Page 37 of Crazy Spooky Love

“Melody, darling, I’m having a dinner party tonight and Rose just canceled at the last minute. You’re not too busy to fill in, are you? You know how much an unbalanced table upsets me.”

“Yes, I absolutely am too busy.” I followed my nose into my mother’s kitchen when I came back from Scarborough House a little while back, and now I remember why she’s cooking up such a storm; she’s having one of her many dinner parties.

Pulling her empty mixing bowl toward me when she turns to slide the cake tin into the oven, I run my finger around the rim to scoop up any spare cake batter.

I doubt my mother ever even asked Rose, one of her radio colleagues.

She’s not catching me out like that again in a hurry. “Ask Gran to do it.”

“I’m already coming.” Gran is head-to-toe in cherry-red yoga gear on the kitchen rug and looks at me upside down from between her knees.

“So ask…I don’t know, somebody else. Anyone else. Just not me.”

“It’s 4:00 p.m. on Saturday. Who am I going to be able to ask at such short notice?” She looks pained. “I’m making my paella. You said it was marvelous.”

“It was. It is. Save me a doggy bag. Sorry, Mamma, I really do have something on this evening.”

She sighs grumpily. “What’s so important that you can’t cancel it to help your own mother?”

I say the only thing that will possibly keep me out of her bad book. “I have a date.”

“A date?” Her mood instantly brightens. “Tell me more! Who with? Where?”

Oh crap, I should have thought this through. “It’s a blind date,” I say. “At…the movies. Marina set it up.”

Some of the animation leaves my mother’s face.

“Marina set it up?” She loves Marina almost more than she loves me, but that also means she knows my best friend’s limitations as well as I do.

Any date Marina sets up should be approached with a good degree of caution.

Her romantic history is even more checkered than mine, mostly because she terrifies men senseless.

“A visiting second cousin, I think she said.” I’m a terrible liar. Why did I say that?

My mother looks horrified. “From Sicily? But I don’t want you to up sticks and move to Italy, darling!”

This isn’t going very well; I’d probably have been better off just eating paella and making small talk. I wish I’d never mentioned the movies; I know full well she’ll grill me first thing in the morning on what we saw.

“He’s from Solihull, not Sicily. Calm down, will you? It’s just popcorn at the pictures, not an arranged marriage.”

Gran contorts herself into the lotus position on the rug then smiles at me serenely. “Put the TV on, would you, darling? My show’s about to start.”

Relieved, I pour her a teacup of champagne and leave them to it, heading back to my flat to check the cinema listings.

We’re quite lucky in Chapelwick, we have an old art deco cinema on High Street that’s managed to survive the onslaught of the multiplex at the huge shopping center a few miles away.

The Regal has only two screens and the sound system is out of the arc, but it’s kind of cool and kitsch, one of the most beloved and protected features of the town.

I’ve decided to hold my imaginary date there, mostly because I can walk to it and take my own wine.

They don’t mind at all; in fact, they’ll give you a glass when you buy your ticket as long as you hand it in again afterward.

Inside the foyer, I fold down my soaked brolly and shove it in the special wet-umbrella bucket by the revolving doors to collect at the end.

You don’t get that kind of service in the multiplex, do you?

As I shrug off my coat and hang it, I study the boards behind the booth attendant’s head to see what my film choices are.

An advance screening of the brand-new Scarlett Johansson blockbuster romantic comedy or, what do you know, another romance, only that one looks a bit more serious and stars Anthony Hopkins.

Why couldn’t it have been a special showing of The Silence of the Lambs instead?

I’d far rather see him threaten to eat someone’s liver with a nice bottle of Chianti than fall awkwardly in love with his nurse and then probably die, slumped in his meals-on-wheels dinner, as the poster seems to suggest. I sigh inwardly. A good old rom-com for one it is, then.

It’s quiet at least; it seems that most of the good people of Chapelwick are as put off by the sheeting rain as I would normally have been.

“On your own, Ghostbuster?”

Oh crapola. Really? I’ve just settled myself in, popcorn on my lap, big glass of wine in my hand. I made zero effort with my appearance for my fake date, and now I sort of wish I’d gone wild with the mascara.

“Of all the cinemas in all the world, you have to choose to come to this one,” I say, surreptitiously checking if Fletch has a date lurking behind him in the aisle. The only thing worse than him being here at all would be to have to endure watching him necking in the front row.

“Work,” he says, flashing his press pass as he drops into the seat next to mine. “Someone has to file the movie reviews.”

“You can’t sit there,” I say.

He crosses his long legs and peers into my popcorn. “Because?”

“Because my date is due to arrive any minute. Pick someone else to harass.”

“Your date?” He grins. “I don’t think so.”

I’m incensed. It doesn’t matter that I’m lying, the fact that he instantly assumes I don’t have a date pisses me off.

“You won’t be saying that when he arrives.” I take a sip of wine and he just laughs and fills his face with popcorn.

He looks me over, assessing. “You have one glass, Billy-no-mates popcorn for one, a stain on your jeans, and I doubt you’ve even brushed your hair. No way are you on a date.”

“It’s bloody windy out there!” I protest, stung by the reference to my hair as I rub at the wet wine-splash on my leg.

He shrugs. “I didn’t say it looked a mess. The just-tumbled-out-of-bed look is good on you.”

I dig a hair band out of the pocket of my jeans and pull my hair back into a low bun, silenced by the compliment-and-insult sandwich.

“So if you’re not here on a date, why are you here?”

I could be truthful and tell him that I’m hiding out from my mother’s dinner party, but I don’t want to bring up the subject of my family because he’ll probably insult them and then I’ll throw my wine in his face and we’ll both likely be banned from The Regal. I like The Regal enough not to riskit.

“I love romantic movies.” God, that lie actually hurt as it left my mouth. It was that or express a special interest in Scarlett Johansson, which I’m sure would only amuse him even more.

“Now, that surprises me,” he drawls. “I’d have had you down as a blood-and-guts action movie girl.”

Oh, how I want to say yes, that’s exactly what I am. Throw in a superhero and I’m practically orgasmic, but I just shake my head demurely and then down half of my glass of wine. This lying thing isn’t working out well for me today.

As the movie begins, I try really hard to concentrate on the plot, but Fletch is next to me making the odd note in his pocket book as he watches it and he’s distracting me.

I mean, he could use his phone like a normal person, but he goes old school, and I find it kind of sexy.

I don’t get what’s happening between us.

I don’t like him at all, but I react to him like a daisy, spreading my petals in delight when the sun comes out.

I recognize the warm leather and spice smell of him before I see him, and he sparks off a swarm of fireflies in my stomach.

He detests everything about the life I lead, yet still he kissed me and bought me a pooper-scooper.

I mean, I know what this is. We live in a small town and pickings are slim.

We’re physically attracted to each other, and sometimes only another actual human will do, but why this particular human?

I can well imagine my mother’s face tomorrow if I tell her I spent the evening with Fletcher Gunn.

She’ll wish she hadn’t been so sniffy about Marina’s Sicilian cousin then, won’t she?

Not that I’m spending the evening with Fletch.

He just happens to be in the same place at the same time and in the seat next to mine, even though the cinema is practically empty.

It’s not the same as spending the evening together.

The movie is about halfway through and I’m about the same distance through my bottle of wine when things up onscreen take a sudden turn toward sexy.

Scarlett is all tearful and wobbly lipped and Fletch scrawls something in his notebook and then shows it tome.

She’s probably just won an onion-chopping competition .

I laugh under my breath as Scarlett’s leading man wipes her tears away with his fingertips, then I take Fletch’s pad and pen and write my reply.

He’s probably bought her a shit gift to cheer herup .

Fletch takes the book back and reads my reply, and onscreen, Scarlett’s beau draws her into his arms and kisses her tenderly.

I watch them, and horribly, it makes me want Fletch to do the same.

Should I snog your face off now?

I look from his words to the screen and see the guy unbuttoning Scarlett’s blouse.

Leave it to the professionals. He looks like he knows what he’s doing.

Fletch reads it then puts his pocket book down, props his feet on the chair in front of him, and flings his arm along the back of my seat.

We watch in silence as they make out on the screen and I make headway on my third glass of wine.

At around the point where Scarlett’s bra hits the floor I become aware that Fletch’s fingertips are resting on the back of my neck, so barely-there and casual that it means nothing, but for one tiny second it means everything.

It is literally all I can think about. Up there on the screen Scarlett is sighing and rolling around with pleasure while I am perfectly still and silent in my seat, yet still, I think, I win.