20. Forward
CARTER
Can I touch her? I don’t know if I can touch her.
I keep reaching for her hand and then letting it hang there in midair before pulling it back, dragging it over my thigh. It’s all clammy, so she probably doesn’t even want to hold my hand anyway. But I want to hold hers.
Olivia’s being a good sport, pretending not to notice how anxious I am, how I have zero clue what the fuck I’m doing. She keeps her eyes trained on the movie trailers in front of us, but every time I look at her, the corner of her mouth quirks as she tries not to laugh at me.
“I’m so hot,” I blurt, tugging at the neck of my hoodie. I fan at my face. “Are you hot?”
She twists in her seat, amusement twinkling in her eyes as she watches me. “No.”
“Oh. Just me then.” Leaning forward, I tug my hoodie over my head, and Olivia grunts as my elbow connects with some part of her body.
“Oh fuck.” I shove my hoodie in her lap and stick my face in hers, my hands running up and down her arms, lifting them, searching for…
bruises? I don’t fucking know. Christ, I’m a fucking mess.
“Did I get you? Are you hurt? Are you okay? Sorry my hands are so sweaty.” I twirl one in the air, then point to the ceiling.
“It’s the heat. I think they’ve got it cranked all the way up.
Want me to ask them to turn it down?” I push on the armrests of my chair, climb to my feet, and thumb down the row. “I’ll ask them to turn it down.”
Olivia grabs a fistful of my shirt and tugs me back down to my seat. “The temperature is fine, Carter. I know you’re nervous, but—”
“Nervous? Me? Psssh.” I wave a flappy hand through the air. “ Please . They call me Mr. Confident.”
Her tongue pokes the inside of her cheek as she fights her smile. “Uh-huh.”
I sink back in my seat, knee bouncing as I stare at the screen but don’t actually see what’s on it.
This particular theater is relatively quiet considering how busy the place is.
Perks of seeing a kid’s movie after they’ve all gone to bed, I guess.
Anyway, I kinda wish it was busy, because then maybe I’d have something else to focus on other than how fucking nervous I feel.
She’s here. She came, all on her own. What does that mean? Is this a date? Does she want to, like…move forward? With me? I won’t fuck it up. I’m gonna be so fucking good, and I’m gonna show her how much she can trust me.
“Carter, I—”
“I’m gonna go get snacks,” I half yell, leaping to my feet before promptly tripping over them on my first step, catching myself against the row in front of us.
“Are you o—”
“I’m fine,” I call over my shoulder, scurrying down the row.
“Snacks. Snacks, snacks, snacks.” I bury my face in my hands the second I burst into the hallway, leaning back against the wall.
What in the fuck is wrong with me? She’s, like, half my size.
Why am I scared of her suddenly and how do I become, like… normal again?
I pick the longest line at the concession stand, relishing in the time alone to screw my head on straight, but by the time I get to the counter I accidentally order so much food that they have to put all my candy and chocolate in a popcorn bag so I can carry it all.
“Thanks.” I wrap one arm around the XL popcorn, the other around the bag of treats, and carefully pick up a drink in each hand. “And by the way, it’s hot as balls in theater four. You should maybe think about turning the heat down.”
The kid behind the counter blinks slowly. “We keep all our theaters set at sixty-five degrees.”
My brows rise as I give him a pointed look. “Yeah. Fucking scorching.”
With that, I leave him staring after me, carrying my goodies back to the theater.
My blood drums in my ears with each step I take, climbing the stairs to Olivia in the back row. Her eyes shine with laughter as she unfolds my seat for me so I can sit down with my hands full. I place the bag of candy in her lap and she snickers as she peeks inside it.
“This is a lot of food.”
“Yeah, I eat when I’m nervous. And all the time, really.
And I remember the day after we met you said you like sweet over salty, so I got a few bags of chocolate and candy, but we’re at the movies, so we need popcorn too.
Do you like popcorn? I didn’t know what you wanted for a drink, so I got a root beer and an iced tea, and you can have whichever one you want, or we can split them both if you want some of each and you don’t mind sharing germs or whatever, but if you don’t want my germs, then that’s cool, and we can—”
“Carter.” Olivia lays her hand on my forearm. It’s soft and warm and all I can hear is my heart. “Take a breath. I love chocolate, candy, and popcorn. I like both root beer and iced tea, so I’m okay with either, but we can share if you’d like, because I don’t mind your germs. Okay?”
I lick my lips. “Okay.”
“Thank you for this. And thank you for the extra-extra bacon pizza last night.”
“Did you find the most bacon-y slice?”
She smiles, and I think my heart stops. “I did, but it was hard, because there was so much bacon. My dream come true.”
“I asked them to use the real stuff, not the crappy crumble.”
“It was incredible.”
“Okay.” I nod. “Yeah. Good.”
The lights dim in the theater, a quiet hum fading to silence that makes my skin crawl as Olivia settles back in her seat and I’m forced to go back to pretending like I don’t want to take her face in my hands and kiss her.
I’m one of those people that gets completely enraptured in Disney movies.
My sister and I spent entire weekends lying on makeshift pillow beds on the living room floor, watching every Disney movie in our extensive collection.
It’s one of my favorite memories. At nighttime, my parents would cuddle up on the couch behind us, and if we begged enough, they’d agreed to let us sleep out there, stay up and watch the movies.
I can count the times we made it to midnight on one hand, and more often than not we each woke up in our own beds.
And yet right now I can’t focus on a single thing happening between Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Sven, or Olaf.
By the time we’re a half hour into the movie, Olivia sets the treats down on the ground, and I follow her lead, placing the popcorn down too.
I can’t get my knee to stop bouncing, and I’m itching to do something with my hands, namely hold one of hers. Instead, I yank my toque off my head and plow my fingers through my hair, tugging on the strands.
Olivia reaches out, gently pulling my hair free, bringing my hand down to my lap, where she slowly twines her fingers with mine.
“Okay?” she asks on a whisper.
I stare down at her hand in mine, so tiny, so soft, so fucking warm , and when I peer up at her, she gives me a tender smile. The frantic race of my heart slows to a steady gallop, and the tension in my shoulders dissolves.
“Okay.”
* * *
“You really thought Olaf was going to die there, huh?”
“He did die, Ollie. Elsa brought him back to life, thank fuck. I would’ve rioted.” I nearly cut off the circulation to her hand by gripping it so tight while I waited, hoping the funny snowman would reappear.
“Can you imagine if Disney movies were as cutthroat now as they were when we were growing up?”
I shudder, squeezing her hand as we head through the lobby of the theater. “There was so much trauma back then.”
“But it shaped us. I wouldn’t be who I was if Scar didn’t toss Mufasa off that cliff, you know?”
“I’ll never get over Simba trying to wake him up,” I reply as we step into the cold night.
Olivia releases my hand, stuffing her toque over her mane of curls and pulling her floppy-eared puppy mitts from her coat pocket. “Thank you, Carter. I had a lot of fun.”
“Me too. I’m glad you came.” I rock back on my heels, smiling down at her as she smiles up at me. I don’t want to say good-bye.
She tilts her head down the street. “Um, I’m gonna go grab a tea at the coffee shop down the road.”
“Oh. What a coincidence. I was also about to go there and get a tea. Guess we can walk together. Maybe grab a seat at the same table.”
“You drink tea?”
“Never.”
Olivia’s eyes shut with her laugh, and I wrap my gloved hand around hers as we start strolling down the street. Fat snowflakes start falling from the sky, clinging to her lashes, the tips of her hair, and she looks kinda like a snow angel.
“I guess you’re used to this kinda winter, huh?”
“We got our asses kicked every winter in Muskoka,” she nods, “but they were the most gorgeous winters. Towering, snow-covered pines, and frozen lakes that looked like glass. My brother and I would walk to Willow Beach and play hockey where the lake was frozen solid.” Her nose wrinkles.
“But I think I’ve grown too accustomed to these west coast winters, because whatever’s going on lately with this weather is really doing me in.
I’m this close to taking Cara up on her offer to finish the season in Cabo. ”
“Nah, you don’t wanna do that. You’d have to listen to her and Em have phone sex every night.
Trust me, it’s not something you wanna hear.
I’ve been subjected to it for way too long on our road trips.
” I nudge her shoulder with mine. “Plus, that sounds like a lot of days without me, which would ultimately suck for you.”
Her eyes glitter. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, you’d miss me like crazy and your days would be boring as fuck without me making you laugh.”
Olivia laughs, a soft sound as I open the door to the coffee shop. It’s quiet in here, a few people sprinkled throughout, chatting lowly and sipping on hot drinks.
Olivia reaches into her purse, producing her wallet. “What do you want?”
“You’re not paying.”
“I’m paying.”
“No, you’re not. I’m paying.”
“You paid for the movies and the snacks.”
“Yeah, ’cause you kicked my ass in beer pong—by way of cheating—and I owed you a night at the movies. It’s the same night, so it counts.”
“Carter—”
“You won’t win, Ollie, so you might as well tell me what you want.”