For a minute, we sit together, his head on my chest, my fingers weaving into his hair, gently rubbing his scalp.
He sighs. “I’ll give you an hour to stop doing that.”
But then his stomach rumbles.
I chuckle. “Are you hungry?”
“It’s true that I haven’t eaten anything since a protein bar this morning, but eating would require moving, and that might be more than I can handle right now.”
“You can stay here, and I’ll grab some pizza.”
“You moving might also be more than I can handle right now.”
“What if I take off these clothes, then bring you pizza?” That way I won’t get any sauce or grease on Aubrey’s fancy clothes.
He leans back. “Sold.”
We end up both stripping to our underwear and eating pizza on the couch and drinking wine, talking about anything and everything. I’m not sure if this is how a typical date is supposed to go, but I like it.
When we’re done, full, and a little warm from the wine, we go through the secret passageway in the closet to the projection room to start the movie, Some Like It Hot. I show Spencer how to thread the film into the projector.
“Back in the day, the reels were smaller. The studios would ship a bunch of separate ones so someone had to sit in the projection room and wait for a circle to flash in the top right corner. They called it a cigarette burn.”
He steps close behind me. “Oh, I’ve heard of this. The cue to switch to the next real.”
“Exactly. Sometime in the 1970s they switched to a continuous platter.”
His arms slide around my waist and his chin rests gently on my shoulder. “So we don’t have to sit here and babysit it?”
“Nope.”
Once I’m done, we go back into the passage to get to the theater.
“I can’t believe I never knew this was here,” Spencer says.
“I think they put it in to hide booze during Prohibition.” But of course, Beverly strung up shimmering lights and fake candlesticks and the occasional treasure chest full of costumes and trinkets and fake jewelry and old photos. Colorful rugs line the pathway. It’s narrow, hardly wide enough for us to walk side by side.
“I like that it’s tall enough to stand in.”
“Yeah. That makes it easier to move around down here, for sure. It gets kinda tight under the theater chair though?—”
He stops me with a hand on my arm. “It also makes it easier to do this.”
He presses me back against the cool stone wall, and then we’re kissing, and my legs are lifting, locking around his waist. We kiss like we didn’t just have sex thirty minutes ago, and then he’s thrusting into me, his eyes hot and searing in the dim tunnel.
This time, we find our release together, both of us calling out in the dark, our cries bouncing off the narrow walls.
When we finally climb out of the passage and make it to the theater, the movie is rolling and about a quarter of the way in.
“I almost forgot about the movie part of date night,” I say.
Spencer is smug. “I really like all parts of date night.”
We find popcorn, a small cooler of water and drinks, and a variety of candy waiting on one of the love seats in the back. When the movie ends, the screen goes white, flickering slightly.
I turn to him. “I’ve got to go shut off the projector.”
“I’ll go with you.”
