She grinned, grateful for his levity.
“Did you know you can buy movies at Walgreens? They have everything at that store.”
“You don’t say,” she deadpanned.
“I needed some Tylenol the other day,” he said with an amazed shrug, “and happened to pick these up. Princess Bride, Bridesmaids, Inception…”
“I’ve never seen them.”
His eyebrows practically disappeared from his face. “You’ve never seen any of them? Even Princess Bride?”
She shook her head. “I mean, I’ve heard of them. I know Fitz was obsessed with Inception when it came out. That’s the dream within a dream one, right?”
“But you’ve been living under a rock?” he guessed.
“Yep.”
“Well, come on, then. Let your education begin. We’ll start with Princess Bride. It’s a classic, and I think you’ll really love it,” he said and motioned with his arm for Bronte to follow him to the living room, where he put the food boxes on the coffee table and helped himself to turning on the television. He knew his way around like he lived there. “Cary Elwes and Robin Wright are in it. I think Cary is way underrated as an actor. Everyone thinks of him from this movie, and maybe Robin Hood: Men in Tights, but he can do smarmy really well. In Twister, he plays this—”
“You’re really into movies, huh?” she asked as he passed her chopsticks and opened the containers of lo mein and sweet-and-sour pork.
“I, uh, yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“If you weren’t allowed to watch them when you were a kid, did you sneak them, or…?”
He sat back, munching on an egg roll before finally answering, “When I got my license, I was supposed to go do volunteer work. Instead, I went to the movies. I was caught after a while, and…” He shrugged. “I wasn’t the only kid trying to explore, ya know? I wasn’t the only one trying to sneak cigarettes or get hold of alcohol to give it a try, but somehow, I was the only one who ever got caught. I was known as the troublemaker, the bad kid.”
She huffed. “You weren’t a bad kid—you were a normal kid. Everybody does that stuff.”
He snuck a piece of pork from the box Bronte held. “At first, my parents didn’t mind when I moved away. They were proud, I was doing it for the Lord.” He drew imaginary quotation marks around that last bit, a rueful curl to his lips. “But…”
He didn’t need to finish his thought. He’d already told her how it ended, so she finished her food in thoughtful silence as Chris occasionally let her in on some secrets about the movie or actors. He was incredibly knowledgeable about it all, a real film nerd.
After they finished eating, he slid the leftovers onto the table and brushed his hands before settling into the couch, yanking Bronte’s legs into his lap. His head fell to the back of the couch, his fingers absently tracing circles on her calves, and if he had any idea of what he was doing to her body, making it tingle and flutter, he didn’t show it.
“I do like this movie,” she said after a while.
“I knew you would.” When he moved his hand higher up her leg, she shivered. “Are you cold?” he asked, grabbing a nearby blanket to drape over both of them.
He towed her to his side to wrap an arm around her shoulders, while he rubbed his other hand along the outside of her thigh, completely encasing her in his warmth. “Better?”
They were close enough that when she nodded, her nose skimmed along his, and she held her breath, waiting for his kiss. But it never came. He backed away from her, positioning them more comfortably next to each other with a playful smile. “I’m waiting for you to say the word.”
She got it. He handed over the controls of this thing to her, but with the speed of everything happening between them, it seemed almost too good to be true. She didn’t want to rush any decisions, so she settled against Chris, trying and failing to keep her eyes open.
She stirred awake the next morning, wrapped up in a blanket burrito with her head on a pillow. She blinked, focusing her eyes to find her glasses, which lay on the coffee table next to her cell phone and the Princess Bride box. She put on the glasses and checked the phone. One text from Shelley about going to the hospital today and one from Chris. It read Take the DVD so you can watch as many times as you wish.
She caught the reference from the movie and smiled.
Usually, Bronte liked to confront a problem from every angle, analyze the consequences, which was why it took her so long to make a decision. She was even a comparison shopper on bedsheets. Hell, it took a family emergency to get her to finally break it off with Hunter after years of quibbling.
Yet when she woke up to find Chris had clearly taken care of her last night, even down to her glasses, her best intentions to think everything through were blown out of the water. There was no thinking when it came to him. Only action.
* * *
Chris stood patiently,fingers drumming on the kitchen counter as the Keurig brewed his cup of extra bold. He’d showered and changed after he’d gotten back home from spending the night on the couch with Bronte.
She had been soft and warm against him, and he’d liked her slow breaths against his chest when she finally fell asleep next to him. Then when he’d moved them both down, stretching out along the length of the couch, she’d curled into him, doing this cute little smacking thing with her lips.