Chapter Twenty-Six
Tanner unlocked the Camaro’s trunk, tugging at the stiff lid until it finally gave way and opened with a groan. Lifting the box he’d hurriedly put together before leaving the house, he carried it back to the driver’s seat, laying it on the torn leather. “Stay here,” he told Van, who was watching him with an amused smile. “I just need to start the movie.”
“What are we watching?”
“Wait and see.” He winked and closed the door. He walked across the gravel parking lot toward the projection room, following the directions the audio visual team had given him, starting the digital screen and loading up the movie. As he sauntered back to the car, his cap pulled down low on his brow, his hands pushed into his jeans pockets, he looked at the Camaro, feeling a flash of warmth as he saw Van’s blonde hair spilling over the cracked leather seat.
He’d meant every word he said to her when he’d held her in his arms. He was in love with her. And if she hadn’t said it back yet? Well he could wait. He’d been waiting for ten years, after all.
Ten years of being without her and he could barely remember how that even worked. How had he woken up without her being the first thought in his mind? How had he slept without her curling her warm body against his?
The opening credits had started. Production companies’ logos flashed on the screen, one after another. He’d parked the Camaro in the front row, around thirty feet from the screen. To the right was the playground that kids could use whenever they got bored of what was being shown that night. To the left was the refreshment stand, though it hadn’t been completed yet. When it was, it would have state-of-the-art equipment to make popcorn, burgers, hot dogs, and fries.
Pulling the car door open, he lifted the box of food and slid inside.
“Is this the movie I think it is?” Van asked, as a big globe came on the screen, along with a little satellite orbiting around it.
“Almost certainly.”
“Jerry Maguire?” She looked at him, smiling. “What made you choose it?”
“It reminds me of Cam.” He shrugged. “And we watched it back when we were kids, remember?”
“The Tom Cruise summer series. I can’t tell you how many people complained that year.” Van sighed. “He’s a love-hate kind of actor.”
“He’s made some good movies though.”
“Yeah, he has.” She leaned forward to lift his baseball cap off, raking her fingers through his hair. Sitting back, she jammed the cap onto her own hair, her golden waves spilling out beneath it.
He looked at her and his stomach clenched. It was stupid and infantile, but he loved that she was wearing something of his. And of course, his girl rocked it.
His girl. Was that what she was?
He pulled up the Chaplin Drive-In Theater app on his phone, opening it up and linking it to the Bluetooth speaker he’d stashed in the glove compartment. The sound came on, synced perfectly to the screen.
He’d had to pay for the app to be designed, thanks to the contract he’d signed when he’d sold his business. It had rankled him to fork out for something he could have coded himself in less than a day, but those were the terms he’d agreed to.
Sometimes it sucked to be a grown up.
“Are there still only six billion people on the planet?” Van asked, as Tom’s opening monologue blasted out of the speakers.
“Around seven and a half billion now,” Tanner told her. “This was made almost twenty-five-years ago.”
“We were three-years-old.” She grinned. “Hadn’t even met yet.”
“We probably had and didn’t know it. Hartson’s Creek is so small we had to have passed each other in our strollers.”
“I’d have known it,” she said, her voice sure.
He opened a can of Coke and passed it to her. “How?”
“Because when I look at you, you turn my world upside down. You always have. Especially the first time we met.”
“When I knocked you over?” He grinned.
“Yeah. That time was literal.”
“Do you think there was always something between us?” he asked, tipping his head to his side as he looked at her intently. Tom was still talking, though neither of them were paying attention to him.