Within two weeks, I had over two hundred responses to my questionnaire. A hundred in the last week after Harry had the genius idea of putting a stack in Flicker.
“I despair at people, I really do,” I told him, midway through assembling a giant cardboard cut-out of Thor.
Harry turned his head to one side. “I think you’ve got the arms on the wrong way.”
“Stupid Thor.” I put him down and walked round to see it from the front. His arms were, indeed, skew-whiff. “Why are these things so hard to assemble? And, also, HOW MANY COMIC BOOK MOVIES will there be?”
Harry laughed. “Here, let me show you.” He pulled both of Thor’s arms off. “And don’t diss comic book movies, Audrey. They keep cinemas like us alive.”
I pouted. “Which therefore means I have to work every night this week.”
LouLou emerged from the stock room, dragging a half-assembled Iron Man behind her like she was Jesus carrying the cross. “Hey, Audrey. Sorry, we’re still behind on staff since the change up.”
“Honestly, it’s fine. I was just whingeing.”
LouLou gave me a tight smile, one of her new special ones. “Well, I’m grateful you can cover.” She shuffled into the office, leaving a half-constructed Robert Downey Jr for Harry to deal with. He sighed and got to work putting his head on. Our excitement at Ma’s promotion had been short-lived. Though we hardly had to deal with her in person any more, her control-freakery was ruining LouLou’s life. She rang the whole time to check and recheck we were following her explicit instructions. Harry was pulling back-to-back shifts most days, and I was on at least four shifts a week rather than my agreed three.
“So, why do you despair of people today, Audrey?” he asked, from behind his cardboard. “What haven’t we covered yet?”
I wrinkled my nose at him, though he couldn’t see. “I’m not that bad. And it’s this best movie kiss thing. I’ve got enough results now and I’m working out all the data.” I wiggled to put Thor’s arm into the right hole. “And it’s definitely depressing.”
“I’m intrigued, continue.” Harry’s smile was revealed like a magic trick from behind Iron Man’s head.
“Well, okay, so at least sixty per cent of everyone’s favourite movie kisses occurred in the rain.”
Harry nodded. “Ahh, yes, the rain kiss. You must kiss in the rain, Audrey. That is the law of kissing in movies.”
“But why? I mean, rain is cold and wet! Plus movie rain is never like normal rain. Nobody ever kisses in drizzle. It’s always the really huge rain that comes out of nowhere, with added lightning.”
I had a flash of a memory, of my first kiss with Milo. Which was actually in some drizzle. We’d been walking back from rehearsal and he kept trying to hold my hand but I couldn’t hold his hand and hold my umbrella. When he’d romantically pulled it away, I’d shrieked about my hair going frizzy before I realized he was doing a gesture.
“What else, pray tell, Audrey – you romantic ray of sunshine – did your judgemental survey find?”
I picked up Thor and used it to knock his figure.
“Hey,” he said. “You can’t make Thor fight Iron Man. They’re on the same team.” I hit him harder. “Audrey, seriously, stop it. You’re breaking everything I believe in.”
I rolled my eyes and put Thor down again. “Well, head-clutching is another hugely popular theme. Whenever anyone kisses in the movies, they always seem to, like, grab the other person’s head. It’s almost always the boy clutching the girl’s head to, I dunno, show off the guy’s masculinity or something.”
Harry smiled again, and, again, I got this notion that he would usually have made a joke or flirtatious comment at this point.
“I’ve got a rival to the head-clutcher,” he said, putting the finishing touches to Iron Man with a “voila”. “The perfectly-arranged-thumb-on-cheek kiss. Have you ever noticed that about movies? When the boy reaches out and puts his palm onto the girl’s face, with his thumb pointing upward? I only notice, I think, because of my directing, because, to me, it looks awkward. Nobody kisses like that.” He leaned against the cut-out, realized it couldn’t take his weight and straightened himself again. “I mean, if I want to kiss someone, it’s like fighting an addiction not getting to kiss them. When I finally get the chance, I would never waste time gently stroking their face.” He laughed. “No, my kisses would probably look horrid on camera, but they feel great.” He made straight eye contact with me and I got another flash. But this time a flash of fantasy. Of Harry grabbing my head and kissing me. Our mouths smashing against each other with urgency.
I blushed, hiding it behind Thor’s head. God, I was such a ridiculous cliché. A guy likes me, and I don’t like it. But then he takes the liking-me away and then, what? I want him to like me again?
Harry, maybe sensing my discomfort, moved on. “So, what else? What else do people want to see in a kiss?”
“Lesbians,” LouLou interrupted, carrying in a giant Scarlett Johansson. “Where the feck are all the lesbians?”
I pointed at her. “Yes! That’s also what my research unearthed. People only really voted for heteronormative kisses.”
“Hetero-what-now?” Harry asked.
“Normative. It means straight couples are considered the norm. I only had two same-sex kisses nominated, and, yeah, LouLou, you’re right. They were both male-on-male kisses.”
“I told you.” LouLou grinned under her new blue hair. “We need more fecking lesbians.”
Now that our cardboard cut-outs were individually constructed, we had to attach them all to the stand. It was a huge faff, the set was a full-on 3D grand-scale display. We paused for a while to swear and bitch at each other, shouting “No no no, Iron Man’s foot goes HERE” and “Ouch, you just poked me in the eye with Captain America’s finger”. When we were finally done, we stepped back and admired our work. Apart from a slightly saggy Iron Man from where Harry had leaned on it, it looked okay.
“Thanks, guys,” LouLou said. “If we weren’t already sold out, we would be if they saw this. Now, we just have to spend every evening stopping crazed fans from nicking it. Or making the Scarlett figure do nasty things in photographs.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
She nodded grimly. “Seriously. Last year Ma found actual ejaculate on the back of a Princess Leia cut-out. She took three days off work to recover. Ma! Taking three days off work. Speaking of which, you two still okay to lock up tonight? I have to go meet Her Highness this evening to ‘explain why there is a discrepancy in my use of time rotas’.”
Harry and I nodded. “We’re fine,” he said. “This spunkathon isn’t out for another two days, and most people have seen The King and Me now.”
“Thanks, thanks.” LouLou retreated back into the office, swearing under her breath.
Harry and I looked at each other for a moment – me trying to keep my blushing under control as I kept getting unwelcome flashes of us kissing in the rain.
“I guess we’d better make some guacamole,” I said and we both walked to the kitchen.
“So, what other kisses have done well?” Harry picked up the conversation where we’d left off as we became a two-man factory line of avocado mashing. We’d worked together so much over the last few weeks we didn’t need to communicate when it came to the making of guacamole. He would half them, I would squish them. Half, squish, half, squash. Our hands touching every time he passed me one, and him not making comments any more like, “Audrey, I know you can’t keep your hands off me, but using avocados as your wingman is a little bit weird.”
So now, of course, I missed it.
“Grand gesture kisses. Ones where they hire out a baseball field, or stop a party to make a huge speech or something. Essentially kisses where there is applause from random members of the public.”
“Eww.” Harry pulled a face. “That’s actually something I properly despise. How couples these days are all about publicizing their love, rather than enjoying their love? The way I see it” – Harry washed his hands under the tap and moved away to start on the cinnamon dust – “is the more you’re trying to prove to people you’re happy, the less happy you actually feel.”
I watched his arms as he started shaking up the ingredients and my stomach did this annoying flip-flop.
“Agreed!” I said. “Milo was like that a lot actually. He always made us pose for couple selfies.”
“Because he’s an idiot,” Harry mumbled, before apologizing.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I think I’m starting to get over him.” The moment I said it out loud I knew it was true. It had taken half a year, but I didn’t hurt so much any more, I just felt…embarrassed. About the whole sex thing. But seeing him and Courtney flaunt themselves down the hall, holding hands, loudly practising their lines in the sixth-form common room so everyone could be reminded daily that they were the main parts…well, I felt cringe-y for them. Embarrassed that I’d behaved like that when I was Milo’s golden girl. And, though I was reluctant to admit it to myself, the stirring in my tummy I got when I thought about Harry may have had something to do with that. Is that how hearts work? Is love just a parasite that jumps bodies? It always exists, you always have to yearn for someone, and the only way to get over somebody is to obsess about someone else…? “And I’m glad I’m not in Guys and Dolls. It sounds like a nightmare. Our new Drama Head is a crazy perfectionist and is making everyone rehearse until gone eleven most nights. I actually have more free time working here.”
“And time to do my movie.” Harry’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “I watched some scenes back last night. The ones where you turn.” He put down his shaker and turned to really look at me. Our eyes properly boring into each other. “It’s…exceptional, Audrey. The most flawless take I’ve ever seen. I mean, seriously… You’re exceptional.” He coughed. “You’re an exceptional actress,” he corrected himself, and I saw a hint of blush climb up the neck of his black shirt.
His blush made me blush and, to cover myself, I turned around and started clanking glasses about, mumbling about how I needed to mix the special salt for the artisan flatbread.
We worked in silence for a while. LouLou came in to taste-test the guacamole, which inevitably led to us needing to make another batch. The atmosphere felt chilled out. We knew our shift would be quiet. Once all the food was prepped, Harry went to go fiddle with the projector and I cleaned up. I thought about what he’d said, about love and publicizing it. Was he right? Do we project to others how we want our love to look to cover up the fact it doesn’t feel how we want it to feel? Do we cover our relationships with mirrors, so all people get are cutesy projections rather than the truth?
Dad had uploaded yet another album of him and Jessie last night, entitled We got a babysitter. The album could’ve easily been made by two teenagers, apart from the deep wrinkles around Dad’s eyes. They’d posed for selfies around London – proving their existence, their love, with St Paul’s as a backdrop, Tower Bridge, the OXO Tower. We are in love here, and here and here and here… He’d taken Jessie up to the Sky Garden and taken so many photos of her. Some of her looking at the camera, some of her deliberately looking off into the blinking skyline of London. Pretending she didn’t know the camera was there, though I’m sure she would’ve helped negotiate filters and sharpening techniques and the best way to crop it. Instructing him to take it again if she didn’t like it, until they found one that reflected “Them” to “Us” perfectly. Each photo was diligently commented on, with Such a lucky man and How gorgeous? People robotically clicked like because they knew they were supposed to.
But what they didn’t realize was there were so many depths to those photos they’d “liked”. Depths that you couldn’t see. Moments Dad had chosen not to share. Where was the photo of Mum, coming back from the lawyers last week, and sinking to the floor before she’d even closed the front door behind her? Where was the screengrab of the abusive message Dougie sent to Dad’s phone, accusing him of being every explicit swear word in the English language? And, most importantly, what about the other photos that existed? We had album after album stacked in the cupboard under our stairs. And Mum still tortured herself by poring over them and littering them around the living room. Dad and Mum in Rome, on the grand romantic holiday that resulted in their proposal. Photos of Mum dressed up for classy surprise dinners. Photos of the four of us, in different incarnations of ageing and growing up, beaming into the camera, the sun on our faces, reflecting the veneer of our perfect lives. Their perfect love.
Until love, the parasite that it was, jumped from Mum onto Jessie.
The door opened and an assortment of customers trickled in for the early showing. I had to come out from behind the till to take at least four photos of people with our new cardboard cut-outs. The films started, the foyer quietened, disrupted only by the noise seeping under the doors. Harry reappeared from the projection room and helped me clean up. LouLou said goodbye in a stressed flurry of putting her coat on and carrying a giant stack of important-looking papers.
“If you get a call from me later tonight, it’s because I killed Ma and I need help burying the body.”
“Torture her first!” Harry called after her. “Tie her up and show her spreadsheets that don’t quite balance.”
The double doors swung shut behind LouLou and I seeped onto my chair. Harry groaned, clutching his neck as he lowered himself onto his stool like an old man. “I swear I’m too tall for that projection room.”
“I still haven’t been allowed into it,” I said. “Is everything in it that breakable?”
“Yes.”
Silence floated down between us, and for some reason, it was awkward. Neither of us looked at each other. There was nothing left to mop up though, no jobs to do until Screen One finished throwing popcorn into their mouths, missing, and decorating the floor.
“So, any more extra insights into what makes a great movie kiss?” Harry asked after a while. “What’s the conclusion you’ve come to?”
I’d been trying to figure this out myself. “Well, actually, there was this one thing I noticed,” I admitted. Staring at the till rather than his eyes. “Some of the winners weren’t what I thought they would be. One of the most popular kisses was actually in this film called 10 Things I Hate About You. Lots of our older customers here voted for it. It wasn’t a huge movie, but I looked up the kiss on YouTube and, it’s just really simple! All he does is smile at the girl, tuck her hair back and then go in for the kiss. It’s the same with the other high-hitters. The common link was just how…normal the kisses were. And just how obvious it was that the characters NEEDED to kiss each other.” I made myself look up at him. He was staring right at me, his hair all standing up on end, looking like he was hanging onto every syllable. I felt myself go hot. “The ones where people kiss each other just because they can’t not…” I trailed off. Silence descended once more. My stomach twisted in on itself, my heart thud-thudding. I looked down at Harry’s hands and he was gripping the counter.
There was something there. I felt it. I could feel it coming off him. Off me. Quickly, like a fucking idiot, my love parasite had jumped. Did I not learn? Was I the most stupid person in the world? But Harry wouldn’t do anything. Not now. Not since I’d screamed abuse at him and scared him off. Which was good, I told myself. He would just hurt me; I’d been warned about him enough.
Our heads whipped up as we heard the loud music of closing credits from Screen One. The doors squeaked open, throngs of customers piled out. I sighed, stood, ripped off a bin bag.
“Audrey?” Harry called after me, as I walked towards the screen.
“Yep?” I stopped and turned around.
“Umm…do you want to see the best kiss scene of all time? Later, I mean? I feel you need to see it. For your project.”
I smiled and raised my eyebrows, in what I hoped was a jokey enough way to make it clear there wasn’t anything between us.
“Sounds ominous.”
“It’s good. Trust me.”
I didn’t trust anyone any more…
“Sure,” I said.