CHAPTER ONE
Of all the places to spend a hot August day in suburban Indiana, Cinema 12 had to be one of the best. Snacks, ice-cold air-conditioning, and endless opportunities for screen-writing analysis. At least, I thought so when I got the job in July.
Instead, Cin 12 gave me spilled nacho cheese, coagulating on the floor. Gray-haired men demanding student ticket prices but yelling at me when asked for a student ID. People complaining about strong perfume, about back-row make-outs, about the movie’s ending, about the ice-cold air-conditioning itself.
Every time I tugged on my itchy, ill-fitting tuxedo uniform, I chanted: College tuition. Room and board. Meal plan. I got to wear my own white collared shirt, at least, but no shade flattered me in the low theater light. I’d gone through more blush in half a summer than I usually did in half a year, coaxing my skin from “vampire-adjacent” to “peachy.”
“Okay, if you didn’t know what happened in these last five minutes,” Hunter said, his voice low in the darkness, “how would you write the ending from here on out? Same way?”
“Hmm.” I shifted my weight, leaning against the broom handle. Hunter’s taste skewed toward big explosions or heartwarming football movies, but he’d taken to asking me about screen writing. “I’d end it more quietly. Instead of her running after his cab, I’d have him turn around, walk back to her front door, and knock. Roll credits.”
“What?!” He glanced up at the smattering of viewers, all too enraptured to notice his outburst. “Hancock, you’re kidding me.”
My other coworkers called me Paige, but not Hunter. Hunter Chen spoke to all of us like we were his baseball teammates.
“You don’t like the sprinting-after-him scene? Those are classic.”
“No, I do,” I said, damping down a smile. In fact, on the last day of school in June, I had sprinted after Max Watson, and I’d kissed him in the empty junior hallway. It was adrenaline and a lifetime of rom-coms, yes, but also something very true. “It shows the pivotal moment of dropping everything to chase what matters.”
This summer, my screen-writing-program friends had teased me for preferring TV shows to film. When a movie closed with an inevitable, iconic kiss—atop a building, at the altar—I liked it fine. But I grew up with miserably married and then divorced parents, so I’d always known that wasn’t really the end of the story. A TV relationship, though, could bear out for years, through the mundanity and will-they-make-it lows. It made small moments big.
On-screen, the beautiful lead reached the taxi, her russet hair tousled. She was breathless and lovely, no trace of sweat even after sprinting. The musical score held its note, violins in waiting.
“Oh my God.” Hunter squeezed my arm in mock suspense. “Is he going to get out of the cab? He is!”
Of course he was. We’d seen the end a dozen times. They kissed as cars around them honked, and I shook my head. “See? A quiet realization would be more poetic—something as quotidian as showing back up. Choosing each other when there’s no fanfare.”
“Quo-what-ian? Okay, Honor Roll.”
“Commonplace. So everyday.”
He waved me off. “I like the running scene. Cheesy, sure. But packs a punch.”
“Oh my God.” I snorted. “It’s, like, the closest you can get to an action movie sequence. That’s why you like it.”
“Or maybe,” he said, hands on his chest, “underneath this stone-cold exterior, I’m a big softie.”
I rolled my eyes, used to this after a month of coworkerdom. For a while, I’d wondered if Hunter’s friends ribbed him about his good looks, about his training regimen. Maybe he made the jokes before anyone else could. Or, I wondered, was he possibly a little vain and drawing attention to himself? Finally, I realized: it’s definitely both.
We rotated through three stations at Cin 12: box office, concessions, and usher shifts. Our manager, Donna, had taken to pairing me with Hunter because he’d worked here long enough to help train me. And I, apparently, “kept him in line” better than Hunter’s best friend, Lane, whom he’d sweet-talked Donna into hiring.
The credits rolled to the beat of “Say Yes,” this summer’s “Live in the moment!” anthem. People filed out of the theater, and I smiled thinly as they passed. “Have a good one.”
“Take that chance with me,” Hunter added, speaking the song lyrics. The girl he directed this toward glanced away, bashful and thrilled. He had one of those full, semicircle grins, with dimples and a square chin to frame it. “Make a running leap and see.”
In June, “Say Yes” had pulsed out of bodega speakers and open windows as I walked to classes in New York. I’d bobbed my head happily. By mid-July, I was groaning at the intro’s percussive handclaps as I swept up crushed M&M’s. Now, though, Hunter and I had come back around to “Say Yes.” Was it because the song was terrible and we’d succumbed? Was the song great and we’d embraced it? I had no idea; it was simply part of us now.
“ ‘Say yes, say yes,’ ” Hunter sang in an atrocious falsetto, shimmying up the steps. He’d apologized early on for his terrible voice and for the fact that it would not stop him. The universe, I’d supposed out loud, would only allow him greatness in one type of pitch. He was delighted by my willingness to both mock him and laud his baseball prowess, which I’d gotten a crash-course on these past few weeks. Hunter used to be singularly focused on playing Major League Baseball someday, but the rigor of year-round ball had twinged his elbow and his enjoyment. He’d scaled back, healed, and landed a full athletic scholarship to Indiana University, on his way to PT school or school counseling. But he still hoped to play pro ball—following in the footsteps of his hero, and fellow Chinese American pitcher, Vance Worley.
I knew at least a thousand percent more baseball trivia than I had at the start of summer. And Hunter, I suspected, knew a thousand percent more about screenwriting.
“So, what’s the countdown on The Boyfriend? Cutting it pretty close to the start of school,” Hunter said. My coworkers called Max “The Boyfriend” with implied air quotes, like they didn’t fully believe he was real.
Perfectly real, in fact. Just in Italy for the second half of the summer, thriving in his preferred lifestyle of Latin, ancient relics, and gelato.
“He’s home Friday morning.” The closer Max’s arrival, the joltier my pulse. I imagined the sharp lines on an EKG, its alarm beeping with increasing urgency. Even with good anticipation, my body didn’t handle feelings well sometimes.
“Friday morning? Don’t you mean thirty-six hours, twelve minutes, and forty-two seconds?” Hunter clutched his hands together like a Disney princess daydreaming of her true love. “Forty-one. Forty!”
I chucked an empty popcorn tub at him, which he dodged, laughing. I didn’t even talk about Max that much! Or maybe I did. But who wouldn’t? I’d spent the first half of summer in Manhattan. By the time I got home, Max had left for his Italian study abroad. And since I hadn’t confessed my feelings for him till the last day of school, our relationship had been spent almost entirely apart.
I leaned down to an aisle seat, examining what appeared to be—yep, lovely—a small glob of white gum, newly stuck to the armrest. “Honestly. What compels a person to remove something from inside their mouth and press it somewhere another human being will sit?”