The window seals up tight again. We start away. Derick’s vise-like grip loosens. “Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, running a supportive hand up the outside of his arm.
“No. Not right now, thanks. Maybe later tonight. I just want to find the perfect spot for us to watch the movie.” He weakly smiles down at me. “Is that okay?”
“That’s more than okay.” I borrow his conspiratorial expression from the night at the Lonely Lass-O. “I have just the spot.”
When we reach my dad’s cobalt-blue pickup truck in the last row of spaces, I lean against the bumper hoping to exude some of Derick’s unflappable ease.
“Why are you making that face?”
“I’m glad you asked.” I reach for his hands. “I realized something. Even though true time travel doesn’t exist, I have been known to rewrite history.” I indicate the crowd around us. “Care to join me on a little journey to the past?”
His nod lets on that he knows where this is going. The element of surprise wasn’t on my side to begin with, so I’m unbothered as I pop the back hatch and leap into the bed.
Three flicks and the whole rectangle comes alive with strands of magical fairy lights, battery-powered and illuminating a drove of blankets and pillows. Including the one Mateo had to pry from Claire’s materialistic grip.
“Twizzler?” I ask, reaching a half-open pack of Pull ’n’ Peels down toward him. The interaction with his parents falls away. He accepts one right before I hoist him up to my level.
“You did all this for me?” He does a three-sixty, inspecting days of planning come to fruition. Then, he does another spin, eye line out on the lot, inspectingmonthsof planning paying off.
“Half for you, half forus. What you said at Alice’s the other night gave me the idea.” We sit, get comfortable. He reaches for one of the buckets of popcorn. “That one’s actually mine.” I grab it from him, wiggling my fingers. “No butter or salt. This one’s for you.” I pass him the second one. “Extrabutter,extrasalt. And…extranapkins.” I drop a stack in his lap.
“You thought of everything, didn’t you?”
“What can I say? Anything worth doing is worth doing right.” It seems sometimes my affinity for not settling comes in handy. Especially when it comes to him. I slide in closer.
Easing into the moment, I rest my head on his shoulder, the soft cotton and defined muscle making an excellent pillow. I realize it doesn’t feel the same as it did senior year. Not even close. Too much has shifted since then. Derick and I are settled into our identities. We know each other on a deeper level. There are no friends here to cockblock our (hopeful, eventual) kissing.
“Remember when you said one kiss can cause a whole lot of trouble?” I ask, recalling that huge stalk of comical celery.
“Yeah?” He’s already munching on a handful of popcorn.
“You weren’t kidding.” I snort. Not on purpose. But thankfully, Derick doesn’t cringe. He boops my nose with a salty finger as if it were the cutest thing in the world. An almost-kiss wreaked emotional havoc on my life for so long. A real kiss was the tipping point for complete upheaval. But now, quite a few kisses later, I’m more motivated than ever to rebuild my world the way I want to see it. Even if that world can’t include Wiley’s.
It dawns on me that this is the last night ever that I’ll get to really enjoy the drive-in as an audience member. In the coming weeks, we’ll start clearing out, listing equipment for sale, and saying goodbye. I’ll be on the clock for all of it. In the end, I couldn’t have coordinated a better final experience, nor a better final person to share it with.
Maybe it’s the twinkle lights mirroring the stars above us or the buzz building around us, but whatever the impetus, I tilt my head up toward Derick’s and whisper what I’ve been feeling for an eternity. “I hope you know how much you mean to me.” His smile shines brighter than the moon. “Doing this was only one small way to show you. If you’ll let me, I’d like to keep showing you in a bunch of different ways, in a bunch of different places for a long, long time.”
He bites his lip. “I’ll strongly consider it,” he teases, making a reference to Alice’s early hesitation over this exact evening. I give him a playful shove. Setting his popcorn aside, he asks in a low voice, “How else do you plan on showing me?”
“Hmm.” I make a grand show of considering his question as if I haven’t imagined this specific scenario a million times since that fateful night. “Maybe with a kiss?” I lick my lower lip, anticipating his buttery taste.
“I think I could be persuaded with a kiss.”
Just as the countdown clock on the screen times out, I sit up and correct the past with a perfect (perfect) kiss. The passion with which he kisses me back tells me I’ve persuaded him fully and then some.
“You mean a lot to me too, Wren,” he whispers when we lean back.
His fidgety fist blossoms into an open palm. I lace our fingers together as we prepare to take in the movie and take on the future, whatever that may include, together.
Chapter 30
Alice’s house is, for the first time in a long time, full of life.
Light spills out of every window. People sit on every sturdy chair. Food and drinks are splayed out across every available surface.
Good thing Derick and I helped her clean up the wreckage of her riot last week. The impromptu potluck formed immediately after the screening ended, and it’s been going on for at least an hour now. I stand in the corner of the porch, empty red Solo cup in my hand, watching as the fireflies dance across the property.
Chompin’ at the Bitmade massive waves. When the film concluded, as I suspected, Alice walked out from Mom’s car to the center of the lot and blew kisses to her adoring public. The cheers could probably be heard for miles.
