“You don’t want to do that,” he tells me. “You’ll be so bored.”
“Not as long as we’re hanging out.”
He blushes. “I guess there is unlimited popcorn in it for you.”
“Throw in some Milk Duds, and we have a deal,” I say.
“Done.” He holds his hand out for me to shake.
Malik parks around the back of the movie theater, near the employee entrance, and we trot up a dark, narrow staircase just inside the door.
I have been to this theater countless times, with its old, dusty Art Deco lobby and plush royal-blue seats, but a few years back, the drive-in on the edge of town reopened, and this place just isn’t quite as busy as it used to be.
“Okay,” says Malik. “It looks like Cameron got all the shows going, so I’ve just got to be here to change out the reels and do the late shows. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Not even a little bit,” I tell him.
“Let’s get those Milk Duds I promised you.”
I follow him through a tiny office and onto an even tinier elevator that drops us right into the lobby, which smells like butter and years of soda syrup soaked into the gold, red, and blue carpet.
“There’s no one here,” I say.
“Everyone’s in their movies,” he tells me. “The calm between the storms.”
“Trust me,” says a petite, older black woman behind the counter. “This place turns into a war zone in between shows. And you don’t even want to know what the floors of those theaters look like when we bring up the houselights.” She wears black slacks, a white button-up, a blue satin vest, and a bow tie made to look like the Texas flag.
“Cynthia,” says Malik, taking my hand, “this is—”
“Millie!” she finishes for him. “Darling, he has been singing your song for months now.”
A sharp gasp that comes out more like a laugh tumbles from me and echoes through the lobby. “Months, huh?”
Malik bites down on his lips until they disappear and his cheeks melt into a deep shade of pink. “Cynthia is my coworker.”
“And friend,” she adds.
He turns to me. “And general sentence finisher.”
Malik fills a large tub full of popcorn, pours us each a soda, and retrieves my Milk Duds from the glass case. I know this isn’t how our date was supposed to go and that this is just concession food, but something about this feels decadent. My mom never buys movie theater snacks. Instead, she sneaks in bags of sliced apples or, if she’s splurging, a SlimFast cookie-dough bar.
We take the elevator back upstairs and settle onto a small couch in one of the projector rooms.
“So should I be worried about you and Cynthia?” I ask as the ninth movie in an action-adventure car-chase franchise plays in the background behind us.
He cracks a smile. “I guess we’re not two people who you would expect to be friends, but you try spending half your summer here and not bonding with the closest set of lungs you can find.” He shoves a handful of popcorn in his mouth and washes it down with a swig of Dr Pepper. “But I’d like to think that me and Cynthia would’ve found a way to be friends even if I didn’t work here.”
“Is she married?” I ask. “Any kids?”
“Two kids. A daughter in Houston and a son in Fort Worth. She took a job here after her husband passed away.”
I don’t know if this makes me feel better or worse. Knowing that she has people and is alone anyway. “Why does she stay here then? She could go be with one of her kids. And I’m pretty sure they have way better movie theaters in Houston and Fort Worth. No offense.”
“Oh, I’m offended,” he says. “Experiencing a film on thirty-five millimeter is the purest movie-watching experience there is. Even if it means sitting in our broken seats and your feet getting stuck to the floor. But actually, Cynthia and her husband went on their first date here, so she’s kind of serious about keeping this place up and running.”
That’s so sweet,” I say. “But I had no idea you were such a hipster snob about your movie-watching preferences.”
“If we lived in a big city, I’d be a total hipster snob, but out here, I’m just the weird kid who works at the movie theater and is boring enough to be trusted with keys to the school.”
I take a few pieces of popcorn and toss them in my mouth with a Milk Dud, because I’m an enlightened genius. “I don’t think you’re boring. Heck, I didn’t even know you were this into film stuff.”
“I wasn’t always, but working here and watching old Westerns with my dad has kind of had an effect on me.”
“I for sure thought you wanted to be a politician.”
He sets his drink down on the floor by his feet and rotates his whole body toward me. “I did. I do.” He shakes his head. “Maybe I still will be.” He holds his lips in a firm line for a moment. “I always wanted to change the world. I know that’s so corny. Of course everyone wants to change the world.”
I place my hand on top of his. “No,” I say, my voice dead serious. “Not everyone wants to change the world.”
“I just always thought the only way I could do that was by being a senator or a mayor or something like that, but there’s something about movies and stories. I want to help change the rules, you know? To help make everything more fair. But no one cares about evening the playing field or changing the rules unless they have some kind of connection. I guess . . . well, that’s what stories do. They connect people. Stories change hearts and then hearts change the world.”
I didn’t think I could fall harder. But I am. I know that lots of folks look at people like me and Malik and think we’re just silly idealists who want more than we have any right to have. But let them think that. “I bet you can have it both,” I tell him. “I bet you can change the rules and the hearts.”
He leans toward me and our lips brush—just as the credits in the theater begin to roll. “All I’m changing tonight,” he says, “are these film reels.”
My heart hiccups. And then I begin to hiccup.
“Are you okay?” he asks, holding back a laugh.
I nod, only a little mortified. “Too much fizzy soda.”
He takes my hand and pulls me up. I follow him to each of the projector rooms and watch as he carefully changes the film for the 9:00, 9:10, 9:20, and 9:30 showings, which is right about when my hiccups die down.
We hang out for a bit in each room and catch a glimpse of each movie: action adventure with street racing, a cartoon about cats, a World War II romance, and a slasher movie about a cheerleading summer camp.
At the end of the night, Cynthia closes up the concessions and the ticket counter while Malik and I sweep up the four theaters.
“I’m sorry this didn’t turn out exactly as planned,” he tells me.
“Hey, at least I got a free pair of socks out of the whole thing.”
“And Milk Duds,” he reminds me.
Cynthia pops her head into theater four. “I’m all done up here,” she says.
“You head on out,” Malik tells her. “Just lock up the front and we’ll leave out the back door.”
“You got it,” she says before turning to me. “Millie, it was a pleasure.”
Once she’s gone, Malik asks, “Do you have to be home soon?”
I glance down at my phone to find a text from my mom asking how much longer I’ll be. I shoot off a quick response to tell her we’re studying late at Amanda’s. That should buy me a few hours. “Nope, I’m good!”
“What’s your favorite kind of movie?”
“Promise not to laugh?” I ask.
“That depends.”
I clap my hands over my face. “Romantic comedies.”
Between my fingers, I watch as he leans the broom against a chair and takes a step toward me. One finger at a time, he pulls my hands from my face. “Romantic comedies,” he says, “are entirely underrated.”
“Right?” I feel my whole face lighting up. “It’s like, just because they’re marketed toward women and end with a happily ever after, they’re somehow silly or frivolous.”