watching the movie, I can’t help but zone out some, my gaze shifting to the movie shelves behind him.
A few seconds go by before I see movement in my peripheral vision and find Robbie running a hand through his hair, his eyes trained on me.
“Whatcha doin’, Cooper?” he whispers, as if we’re actually in a movie theater.
That brings a small grin to my face. “I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “Just…thinking, I guess.”
“About what?”
I open my mouth and then press my lips together.
“Nope, don’t do that,” Robbie says, shaking his head.
“Do what?” I laugh.
“Sit there overthinking your response about what you were thinking. No more thinking about it. Just tell me what you werejustthinking.”
My brows knit at the amount of times Robbie just said the wordthinking, but then I decide to just give him what he asked for.
“Well, I was justthinkingabout the amount of time throughout our relationship that you and I have spent between shelves. How many hours it must add up to.”
Robbie’s eyes search my face. Just as I’m about to regret being honest about what I was thinking, he smirks.
“Relationship, huh?”
I snort. “Calm down.”
“You just said we’re in a relationship, Cooper,” he grins.
“I said we have a relationship, not that we’re in one. That’s two very different things.”
“Seems like a pretty fine line between the two to me,” he says.
