It was half eleven by the time the last customers staggered out – leaving the normal trail of devastation in their wake. I was a popcorn-sucking machine by now. Able to clear an entire screen by myself in twenty minutes. But Harry pitched in, and we collected empty glasses and popcorn boxes, leaving the glassware in the kitchen for the cleaners who came in at six every morning to deep clean.
We worked in silence, a weird atmosphere floating between us. I kept wanting to look at him but I fought the urge. Trying to tell myself that I didn’t like him, I just didn’t like the fact his attention had been withdrawn. Because that’s how power and lust worked. And Harry knew that. That’s why I’d been so warned off him. The one time I did look up, he wasn’t looking at me. Rather staring down the nozzle of the Hoover, checking it for a clog. I blushed and got on with stacking artisan pizza plates.
By midnight, the place was free from kernels and discarded Coke bottles. We took out the rubbish bins together, and, once he’d slammed down the top of the skip, Harry broke our silence.
“So, you ready for the best kissing scene of all time?”
“That’s quite some statement to make, Harry.”
“I told you to trust me.”
I followed him back into the cinema, the cold night air making me take short breaths. Harry vaulted over the counter, his long legs only just clearing it, and took two bottles of Coke off the shelf. He added a tub of chocolate buttons and scooted them towards me. “How late can you stay tonight?”
I prodded the chocolate packet, confused. “Mum’s usually asleep by now, so as late as I want I guess. Though I’ve got college tomorrow. How come?”
Harry vaulted back over the counter, landing way too close to me. He grinned, all his teeth showing. Like a wolf…a sexy wolf… Stop it, Audrey. “The film’s quite long. But it’s worth it, and I’ll have you home by three.”
I ran through the maths in my head – weighing it up. If I didn’t get home until three, I’d only get four hours sleep before I had to get up for college. Who was I kidding? There was no way I was saying no. For some unknown reason, I was ignoring every red flag I’d been given about Harry. For some stupid reason I was entertaining stupid thoughts. Thoughts like, Maybe he would be different with you. Thoughts like, Maybe you are just the girl who changes him. Thoughts that were everything I’d tried to teach myself weren’t true in real life. It was like someone had held me upside down and shaken me until all the wisdom had fallen out.
“I’m suitably intrigued. But if you’re going to make me stay up that late, it better be good.”
His smile revealed even more teeth, if that was possible.
“It will be.”
He turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, like the children who came here waaaay too excited for the new Pixar offering. I sighed, smiled and followed him. I saw only the swinging door leading to the projection room. I climbed the steep stairs with apprehension, guided upwards by the glow of a blue light. When I got to the top, I was…underwhelmed.
“I expected it to look more magical than this,” I complained to Harry’s arse, which was sticking out of a box.
He straightened up, his teeth glowing blue. “It’s not what you imagine, is it? Were you expecting rolls of films on reels?”
I looked around what was essentially a cupboard, with two big humming boxes emitting the blue light. “Umm, yeah. I at least expected a flickering noise. Why are we here?”
Harry was rooting around in a giant box in the corner. “I’m looking for a film reel. I know it’s here somewhere.” He actually climbed into the box, lifting his long spindly legs over the edge. “It must be here,” he muttered to himself. “We played it on Classic Sunday just the other week…hang on…” His head vanished into the box, and he re-emerged with a smile, holding a greyish box above his head like it was the FA Cup. “Got it! Right, let me set this up. I’ll meet you in Screen Two.”
I crossed my arms. “What is it? What are we watching?”
“The best film about cinema ever made.”
“Quite a claim.”
“Not a claim. The truth, Audrey. Now, I want it to be a surprise. I’ll meet you in Screen Two.”
I climbed back downstairs, collected up our snacks and pushed through to the cinema. The screen was blank but the curtains had been wound back. I plonked myself in the middle and put my legs up on the seat in front. The lights went down and the screen kicked into life. No trailers, just the film certificate came up.
“Cinema Paradiso?” I muttered. “What?”
Harry scuttled down the aisle. He picked the seat right next to me, and grabbed the chocolate buttons out of my hand. I felt like if I hadn’t had a huge go at him, he would’ve made a joke here, like the age-old yawn-and-put-your-arm-around, while I batted him off. But he didn’t. He just chucked some chocolates into his mouth.
“You ready?”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Prepare for an education, Winters.”
I was about to ask more questions when the opening music started. So I settled back in my seat.
The film was subtitled, which I didn’t like at first. I kept trying to look at both the movie AND the words at the bottom but found I couldn’t. I squirmed in my seat, uncomfortable and slightly ashamed. I’d never watched a subtitled movie before, and Harry certainly didn’t comment on it. It was set in Italy, years and years ago and, from what I could make out, it was about this young boy who was obsessed with the local cinema and became friends with the old projectionist who worked there. Then, after ten minutes or so, something just clicked in my head and I found I didn’t notice I was reading subtitles.
The movie was amazing. It was beautifully shot, and charming, and so, so funny. The cinema was how I imagined cinemas to be before I started working at Flicker. The projectionist worked with giant reels of old film, where the new releases were biked in, often being carried miles and miles. There was this hilarious scene at the beginning, where the local priest watched all the movies before the town was allowed to, and rang a bell whenever anyone in the film kissed each other. The projectionist had to mark up every single kiss and cut it out – censoring the town from even the most innocent of kisses.
Soon even Harry melted away as the movie bewitched me. I watched in horror as the cinema couldn’t cope with modern life, how it stopped becoming the epicentre of the town’s community – as video games and technology peeled people away from each other like Cheestrings. I bit my lip as the little boy grew up and left the town and his beloved projectionist friend. And I wept when it cut to many years later, the young boy now a grown man, and he heard the projectionist had died. He returned to his old town and found the cinema in disrepair, about to be demolished. When he was given an untitled film reel, gifted to him in the projectionist’s will, I was close to crying. Harry leaned over, his breath tickling my ear, jolting me out of the film slightly.
“Are you ready for it?” he asked. He gripped my hand, really quickly, before withdrawing and tucking it back into his pocket. My hand fizzed from where he’d touched me.
I watched as the man picked up the reel of film and fed it into an old projector. Then he turned off the lights and watched what his old friend had left behind for him.
I started sobbing almost instantly.
Every single kiss that the priest had removed was spliced together to make one short movie of kisses. Shy ones, passionate ones, tender ones, short ones, long ones, nervous ones, giddy ones. Kiss after kiss flickered past as the background music built to a crescendo. It was probably one of the most beautiful scenes I’d ever seen – the bittersweet sadness behind each kiss. The melody of each one, the way they built off each other. I could hardly see through my tears as I sat in the dark and the credits rolled.
Harry jumped up from his seat and vanished up the aisle, while I stayed there and cried. Then the music cut out, the lights came up and the curtains whirred shut.
I blinked and twisted towards the door, where a blurry Harry stood sheepishly at the top of the stepped aisle.
“Umm, did I break you?” he asked.
I tried to laugh, but it came out in an unattractive snort filled with tear-triggered snot. “That was…” I tried to search for a word that came even close to summing it up. “Impeccable.”
“I told you.” He stepped back down towards me, looking pretty darn pleased with himself. “I feel like I need to prescribe a movie list for you, one to counteract all the bad romance films you’re watching for your project.”
I sniffed, and ran my finger under each eye to catch the mascara slug trails. “That’s a stellar kissing scene. Thank you.”
“Any time.” Harry scratched his neck, and the quiet between us felt like it had tiny weights attached to every atom in the air. “Are you in a fit state for me to walk you home?”
I nodded, yawned – stretching up, the lateness hitting me. “I can manage on my own.”
“Audrey, it’s almost three in the morning.”
“Exactly, not even the most determined of attackers will stay up this late. Anyway, statistically I’m more likely to get attacked by you…”
Harry’s mouth dropped open.
“Whoops,” I said, smiling. “I’m too tired to filter.”
“Come on, let me be a gentleman.”
We locked up, setting the alarm and doing the panicked run to get out before all the red lasers activated. Then we stepped into the icy cold of the empty street.
It could’ve been the zombie apocalypse, it was so empty.
Harry stopped in the doorway and lit a cigarette then beckoned with his head. “Come on, crybaby, let’s take you home.”
I scuttled after him, slipping slightly on the crystallized pavement. We crossed the wide crossroads – the traffic lights turning from red to green to red again, commanding no traffic. I felt my thoughts drift to that scene in The Notebook – the one where Noah and Allie lie in the middle of the empty road. You could not be that romantic in England. I’d get frostbite of the bumhole if Harry and I lay on the ice tonight. Not that he would want to…
We wandered the deserted streets, leaving icy footprints that would freeze over again before anyone woke up to see them. We didn’t talk, either out of awkwardness or tiredness. I wanted to say a million things, but also had no idea what they were. So I just tried not to look at him as we crunched along – the cold biting at the back of my throat, my shoulders hunched up in a failed attempt to keep my neck warm.
Harry seemed tense. He lit one cigarette after another, leaning into the cold, not really looking at me. What was going on? Something was definitely going on. And, as we reached the end of my road, he stopped abruptly, turning to me, but not looking me in the eye. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Riiiight.”
He took another drag of his cigarette, blew the smoke out over my head. “Umm, well, it’s two things, I guess. Firstly, I wanted to apologize. For…well…for being flirty when you first started. It wasn’t on. Sorry. You should be able to start a new job and not have some random dude hitting on you.”
My tummy twisted. “It’s okay,” I said.
“Well, I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone, like that, I mean.”
I bit my lip to stop myself yelling out, No! I’ve changed my mind. Flirt with me shamelessly, please.
“And, well, with that out of the way…” He hadn’t made eye contact with me once. “I, umm, well, we kind of need to film the kissing scene this week. I’ve been holding off, because I know you’re mad at me, and I made you uncomfortable. But it’s got to the point where I really need to film the scenes I’m in… Sorry…I mean, I guess you’re a good enough actress to kiss someone who pisses you off, right?”
My tummy plunged. This was what tonight was leading up to – not anything romantic. It had just been a gentleman-like buttering me up, so he could tackle this awkwardness. I wasn’t replying, only digesting. So Harry gabbled on.
“I mean, we can try and do it in one take. And I promise I won’t be all, like, well, like me. LouLou had a go at me…told me off too… I mean, I was going to apologize anyway, but I thought you’d like to know she kicked my butt.”
“Harry, it’s okay,” I managed to stammer out. “I’ve done kissing scenes before.” Although only with Milo, who I was also seeing, so I’d never actually kissed someone I didn’t like. Not that I didn’t like Harry. Actually, some sliver of me plummeted with the knowledge that acting was the only way I would get to kiss Harry now.
“Yeah, I assumed so. Even so, I wanted to talk it through with you, check it was okay.”
“It’s fine,” I insisted. “But I appreciate you…umm… apologizing. And taking the time to talk it through.”
“So, it won’t be awkward?” He still wouldn’t meet my eye, so he couldn’t see my forced smile.
“It will if you keep asking if it’s awkward.”
He laughed, a hacking one that bounced around the empty street. “True, true. Anyway, that’s all sorted. Come on, I’ll walk you to your door. Like the gentleman I really am not.”
It was my turn to laugh. Though I still felt disappointed. In a way I didn’t have a grasp of yet. We walked the twenty metres or so to my door, past the sleeping Victorian terraces. When we got to my doorstep, I stopped, hovering. Exhausted from how late it was, but also, part of me not wanting to say goodbye. All the kisses from Cinema Paradiso flickered past my eyelids, making the bottom of my stomach ache.
“Thanks again,” I said, reaching in my bag for my keys. “For the movie, and the apology, and walking me home and all.”
I looked up once I’d found my keys and this time Harry was staring right at me. Our eyes met. Breathing got tricky. He reached up and ran his hands through his mad hair. “I’m sorry for the comment I made too. About you not being like other girls. You…well…I guess you’re not like other girls in that you didn’t melt into a puddle when I said it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So you have used that line before?”
“Maybe.” He grinned, but didn’t look proud of himself.
“I knew it.”
“If it means anything, for what it’s worth, I actually meant it when I said it about you. But you were right. I shouldn’t be, er…turned on by your emotional trauma.” He leaned forward, so our breath mingled. “I’m sorry for suggesting you are anything other than perfectly ordinary.”
I instinctively leaned closer. “I’m practically dull.”
Then, before I could compute what I was doing, I leaned forward to kiss him. An urgent need spreading through my stomach, up my arms, bypassing my brain. I was going to, I was going to…
“Ouch. What?”
Harry had dodged back at the last moment. I clashed my head into his jaw, the pain radiating through my skull. It was like someone had injected a syringe full of humiliation directly into my heart.
“Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I yelped.
Harry was rubbing his jaw. “What was that?”
My keys were in my fingers, my back was to him. I fumbled with the lock. I had to get out of here. Oh my God, I’d tried to kiss him and ended up headbutting him. Like a freaking…WWE wrestler.
“I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry. I have to go. Thanks for…everything…sorry.”
The door opened. I couldn’t get through it quickly enough. What was wrong with me? Seriously, what was I doing? I HEADBUTTED HIM. I needed to not be here. I needed to escape what I’d just done, how embarrassed I felt.
I heard laughter as I bowled through the door. “Audrey? Wait. Come on! Audrey, come back.”
But I was safely over the threshold and I swung the door shut in Harry’s face, running up to my bedroom. Peeling off my coat and scarf, like they were layers of humiliation I could remove. I heard him call through the glass one last time, more urgently. I ignored it. I got into my bedroom, dived under the covers and curled up in a ball.