Chapter 7 Movie Night

• Helaine
• “I don’t know, I think the villain’s motivations were a little passé.”
• “Passé? Come on, it was a vampire flick from the 80s. What motivation does he need beyond ‘Mmm lemme at that blood’?”
• “Helaine, you’re into gothic lit, right? Help me out here.”
• “Hmm, what?” I startled, looking dazed as my friends waited for an answer. “Sorry, I was . . . I was focused on the movie.”
• Lie.
• It was a total, complete, bald faced lie.
• Ever since my friends and I pooled our money together for a projector, movie night in the abandoned underpass had been my absolute favorite thing to do, especially in October, where we met once a week for a horror movie on Saturday as opposed to once a month like the rest of the year.
• It helped to make up for the fact that outdoor movie nights tended to be a no-go through most of winter.
• By all accounts, I should have been absolutely engrossed in this cheesy old vampire movie, but it was hard to focus when Evan spent the entire time sitting across the underpass staring at me.
• Something about the too-bright stage blood and the horrendously obvious prosthetics just seemed so ridiculous after I’d encountered the real deal.
• It was hard to take the fictional vampire seriously when all I could think about was having Evan’s fangs buried in my neck again.
• “Wow, you’re totally spaced out.” Delanie grinned, snapping her fingers in my face. “Earth to Helaine, we’re talking vampires here—overplayed premise or literary classic?”
• “Del, it’s 1980s splatter horror.” I rolled my eyes. “Hardly gothic lit.”
• Roman clapped his hands together victoriously. “Exactly! It doesn’t have to be good—the rule of 80s horror is fun over substance.”
• “Yeah yeah,” she waved him off, never taking her eyes off of me. “What I want to know is why you’re being such a space case today.”
• “What?” I panicked, very quickly glancing over at Evan, who was doing nothing but eyeing me with amusement. Ass. “I was just . . . really into the movie.”
• “Mhm,” she hummed, obviously not buying it for a second. “Because you’re so into . . . what did you call it . . . ? 1980s Splatter Horror?”
• “Oof, better run, Lainey.” Roman jutted his chin over my shoulder, and my heart practically dropped into my stomach. “Here comes trouble.”
• What the hell was he doing?
• Evan approached us with that same, swaggering walk he always had, which in retrospect makes sense. He’s still a rockstar, even if he hasn’t been on the stage in decades.
• The fact that I didn’t recognize him still drove me insane. E.V. Rose, my long time favorite, and he’d been hanging around my friend group since the semester started.
• Up until last month, when we began our little . . . arrangement, I had always made a point to avoid any one on one time with Evan, and he had been respectful of that boundary.
• The days between then and now had been . . . normal, almost disappointingly so, so I had absolutely no idea what he was planning in this moment.
• “So, how about that movie?” Evan called as he walked up to join us. “Awfully thought provoking, no?”
• “No,” Roman laughed. “But I feel like that’s the point.”
• “Fair, fair,” Evan laughed, before turning his mahogany brown eyes to me, all too intensely. “But what did you think?”
• “Oh, I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about it.” I held his gaze, not one to back down from a challenge, until Delanie cleared her throat.
• “So . . . what’s this?” She asked, gesturing between Evan and I with a raised brow. “You two don’t . . . talk.”
• “Oh, no—” I put my hands up defensively, taking a half step away from Evan, not missing the amusement in his eyes. “We’re just working on a project together, that’s all.”
• “Mhm, sure.” Roman crossed his arms, grinning like the cat that got the canary. “Because that never leads to two artists fucking.”
• My heart was racing, and I thought it was going to burst straight out of my chest when Evan had the audacity to haphazardly sling his arm over my shoulders, as though that was helping make my case at all.
• “Oh, ease up on her,” he teased, squeezing my shoulder playfully. “We’re just going to have a little dinner.”
• I felt my ears heat up at that—he wasn’t lying, he just didn’t mention that I was going to be the dinner.
• “Sure,” Del mocked me, grabbing Roman by the arm to lean against him with mock tenderness. “Come on, Roman, let’s go get some dinner.”
• Roman laughed, biting at the air in front of her before looking back at Evan and I. “Seriously Lainey, no judgment.”
• “Maybe a little.” Del pinched her fingers together, a shit eating grin on her face. “Just kidding, Evan.”
• “No worries.” Evan grinned. “Not everyone has good taste.”
• “How dare you!” Del gasped, clutching at her chest as though greatly offended. “Come on Roman, let’s get out of here.”
• “Catch you later, Lainey,” Roman laughed as Del started to drag him away. “Evan.”
• If the ground had wanted to swallow me up whole in that moment, that would have been A-okay with me.
• It was bad enough that Del and Roman were right, but it was even worse how nonchalant Evan was about the whole thing.
• I kept looking over my shoulder as we started to walk toward his apartment at the corner of Cardinal and Main, nervous that my friends might turn around and see the way that Evan kept touching me—he was subtle, his fingertips ghosting the small of my back, his hip bumping into mine, leaning in just a little closer than necessary when he teased me about the stupid vampire movie.
• It was all so . . . intimate.
• Del and Roman had no idea what was actually going on between Evan and I.
• “Awe, Lainey,” he teased, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me close. “Did the spooky vampire movie get you all scared?”
• “Yes,” I hissed at him, stopping and staring intently at him under an old streetlight—the damn thing flickered incessantly, and that only made the moths flock to it more. “I’m scared that my friends are going to get the wrong idea if you keep acting so . . . friendly with me in public.”
• “We are friendly.” His brow furrowed. “What’s so wrong about that?”
• “You know what I mean.” I fixed him with a serious glare, but he only looked more confused. “I’m afraid that they’re going to think we’re seeing each other.”
• “We are seeing each other.” He cracked that annoyingly devilish grin. “Just not quite the way that the others think.”
• My stomach felt like it was all tied in knots as I looked at him looking at me. I couldn’t tell if it was just the way the flickering light accentuated his features, or if there was a possessiveness on his face.
• “Evan . . . ” I had to tread carefully. “Do you think we’re exclusive?”
• “Why do you ask?” He snorted, tilting his head to the side. “You’re not fucking anyone else.”
• Taking a step back, my eyes narrowed with confusion. “How would you know that?”
• “I could smell it on you if you were.” He shrugged. “Did you forget that I’m not human?”
• Jesus fucking Christ.
• I wanted to bury my head in the sand and stay there until my cheeks stopped being so red, but this conversation had taken a turn for the embarrassing.
• “Well, are you sleeping with anyone else?” I raised a brow, trying to deflect the attention off of myself. “You don’t exactly seem like the monogamous type.”
• Can it be called monogamy if he’s paying for it?
• He laughed openly at me, running a hand through his ash brown hair.
• “Helaine, I may look the same as I did when I was a twenty seven year old party boy, but I’m an old man now,” he sighed.
• I raised a brow at that. “Mhm, sure, let’s say I believe that.”
• “Look, I’ve lived a long life, and I’ve reached the point where I don’t give a fuck about having sex if I’m not having it exactly the way I like it.” He fixed me with an intense stare, his eyes glowing red with want. “You know full well that the way I like it takes a whole lot of preparation, so no, I’m not having sex with anyone else right now.”
• All I could do was stare dumbly at him for a moment, my heart hammering in my chest.
• “It would be too much work.”
• “Oh wow.” I rolled my eyes, leaning away from him with an incredulous look. “Thank you for putting yourself through the great effort it takes to have sex with me.”
• I gasped when he grabbed my jaw, pulling me close to make me look directly into his eyes. “No, thank you for indulging me.”
• He pulled me into a devouring kiss, making me go weak at the knees and leaving me completely breathless beneath the soft hum of the flickering streetlight.