hour. I’m up front organizing the rows of sticky pastries into a precarious pyramid formation I’ve been mentally referring to as “Sugar Mountain,” when Dean pops his head out from behind a row of DVD cases at the back of the store.
“So you said you like Hitchcock, right?”
“Yeah, why?” I call back to him, placing a croissant neatly on top of Sugar Mountain, a pile of flaky crumbs raining down onto the counter.
He emerges from behind the stacks and comes to join me at the front of the store, a DVD case clutched in his hands. “So what’s your take on horror, then? Are you just into old-school, suspenseful stuff? Or have you explored the genre a bit?” His eyes are sparkling in excitement, little crinkles at the corners. “How about monsters and zombies?” He raises his brows. “Gore?”
Dean places the movie down in front of me. It’s called Mayhem in the Monastery and features a terrified nun in the grasp of a giant bloody hand. The scream on her face is almost funny.
“This is horror?” I ask skeptically. “Not comedy?”
He grins for a second, then goes stone-faced. “This is terrifying. C’mon.” He snatches the case off the counter and, without waiting for me to follow, turns and heads to the back of the store.
“C’mon where?” I glance at the front door. Through the clear glass I can see that the parking lot is empty, Dean’s motorcycle the only vehicle in sight. Yes, Dean drives a motorcycle, because of course he does. The chalkboard out front reads:
DAD, WHAT’S A VIDEO?
I sigh and put down the pastry I’m holding, abandoning Sugar Mountain to follow him into the break room. There’s an old couch against one wall that probably has things growing in it, and across from that, a small TV. The walls are covered in more old movie posters, which I kind of love, and in the corner there’s a life-sized cutout of Legolas from The Lord of the Rings, which has probably been there for years. I guess somebody put a Santa hat on his head around Christmas and it’s still there.
Dean is inserting Mayhem in the Monastery into the DVD player.
“We can’t watch now.” I pause halfway through the door. “What if we have customers?”
“We never have customers,” he says dryly. The menu pops up and scary, dramatic violin music fills the room.
“We do have customers,” I protest weakly. “That woman came in earlier for a coffee. And what about that vampire guy?”
The truth is, I don’t want to sit next to Dean on the small couch almost as badly as I do want to sit next to him. Sitting next to him means not knowing where to put my hands and having to keep my body rigid, because if I relax, what if I lean toward him and our shoulders touch? He probably wouldn’t want our shoulders to touch because he’s used to his shoulder touching prettier, older girls—sophisticated college girls who study film and smoke clove cigarettes and talk about how art makes them feel.
“There’s a bell over the door,” he says. “Remember? If anyone comes in we can go back up front.” I know he’s right. In the three weeks I’ve been here, we’ve had more time alone than we’ve had with customers—it’s just we usually don’t spend it actually hanging out. This is the first time he’s paid this much attention to me, and I am practically glowing. He presses PLAY on the remote. “It’ll be fine. I promise.” There he goes again with the promises.
“Mean it?” I ask.
“Every time.”
He flops down on the couch and I sit hesitantly next to him. The screen goes dark, then opens on a scene of a mountain, swirling fog licking the top of the peak. A woman’s scream fills the room and the title card flips into view: Mayhem in the Monastery.
Dean’s leg is relaxed, his knee leaning toward mine. He shifts and the edge of his knee makes contact. I can’t tell if it’s on purpose. The touch is so light he may not have even noticed, though to me, the spot is burning, spreading heat up my leg and through my body,