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He considers this over a couple of pieces of fish. “No. I want a farm. By the ocean. I want to grow my own food when I’m not surfing. I want Harry to be able to run free. Sally too. I’m increasingly realizing I want a simple life.”
I smile. “Aside from the horrible chore of having to buy your own food, you seem to have a simple life already. Surf. Take care of the Airbnb. Play with fur kids. Did I miss anything?”
“Japanese food.” He smiles once more, soothing all of my aches better than the Advil.
“That doesn’t sound all that simple,” I say.
His smile goes away, and so do its analgetic effects. Relatedly, the Advil must be wearing off. My cramps are coming back, and my skin is beginning to seriously burn. Sometime soon, I’ll have to excuse myself and run to the car to get some more.
“What could be simpler?” He lifts a piece of yellowtail with his chopsticks, his strong forearms distracting me for a second. “I can go fishing and then have a meal without having to cook anything.”
Why, oh why did I think about the stupid sunburn? It’s like it was waiting for me to do so before getting worse. “What about internet?” I ask Evan, doing my best to distract myself. “Would you have that on your hypothetical farm?”
He considers my question carefully. “I guess so, mainly to listen to music and watch movies.”
I arch an eyebrow—which makes me realize my forehead is burned too. “What kind of movies and music?”
“Music by The Doors.” He seems to inwardly smile. “And any movie with Faye Dunaway.”
“Faye Dunaway?” I exclaim. “She was in my favorite movie of all time.”
I also know about The Doors, mostly because my late grandmother had this to say about their lead singer, and I quote: “Jim Morrison was the most perfect human male to have ever walked this Earth.”
“Which movie?” The blue-green specks in his eyes gleam.
“Don Juan DeMarco,” I say, flushing. There was a time when I felt about young Johnny Depp the way Grandma did about The Doors’ singer.
“I saw that once,” Evan says. “With my mom.”
There I go again, reminding him about the tragedy in his life. Thankfully, he seems okay, so I carry on. Grabbing a piece of mackerel with my chopsticks, I say, “So, did you have a crush on Faye Dunaway as a kid or something?”
He flashes a grin. “Guilty. When I was fifteen, I saw her face on the cover of an old VHS tape and became obsessed for a while.”
“Which film?”
“The Thomas Crown Affair,” he says.
“Oh.” I resist the urge to scratch the burns on my back. “I’ve never seen that one. Only the version with Pierce Brosnan.”
Evan smirks with disdain—a neat trick I’ll need to practice in front of a mirror. “I don’t understand why Hollywood is so obsessed with remaking movies that are perfectly fine as they are.”
I shrug. “Sometimes they end up better than the original. For example, Scarface with Al Pacino was a remake.”
He scoffs. “That’s probably the only example in existence.”
I cock my head. “There were many versions of Dracula, but Francis Ford Coppola’s version from the early nineties is my favorite.”
“That’s not a remake,” he says. “It’s a screen adaptation, and if I ran the world, there’d be no movies based on books, period. They always suck.”
My eyes widen. “If you ran the world, there wouldn’t be The Godfather. Or The Silence of The Lambs. Or Fight Club.”
He waves it off. “Lucky breaks.”
“Then what about the recent Dune movie?” I say triumphantly. “It was awesome, even though it was both a book adaptation and a remake.”
He sighs. “Are you sure you’re not secretly a lawyer?”
“Are you sure you’re not secretly a member of an HOA in Hollywood?”
