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It did not sound at all like something he wanted to see. He put down his fork, suddenly not very hungry. “Sorry. Nope. Why don’t you go with one of your girlfriends?”
She looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “All right.” She ate a little bit and then asked, “Have you always disliked horror movies? And scary ones?”
Always? Why go to a movie that scared the shit out of you when you got to experience that every night at home? “Yes.”
“Why?”
Couldn’t she tell he didn’t want to talk about this? Dana wasn’t usually dense, but she was sure working on it now. “Do I have to have a reason?”
“Most people do.”
He told himself to be reasonable. She was talking about movies, for God’s sake. He should be able to talk about movies without losing it. He’d come to terms with his past. At least, he thought he had. But some things still got to him. He couldn’t put into words the way he’d felt when he was little and heard his parents fighting. Throwing things, yelling, and God help him if he got in their way. One was as likely as the other to knock the hell out of him if he so much as showed his face. Then later, after his mother left, he’d dread every night, wondering when his father would come home. When he did he was drunk, always. Sometimes, times Levi would pray for, he’d just pass out. But the other times he’d think up any excuse to beat the hell out of Levi. Or he’d go after Asher and Levi would put himself between them, even though Asher begged him not to do it. He’d never talked to Dana about that shit and he didn’t intend to start now. So he said, “They’re too realistic.”
“Realistic? Horror movies are too realistic?”
“That’s what I said. Now can we drop the goddamn subject?”
Dana stared at him. Then she put her hand on his arm and squeezed gently. “I’m sorry, Levi. I really didn’t mean to upset you.”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.” Did it count as no big deal if he wished to hell it wasn’t?
“Obviously it is. And I’m sorry.”
He should give her some kind of explanation. It wasn’t Dana’s fault he’d had a shitty childhood. “They remind me of when I was a kid,” he finally said.
“Because you saw a lot of those movies then?”
“No. Because I lived them.”
He expected her to ask for more details. And he braced himself, trying to think of how much or how little to tell her. But she surprised him. She had a way of doing that. Instead of demanding answers, she simply squeezed his arm. Then she got up, pushed back his chair and sat in his lap. And hugged him, still without speaking. A comforting hug. A loving hug.
Levi’s throat started to close up. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and held on. He swallowed the lump in his throat, horrified that he felt so close to crying. He’d cried when he thought Asher would die but that was the only time since he was a kid that he’d done it. It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.
For the life of him, he couldn’t think of anything to say. Dana released him, took his face in her hands and kissed him. So damn sweetly.
“Dana, I—”
She put a finger to his lips. “You don’t have to say anything.” She kissed him again, then got off his lap and held out her hand. “Let’s go for a swim.”
“It’s a little cool tonight,” he managed to say.
“It’s a heated pool. Besides, I know of a great way to stay warm.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“I’ll have to show you.”
“That sounds like a plan,” he said and followed her out the door.
*
A couple of days later Levi was waiting for Dana to return with some takeout for dinner when his doorbell rang. He checked his app and saw Travis on the doorstep. “Be there in a minute,” he said into the intercom. Sometimes he let Minerva unlock the doors for him but most of the time he liked to answer it himself.
“I come bearing gifts,” Travis said.
Levi let Travis inside, taking the six-pack of beer he held out. “So I see. What’s the occasion?”
“Tobi and I are getting married.”
