She smiled. “Get on with it.”
“After seven years with the same person, was it…like, was it super weird?”
She smiled. “Uh. It’s not like the technology changed. It’s not like the last time I was with someone else it was a Razr and now it’s an iPhone.”
“Okay, okay…” he said.
“But I dunno, the thing that made it the most different was the guilt of the whole thing…”
“But you both had agreed to it, right?”
“You still just kinda feel deeply deeply wrong for it to not be the person you’re used to it being with, even when you’re in the clear. Or at least I did. There’s the obvious stuff that makes you feel it, the things anyone knows from being with someone for the first time. You don’t know what they look like with their clothes off. The moment before everything comes off when you’re wondering whether you’re going to be impressed or disappointed. It’s the way it’s all sort of the same, except when…I dunno, when it isn’t…” She was playing with her hair, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “You think it’s the relationship that’s made it rote. You think it’s the familiarity with the other person. But maybe it’s something else.…Besides, there was this famous actor, so that might’ve been at play, too.”
“A famous actor? Which actor?!” he said, lit up fresh.
“Sorry, you’re out of questions.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s another question. You’re digging yourself deeper into debt.”
“Okay, how ’bout this…” he said, pointing a finger to the marquee a couple blocks away. “If he’s on one of the posters out front of the theater, will you tell me?”
She didn’t think he was in anything that was out. It was safe enough.
“Fine,” she said, and they walked the rest of the way, eventually edging up to the posters, where they started scanning.
He kept naming actors. Practically every actor he recognized, and then the last names of some Spanish actors he read straight from the posters.
She smiled at his enthusiasm. Then she stopped smiling and said, “Oh God.”
“What?” Jack said, excitedly covering the distance to her side in a single stride.
She didn’t move.
“I stepped on a bug,” she said. “It surprised me.”
“No way,” he said. “I saw what you were looking at, you were looking at this one, and you saw something.”
He scanned the poster in front of her. It was a space movie with an ensemble cast. The Right Stuff, but for a mission to Mars. There he was. One of the astronauts, second from center. She watched Jack’s eyes scan the poster frantically, trying to decide which one. Then she gave in and thumbed at him.
“Oh, yes…” he said. “Oh, this is awesome! This is the best thing I’ve ever heard. And Will knows?” He was jumping up and down a little bit. He was purely delighted. “And you’ve seen that one movie, right?”
She knew which movie he was referring to and why. She felt her throat getting pink and she raised her eyebrows and smiled through tight lips.
“Oh my God, that’s awesome. I’ve never known someone who’s had sex with a movie star. This is great. I’m so glad we met! I’m so glad we didn’t go to the concert and that we wound up here instead. So that I can finally say I know someone who—”
He was bobbing up and down a little recklessly and spilled over into the gutter as a car was passing by.
“Easy…” she said, as he hopped back up onto the curb with a doofy grin slopped across his face.
“What was he like? Did you know him from before?”
“You’re out of questions. You’re well into the red. We’re on to other things now.”
A warm storm gust blew through. She heard the weather in the trees. The sky was getting evening-colored. It wasn’t raining yet, but it couldn’t hold off forever.
“Should we see it?” Jack said. “Should we go in?”
“You want to see a movie?” Whitney said.
“I mean, look at that,” he said, gesturing at the ashcloud. “Might as well not get caught in it. And besides, it’ll give us an opportunity for you to break it down for me.”
“My time with Adrien?”
He smiled widely again and pulled the hair on his arms. “No, no,” he said, giddy. “I mean, that too, sure. But I meant we can talk about the movie afterward. I’m sure you pick up on a million things I don’t even know to look for. Maybe I can ask you some more questions if you’re not sick of me yet.”
She hadn’t planned to see this movie and she hated seeing movies that weren’t on her lists. But where else was there to go? What else would she do with the borrowed time? The concert was meant to last another two hours.
She turned on roaming and checked her phone. She’d forgotten to charge it last night or after her run, and it was already in the red. She watched the signal announce itself. She checked her email first. Then she saw there were no new texts from Will. He was either crammed in with a bunch of teenagers pretending to enjoy the music or he was fucking Jenna in a Porta-John. Neither of which she had much say over from where she stood, anyway. She wondered what might happen to the concert if it started raining, but she let the thought consume her only a little.
“Sure,” Whitney said. “But let’s get a couple tallboys from over there and hide them in my pockets.”
She started across the street to the supermercat. She thought he heard him say, “My kind of woman.”
And then she paid for the beers and he paid for the tickets and they disappeared inside the theater to watch a blockbuster movie on a weekday afternoon and to get drunk in the dark together.
They hid under a tree and then an awning and then a sculpture, squeezing
