Never Been Kissed

“What do you have against chainsaws?”

“For starters, we’re living through a pandemic, I’ll pass.” She smiles tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. Yup. Total distraction except I’ve declared movie war.

“Not a fan of The Walking Dead either?” I quip watching for the slightest tick in her cheek.

“Donovan.” Her half gru

mble moan shoots a call sign to my dick making me grateful there’s a river, bridge, and borough between us.

“Oh come on. Give it a try, just for me.” I ramp up my charm, but she huffs dramatically with the grace of a Broadway star rolling her eyes. Her braid of hair teases me by slipping over her shoulder back and forth.

“Next you’re going to tell me you won’t sit through a Die Hard marathon.” I sit back in my bed, she’s propped on my lap which conveniently hides how much she’s turning me on during this sparring conversation. I watch her eyes light up when I mention one of my favorite movies, so maybe there is hope after all.

“Are you kidding?” She glares into the screen wide eyed and maybe a little insulted. “Who doesn’t love Bruce Willis.” Her answer is emphatic and I take note heaving a huge sigh of relief. We can add that to our cue of movies for a Netflix watch party. While the movie happens to be my favorite and my brother’s, I don’t even consider inviting him to our date nights. No third wheels because I can’t see or touch her in person and this is as intimate as we can get.

“Well, we’re twenty minutes in so what you want to do?” I pause the movie on my end so we can figure out where to go from here.

Laurel does a cute little chew on her bottom lip.

“I’d suggest make out, but obviously that’s off the table.” Her shoulders shrug and I nearly snort my own drink. I figured she would have suggested a romance movie or chatting, but damn she has me twisted. So much for her shy demeanor, these little spurts of sassy Laurel turn me on. I clench my fist imagining the moment I’ll finally get my hands on her.

Clearing my throat, I shift in my spot saying, “Yeah, off the table.”

Laurel seems to consider something before saying, “We might as well finish the movie, how many of them are there?” Oh this sweet girl has no idea the torture I could lay out for her over the next week.

I don’t take her offer seriously, but add, “Six.”

“Huh.” She snuggles into her pillows. She’s pretending to not hear me and that’s okay. I can think of things we can do virtually.

“So?” I don’t want our date to end and I find myself oddly anxious to lose this time with her. Me. The guy who has no issues asking a woman I don’t know in a bar on a date and all I want is this girl to watch a terrible movie with me.

“The movie isn’t going to watch itself and I’m not convinced Shepard survives.”

“Oh sweetheart, he not only survives, he triumphs.” I hit the resume button. We make our comments during the ridiculous fight scenes and marvel how Shepard survives the impossible. Laurel tells me it gives her hope for the future of mankind. I chuckle because only Laurel would find a way to make Sharknado a metaphor for never giving up.

I toy with the idea of sending her a gift card for eBooks, but I’m selfish thinking that will take her time away from me. So I dare her to watch the next five movies until she relents. We debate on binging the second one before Laurel yawns and I offer we table it for tomorrow.

We spend the next few days discussing the most illogical scenarios presented to us. I spend the wee hours of the morning hunting for a t-shirt saying, I survived shark week, and then I mail it to her.

I learn a lot about Laurel during our movie marathons. She prefers buttered popcorn over candy, but if candy is the only option then it must be Milk duds. We argue over the merits of dark versus light chocolate and I shut her up by saying until I can taste it on her skin I don’t have a preference. It seems any sexual comment is enough to set her off into Shyville and I’m shameless in teasing her stopping short of crossing the line into Creeperville.

I’m desperate to ask her what prompted her to sign up for the dating app that connected us. I want to hear her version of it and share mine. If this is fate or kismet or some cosmic happenstance, I want her to know that I’m in, I’m all in.

11

Laurel

Marley barks up a storm that’s going to get us kicked out despite the non-eviction notices. Our scruffy little dog is named after my mother’s favorite brand of smokes. The damn dog is lucky if he weighs a pound, but he packs a mean ankle bite if you aren’t careful. Our biggest family secret is that Marley is a fake emotional support animal. When our neighbor down the hall, Mr. Totter complained to our super, Ma forced me to use my graphic design skills to design a convincing certificate instead of taking the tiny beast to actual classes we couldn’t afford anyway. The little snapper was going to be my undoing with his constant barking. I figured he sort of owed me some kind of allegiance or a pass considering my handy artwork saved his scruffy ass.

“Ugh, I’m coming, you tiny terror.” I crawl out of bed and fumble for joggers and shoes.

“Laurel!”

“Coming Ma.” Despite it being the four of us, the place felt like Grand Central station trying to navigate all of us home. My only reprieve was taking Marley out for his walk which was more of a jog between sidewalk trees and garbage cans to pee.

“Can you?”

“Got it.” I grab his leash and watch my hands hooking it to his harness. Lavender barely gives me a glance but she’s been pissed at me since our fight because she went on that date. No one has gotten symptoms yet, but the party she went to also got broken up by the police early on. I figure she’ll be mad until this stay-at-home situation relents and that’s on her.