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“He doesn’t drink. Too much of a control freak.”
“He doesn’t seem like a control freak.” She grabbed the drinks and bumped the fridge shut with her hip.
“You don’t know him that well yet,” he said, napkins and plates in his hands. “Trust me.”
She nodded. She did trust Auden. The nerves she’d been feeling since she arrived started to settle a bit.
They went back into the living room, where Lennox was already working on a slice of pizza and scrolling through the streaming services. Auden took a spot on the couch, and O’Neal was left with the other side of the couch, the one nearest Lennox’s chair. She handed out the drinks, then grabbed a plate and a slice of pizza and settled in.
“So what are we watching?” she asked before folding her pizza slice and taking a bite.
Lennox looked her way. “We play movie roulette.”
“We’re not doing that tonight,” Auden said, twisting off the cap of his beer. “We can let O’Neal pick.”
She looked back and forth between the two of them and swallowed her bite. “Wait. What’s movie roulette?”
“It’s nothing,” Auden said, sending Len a look.
“Oh, it’s not nothing.” Lennox set down his slice and leaned forward, bracing his arms on his thighs like he was ready to tell a story. “It’s Auden’s super nerdy system for movie watching.”
O’Neal glanced at Auden, who was studiously focusing on dipping his pizza into a container of ranch dressing. He clearly didn’t want this discussed, so she turned back to Lennox. “Tell me everything.”
Lennox grinned, delighted. “About two years ago, Mr. Film Geek decided that he wanted to make a movie bucket list of all the ‘best of’ lists. Best movies of all time. Best comedies. Best horror. Oscar winners. That kind of thing.”
“I knew you liked movies, but I didn’t know you were a film buff,” she said to Auden and he shrugged.
“He’s minoring in film studies actually,” Lennox offered.
The revelation sent a dart of surprise through her. All she’d heard from Maya was that Auden was majoring in business so he could work at his father’s company. Film studies seemed far outside of that realm, but maybe he was just doing it for fun.
“And so Auden made this enormously long list and put it in a spreadsheet,” Lennox went on, “because the manlovesa fucking spreadsheet.”
Auden snorted.
“And now for movie nights, we use a number randomizer app. Whatever number comes up corresponds to a movie on the list. We’re obligated to watch whatever comes up. No vetoing,” Lennox said. “Even if it’s an incredibly boring old western that should’ve never won any awards ever.”
Auden sent him an affronted look. “It wasn’tthatbad.”
Lennox gave O’Neal a meaningful stare and mouthed, “So. Bad.”
She laughed. “That sounds really fun actually. If that’s what you usually do, I’m game. I don’t care what we watch.”
“She’s game, Auden,” Lennox said, leaning over the arm of his chair and grabbing a laptop from the lower shelf of the side table. “Let’s pull up the list.”
Auden set his plate aside and shook his head. “It’s a bad idea. We don’t know what’s going to come up. I’m not going to torture O’Neal with my project.”
Lennox ignored him and opened the laptop, bringing up the list. He handed O’Neal his phone. “Here, you do the honor of the randomization. Just press the go button.”
O’Neal looked down at the phone. There were four red boxes where numbers would appear. “All right, here goes.” She pressed the button and watched as the number popped up. “And the winner is…number four hundred and seventy-six.”
Lennox chewed his lip in concentration, scrolling through the spreadsheet. “Looks like tonight we will be watching…drumroll, please…the 1987 classic,Fatal Attraction.”
“The hell we will,” Auden said.
The outburst caught O’Neal off guard, and her attention snapped toward him. “What’s wrong? I thought you couldn’t veto in this game.”
“It’s violent,” Auden said.
