"Yeah. And only a small part of why I hate him so much."
I feel Alyssa's hand on mine. My heart pounds against my chest like it's the first time she ever touched me. I take a deep breath.
This is harder than I thought it would be.
"A few times a week we went to the independent video store across town. She even let me pick out a box of candy, so long as I promised not to tell my father. We had a lot of secrets from him. I knew the pen name she used to write a column for the local paper. I tried to read it, but it was so far over my level. She didn't even have to tell me to keep our movie dates a secret. I knew he would hate it. I knew he didn't want his son to get stupid ideas in his head."
"What kinds of stupid ideas?"
"That caring about film was anything besides a waste of time." I smile. "You should have seen his face when I told him I was going to major in film studies. It was a bluff, but it was the most brilliant bluff. He was beet red. He was so angry."
"Why didn't you?"
"I wanted to. But it was too painful. It made me think about how much I missed her."
Alyssa nods, a nod that says she understands exactly what I mean. But I don't know where it comes from. Who did Alyssa lose? There's still so much I need to learn about her, so much of her I haven't seen.
But there's time. There has to be.
"Those were the best afternoons," I say. "She explained the movies to me. Not the plot. She would talk about the lyrical cinematography or the canted angles or the score. I was probably the only ten-year-old who could carry on a conversation about Seven Samurai and Some Like it Hot."
Alyssa laughs. "So you were a little know-it-all."
"Yes."
"Things never change, huh?" She moves closer to me again. "But The African Queen was her favorite?"
"Yes," I say. "It's a cheesy movie. Completely unbelievable. Katharine Hepburn plays a proper English woman, a missionary, and Humphrey Bogart plays a working class stiff. War breaks out, the First World War I guess, and they have to flee their village on the old beat-up ship, the African Queen. They face a lot of silly obstacles. Some terrible special effects. And they fall in love. They're from two different worlds. Their relationship could never work, but they fall in love."
"Do you think she believed it was possible?"
"Maybe. I don't know. She thought it was romantic. At the end... well, I won't spoil it," I say. "But she loved it. Don't get me wrong, she loved lots of other movies, but this one was her favorite."
"And you think it's cheesy?"
"Yes, but I love it. It's like she's here when I watch it."
"You miss her, huh?"
I nod. "She had to hide all the parts of herself that mattered. She was like a robot most of the time. Like a Stepford wife. But she was a totally different person when it was the two of us and she could geek out over her film collection. She was so happy poring over classics. She could watch a movie she'd seen a hundred times--literally a hundred times--and still notice something new."
"So that's where you get it."
"Get what?" I ask.
"How many times have you watched Law and Order?"
"Not a hundred."
"Uh-huh."
I tap her lightly. She smiles, playful, her face lighting up. There's such a warmth here. It's so perfect. I lean down and kiss Alyssa. For a moment, I feel like I'm floating.
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Her eyes flutter open. "Does it still hurt?"
"I don't usually think about it."