The movie was winding down.
He felt her breathing change beside him as one of the main characters, the father, died in a grand gesture of sacrifice and love.
Her inhalations came deeper. A quick glance revealed her eyes were brighter, glassy.
He fixed his gaze back on the movie. It was a pretty emotional scene. As someone who had lost his own father, his mind went there, thinking how his father would have done anything for him. Dad would have embraced death to save Nolan and the rest of his family.
As the credits rolled, Nolan rubbed his hands up and down his thighs. “I’ll have to tell Emmaline about this movie. She’d love it.”
“But not your girlfriend?” she asked as she hopped up from the couch to tap on the keyboard of the laptop connected to her TV. Her dark bun bobbed on her head with her movements. “She won’t like it?”
He hesitated, thinking about Priscilla and realizing it had been easier to sit here when he had not been thinking about her. “She’s not into horror movies—”
She sent him a reproving glance over her shoulder.
“Yeah. I’m labeling,” he admitted. “I know zombie movies are more than horror. They beg grand existential questions. You’ve educated me on that. But Priscilla would consider them horror. She’s more into rom-coms.”
Hayden said nothing to that, but he felt a certain level of disdain radiating from her. She didn’t approve of his girlfriend, which was kind of funny considering his girlfriend didn’t approve of Hayden either.
“You’re not into rom-coms?” he asked.
“I’ve liked a few, but mostly they feed into false expectations.”
She stood back as the opening credits for World War Z appeared on the screen.
“False expectations?”
She returned to the couch beside him. Reaching up, she pulled her hair loose of its constraints and then worked to reknot the mass. He watched the fascinating dance of her fingers in the inky mass of her hair.
“Um, yeah. Happily ever after with another person.” She snorted like it was a joke.
“That’s a false expectation?”
She crisscrossed her legs and dropped her hands down into her lap. “I haven’t seen much proof of happily ever after.”
He thought about his father’s death and how, at the time, it had seemed the end of everything—how nothing could ever be good or right again after that. His mother had been broken, and even though life was better now, there were still nights when Nolan heard her crying through the walls.
“Yeah, but there’s happiness out there.” He’d come to believe that again. Priscilla had actually helped him believe in that. “You can have happiness some of the time, which is better than not at all. And rom-coms highlight the existence of it. They give hope.”
Never had it occurred to him that he had an opinion on rom-coms, but apparently he did. Hayden Vargas was teaching him things about himself.
Her expression was cool as she looked him over, and he got the sense that she didn’t believe a word of it. “Happily ever after with another person is a lie. Contentment and happiness comes from yourself. Not other people.”
She looked back at the TV and lifted the remote, turning up the volume and effectively ending the conversation.
What made an eighteen-year-old girl such a hard cynic that she didn’t believe happiness existed outside of herself?
As Hayden watched Brad Pitt make breakfast for his movie kids, Nolan looked around the cluttered living room, observing her home. An old recliner, the fabric worn so thin the white stuffing peeked out of its arms, sat beside the sofa they occupied.
His mother would have had the chair reupholstered long ago. Or simply bought new furniture. They weren’t rich, but they were comfortable. They had nice things. The nicest thing in this room was Hayden’s laptop.
Except it wasn’t the shabby surroundings that made the place feel . . . off. He looked around the space, trying to pinpoint what it was that felt wrong about this house.
And then he figured it out.
It was the lack of family photos. There wasn’t a single photograph on a wall or sitting anywhere. No pictures to capture a moment or immortalize an event.
Photos of Nolan with his sisters lined the walls of his house. Last Christmas his mom had forced them into matching sweaters and posed them for a family photo that now loomed in a sixteen-by-twenty-four-inch frame above the fireplace. Because they were still a family. Mom never stopped reminding them of that.
It didn’t seem like a family lived here.
“Are your parents home?” he asked.
Her gaze shot to him, her dark eyes suddenly wary. “No.”
Nodding, he looked back at the screen, watching Brad Pitt and his family drive through traffic.
“Here it comes,” she said.
“What?”
She nodded at the movie, reminding him that he was supposed to be watching it with her and not dissecting her. “All hell is about to break loose.”
True to form, it was a zombie rampage. Quick and breath-stealing. Spectacular effects.
It wasn’t until things slowed down in the movie that she spoke into the humming quiet between them, revealing that she was still thinking about his question. “I don’t have a dad. It’s just my mom, and she isn’t here right now.”
“Oh.”
“My dad died, too,” he volunteered. “Three years ago.”
“Oh, my dad isn’t dead. At least not that I’m aware.” She gave a single-shoulder shrug as though her lack of knowing was no big deal. “Not dead. Just a deadbeat. He and my mother split before I was even born. I’ve never seen him. He’s never seen me.” Nolan watched as she helped herself to more popcorn. “Sorry though. About your dad. Emmaline mentioned your father died. That must suck . . . losing a dad that way. Was he a good dad?”
“Yeah. The best.”
Chewing, she nodded, watching the movie. “Then maybe I got off easier. Never had to deal with the pain of losing a good dad.”
“Maybe,” he answered, glancing around at her naked walls, staring at the absence of good memories, and thinking she was wrong, but not wanting to contradict her. He wasn’t about to explain to her how her situation was worse than his. That he would never trade in the time he had with his father just to escape the pain of losing him.
Instead he settled deeper on the couch beside her, wondering if this was the kind of thing that she talked about with his sister. Existential rhetoric and zombie movie commentary?
“Have you watched this movie with Emmaline?”
She smirked. “You’re fishing.”
“Just wondering.”
“We haven’t hung out that much. No movie nights.”
Nothing like this then. Nothing like what they were doing right now.
“Yet,” she added, still smirking.
He frowned. “You’re planning on movie nights with my sister?”
“I don’t plan these things.” She motioned between them with a shrug. “Definitely didn’t plan for you to be sitting on my couch.”
“Me neither.” He glanced down at the now empty bag of popcorn and gave it a few shakes, rattling the handfuls of kernels. “You want to order a pizza?”
“You buying?”