Thank you. Honestly, I had no idea what movie to pick.
Milo
Be there in five.
I look around my living room, my eyes widening when I catch my reflection on the television screen. My hair is tumbling out of a bun, and I’m wearing cotton shorts, a tank top, and socks. I jump up, my noodles spilling out on my floor.
“Ugh!” I groan, using my fork to funnel them back into the container before rushing to the kitchen to grab a rag.
After cleaning up my mess, I hurry to the bathroom and look at my reflection for only a handful of seconds before I pull the elastic out of my hair and then brush with vengeance, willing it to turn into voluptuous waves instead of crazy frizz. Then I quickly apply a dusting of blush and a swipe of Chapstick just in time.
There’s a knock at the front door before I hear it open and Milo says loudly, “Sadie?”
“Here!” I yell as I slide in my socks toward the front door,where I lose a bit of control, my arms flailing until Milo catches me, my body suddenly slammed against him.
“Hey,” he says quietly, looking down at me with a grin, his arms wrapped securely but gently around me.
“Hey,” I reply, willing my eyes to quit looking at his lips that are just lingering there like they have no better place to be. I straighten my body, stepping out of his embrace, and tug at my clothes as I back away.
“I hope tonight was okay,” he says, brushing at his T-shirt with one hand and holding a DVD in his other.
“It’s great. What’d you bring?”
He hands me the DVD. “Hope you have a player.”
“You’re lucky that I do. I’m surprised you were even able to find a DVD,” I say while staring at the cover—an old shadowy farmhouse and a rope swinging from a tree like that’s completely normal and not terrifying at all.
The Conjuring.
“It’s R because it’s horror, nothing else,” he assures me. “I wasn’t sure what kind of R you wanted . . .”
“Have you watched this before?” I ask, glancing back up at him from the creepy cover.
“Once,” he replies.
“And how scary is it?”
“Scarier than Dusty Hollow’s corn maze,” he teases.
I look up at him and let my head roll to the side with an exaggerated expression stretching out on my face. “Well, that’s not a difficult feat.”
“No, it’s not,” he admits. “It was a good corn maze, though.”
He holds my stare as my skin sprinkles with a memory of Milo and me choosing to get lost in the maze so we could make out in the harder-to-find parts of it. We were seventeen, and the only thing that worried me that night was curfew.
“Yeah,” I mutter before I clear my throat. “I’ll make some popcorn.”
He follows me to the kitchen. “The paint looks good.”
I look at the walls. The walls Milo’s never seen before, reminding me that he’s never been inside my house. The only house he had known as mine was my parents’.
“Oh, yeah. It was all just white before,” I say.
“Grant did a good job.”
“He did.”
“So, are you two . . .” He trails off as he leans back against the counter.
