“Don’t you dare try to serve me pie now. I am stuffed, I tell you, stuffed!” I yelled.
“Quiet, it’s just cooling,” he scolded, coming around the corner from the kitchen. “You’re gonna have to scooch over, sister. It’s movie time,” he instructed, pushing me with his big toe as I struggled to sit up straight.
“What is it that we’re watching?”
“The Exorcist,” he whispered, turning off the light on the end table and leaving the room quite dark.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I screeched, leaning over him to turn it back on.
“Don’t be a wuss. You’re watching it,” he hissed, turning it back off.
“I’m not a wuss, but there is stupid and not stupid, and stupid is watching a movie like The Exorcist with the lights off! That’s just asking for trouble!” I hissed back, turning it back on.
It was starting to look like a disco in here…
“Okay, I’ll make a deal with you. Lights off, but—” he shushed me with is finger as he saw me begin to interrupt “—if you get too scared, lights go back on. Deal?”
I was still leaning across him on my way to turn the light back on again when I noticed how close I was to his face. And how I was angled across him like a girl waiting to get a spanking. And I knew he was capable of delivering one…
“Fine,” I huffed as the opening credits came on. I returned to a normal, seated position.
He smiled triumphantly and gave me a thumbs up.
“If you show me that thumb one more time I’ll bite it off,” I growled, pulling an afghan off the back of the couch and curling it protectively around me. One minute into the movie, and I was already spooked.
I was tense from that moment on, and any idea I might have had about girls being ridiculous around guys when they watched scary movies went by the wayside when Regan peed herself at the dinner party.
By the time the priest came for a little visit, I was practically sitting on Simon’s lap, my right hand had a death grip on his thigh, and I was viewing the movie through the holes in the afghan, which I had draped entirely over my head.
“I actually, literally, hate you for making me watch this movie,” I whispered in his ear, which was right in my face as I refused to leave any space between us. I’d even accompanied him to the bathroom earlier when we took a break. He insisted I stay out in the hallway, but I stood just outside the door, eyes glancing around furtively, still with the afghan over my head.
“Do you want me to stop? I don’t want you to have nightmares,” he whispered back, his eyes on the screen.
“Just no banging on the walls for a few nights, please. I won’t be able to take it,” I said, looking at him through one of my eyeholes.
“Have you heard any banging lately?” he asked, rolling his eyes as he did every time he looked at me with the ridiculous afghan on my head.
“No, I haven’t actually. Why is that?” I asked.
He took a breath. “Well, I—” he started, and then the most maniacal scary noises started coming from the TV, and we both jumped.
“Okay, maybe this movie is a little scary. You wanna sit closer?” he asked, pressing pause on the remote.
“I thought you’d never ask,” I cried, launching myself fully into his lap and settling between his thighs. “Do you want some afghan?” I offered, and he laughed.
“No, I can take it like a man. You stay under there, though,” he teased.
I narrowed my eyes at him through the eyeholes and poked one finger through the weave. “Guess which finger this is,” I said, waving it at him.
“Shhh, movie,” he answered, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me back against his chest.
He was warm and strong and powerful, but absolutely no match for terror that was The Exorcist. What had we been talking about? Now I couldn’t think about any walls banging except the one Regan was currently banging the shit out of and spraying down with pea soup. We watched the rest of that damn movie wound around each other like pretzels, and he finally succumbed to the false security that an afghan eyehole can provide.
Click. Click. Click.
What the hell was that?
Click. Click. Click.
Oh no.
I lay paralyzed in my bed, every light in my entire apartment blazing.
Click. Click. Click.
I pulled the covers up higher, covering my face up to my eyes, which kept a constant vigil around the bedroom. Brain knew we were safe and secure, but also kept replaying scenes from that terrible, terrible movie, making it impossible to shut off for the night and go to sleep. Nerves had everything on lockdown, blazing a trail of fiery adrenaline throughout my body. I hated Simon with every fiber of my being in that moment. I also wished he was here.
Click. Click. Click.
What was that?
Click. Click.
Nothing.
Then Clive leaped on the bed, and I screamed bloody murder. Clive puffed out his tail and hissed at me, wondering why the hell Mommy was screaming at him, I’m sure. The click-click-click was his goddamned kitty hangnail.
My phone vibrated an instant later, shaking the entire nightstand and eliciting another scream from me. It was Simon.
“What the hell is wrong? Why are you screaming? Are you okay?” he yelled when I answered, and I could hear him through the phone and through the wall.
“Get your ass over here right now, you motherfucking scary movie pusher,” I seethed and hung up. I pounded on the wall and ran out to unlock the door. In much the same way I’d run up the last few steps of the basement stairs when I was a kid, I hightailed it back into my room, jumping the last few feet and landing in the center of my bed. I wrapped the covers around me and peered out, waiting. He knocked, and I heard the door push open.
“Caroline?” he called.
“Back here,” I yelled. Sad that I’d been reduced to this, but I was glad to see him.
“I brought the pie,” he said with an embarrassed grin. “And this,” he added, producing the afghan from behind his back.
“Thanks.” I smiled at him from behind my pillow shield.
A few minutes later we were settled on my bed, each balancing a plate and a glass of milk. We’d been too full, then too terrified to eat pie earlier. Clive and his phantom hangnail retired to the other room after rolling his eyes at Simon and swishing his tail.
“How old are you?” I asked, cutting into my pie.
“Twenty-eight. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six. We are twenty-eight and twenty-six years old and terrified of a movie,” I mused, poking in a bite. The pie was good.