Page 33 of The Second Chance Cinema
“I think it’s really great you ended up here,” Drake said, taking a seat opposite her.
“Thank you.” She ran her finger around the edge of the mug. “I believe that people should be honest with each other about what they want. Life’s short, and it’s infinitely better when it’s spent in truth.”
The snow outside made it impossible to see anything.
“For example, I want to dance,” Melinda said. Their eyes met.She sprung up to put on some music. The notes were layered and hypnotizing. Drake stood, too. Her arms circled around his neck. The shapes of their bodies inched closer together in the vanity mirror. Eventually, Melinda’s head rested on his chest, and his arms wrapped around her waist.
“I think that … I want to kiss you,” Drake said when the record finished. “But only if that’s okay. Only if—”
Melinda kissed him first. It lasted forever.
No one was coming out to shop in the storm, so she flipped the little window sign toCLOSEDand put it back up. They stayed tucked away until the late afternoon turned over into night. While all the people they grew up with were sleeping nearby, they were dancing.
And then, the scene faded, blurred, and Ellie flinched as something far less romantic—and far more revealing—took over the screen.
15
Ellie and Drake should’ve left the cinema as soon as her next memory started to play. If there were ever a moment to call it a night early, this was it. But Ellie’s logic flew out the window as she connected with this younger version of herself on-screen. She was confident, carefree, and so very in shape. It was hard to let this Ellie slip away. By the time Drake stood and tilted his head toward the exit, it was too late.
“Ellie?” Drake looped around her in circles by the snack bar. She was the nucleus of his panic. “I think we should talk about this.”
For once, Ellie leaned on the rules. She held her hands up in protest underneath the behemoth chandelier. “But we can’t.”
Drake gnawed on the edge of his thumbnail. Ellie could sense him rummaging for an excuse. “I guess we can’t talk about it,” he considered, then snapped his fingers in the air with anaha. “Although, technically, we’re still in the theater. Right?”
Ellie sighed. If they were going to have this discussion, they needed a private location without the ticket boy or Natalie as their audience. Then, she remembered the empty ladies’ lounge and pulled him toward the small carpeted staircase leading to the basement. “I think I might throw up,” Drake said as his hand planted a firm grip on the cold brass railing.
“Great,” Ellie said. “That’s exactly the reaction I was hoping for.”
The ladies’ lounge defied the concept of a modern restroom. Rosebuds burst from light pink wallpaper that wrapped around a tufted mahogany chaise rising from the middle of the plush mauve carpet. Gold vines circled six vanity mirrors paired with round accent stools below, and a slip-shade chandelier kept watch over it all. In the attached room where the actual toilets were, each stall door was carved from marble.
“Way nicer than the men’s room,” Drake observed. Ellie guided him over to the chaise. The color had drained from his cheeks.
“Are you really going to throw up?” She rubbed his back.
“No,” Drake said. “I … maybe.”
It was just sex, Ellie thought. If his reaction was this extreme for something so harmless, how could he possibly handle what was next? A dripping faucet in the attached toilet room stole her focus. She got up and turned it off, then came back to admire herself in all the vanity mirrors. It was a relief to find that she still had it. Maybe she didn’t have it in the way she’d had it at eighteen, but she looked good.
“Who was that guy?” Drake blurted. “In the movie.”
Ellie sat down again. Drake was jealous of the landlord she’d had a total of three interactions with—a landlord who was illequipped in more ways than one. She’d lived in a truly awful apartment her freshman year of college. Her mom had eventually insisted she move to the campus dorms where she could be around less ominous influences.
“He was the landlord,” Ellie said. “He was there to fix the dishwasher.”
“So, he fixed the dishwasher, and then—”
“Oh, no. He didn’t fix it. Terrible landlord.”
Drake winced. The thought of an appliance remaining brokenthat could be easily fixed was too much for him to handle. “Why that guy?” he asked. It was hard to believe the “why” part was up for debate. The landlord was cut straight from an early 2000s teen movie with gym-rat muscles and an unfortunate puka-shell necklace. “That thing you were doing on the bed looked like a health hazard.”
“I used to love health hazards.” Ellie glanced up to see the two of them there on the chaise. There were so many mirrors, and in all of them, his judgment flashed back at her. Not everyone was as lucky as Drake—meeting a perfect person with their own store and a whimsical cat named Pasta.Pasta. Ellie had repeated the name in her head since she’d heard it. “She came with the name when I adopted her,” Melinda had said in the memory. Drake used the same line the night when he first described Nancy. Was that a coincidence, or was he nodding to something from his past?
The door of the ladies’ lounge swung open. Natalie cleared her throat to make herself known as she moved through the sitting area and ducked into a stall. Once Ellie heard the lock slide closed, she motioned Drake toward the door. The two of them scooted out of the room and back to the stairwell that ran up to the main lobby.
“Why are you freaking out?” Ellie asked at the bottom of the stairs.
“This guy must have meant something to you.”
