Haylee and he laughed and kissed. Chin was lying at my feet now. The way he watched my sister and Jimmy suspiciously brought a smile to my face.
“You’re embarrassing your dog,” Matt said.
Jimmy paused and looked. “Yeah, well, did you ever see two dogs at it? That’s embarrassing.”
Haylee laughed. It seemed to me that she would laugh at anything he said. They began whispering to each other. They ate some pizza, whispered and kissed, and then drank what I suspected might be something besides Coke. When they offered it to us, Matt and I shook our heads.
“Help! My grandparents must have snuck in,” Jimmy joked, and Haylee laughed with more abandon. They devoured more pizza. After another few minutes, Jimmy stood. “I’m going to show Haylee more of the house, more of my part of it,” he said, “before we watch the unappetizing movie.” He took the disc out of the DVD player. “Can you amuse Chin for a while?”
“I don’t know. You had him so fascinated,” Matt said.
“So put on the same kind of show for him,” Jimmy said, and he reached for Haylee, who stood. She looked at me with eyes so full of excitement I thought they might start to crackle and pop like firecrackers. Laughing again, she walked out with Jimmy.
“Your sister was right,” Matt said.
“About what?”
“It’s easy to tell the difference between you.”
“She likes to say that these days, and I don’t stop her.”
“I can see why.” He rose and looked at the movie collection neatly stacked in alphabetical order on the shelf beside the TV. “Want to watch something really good?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He held up To Kill a Mockingbird. “Makes my mother cry,” he warned.
“There are good cries and bad,” I said.
“Exactly.”
He inserted the DVD and then sat beside me, put his arm around my shoulders, and kissed me softly on the forehead. I turned my face up to him, and we kissed on the lips, again softly, almost tentatively, both of us a little unsure. It was nothing like Haylee and Jimmy’s kiss. They had both looked like they would ravish each other’s faces. Matt smiled and brought his lips back, and we kissed more like we meant it. Then I turned and cuddled up in his arm as the movie began. Chin sprawled out below us and almost immediately fell asleep.
Haylee and Jimmy did not return until the movie was almost over. Chin rose quickly and actually barked at them. I picked him up again.
“You don’t spend much time with your dog,” I said.
“That’s not a dog. It’s a stuffed animal with batteries.” Jimmy looked at the TV screen. “Bor-ring,” he declared from the doorway. Haylee was beside him, looking like she had been tossing and turning in her sleep for hours. She looked flushed, too, her eyes wide, as if she had a great secret and was bursting inside with her eagerness to tell me.
“How about we wake this party up?” Jimmy asked. “I have a couple of joints we can share.”
“No, thanks,” Matt said rather quickly.
I glared at Haylee. My message was coming through loud and clear.
“Not tonight, I’m afraid,” Haylee told him. “But don’t smoke them without me.”
“I’ll smoke one at least, and I can get more,” he said. “You guys just sat here and watched this movie?”
“We also finished off the pizza,” Matt replied.
“Could you stand the excitement, Grandpa?” Jimmy kidded, followed by Haylee’s now very annoying giggle. “You should have watched my film. You’d learn something new to do.”
Our movie ended, and we had missed the wonderful conclusion.
“Oh, Matt,” I moaned.
“We’ll watch it some other time,” he promised me. “It’s a movie you can see many times.”