At seven, the line began to move, and we made our way to our seats. “Do you mind if we sit on the aisle?” I requested. “I like to have an exit route.”

“In case of a zombie attack, I’m assuming.” I nodded. Once we were in our seats, Leo asked, “Do you want any snacks?”

“Dots, if they have them,” I said, and fished a few dollars out of my pocket.

“That’s okay.” He wouldn’t take the money. “You can pay for coffee later.” Leo stood up and rubbed past my knees on his way out of the row. Standing next to him outside in line did nothing for me, but that small act of connecting with my knees made my stomach tingle.

I texted Becca while Leo was away.

About to see Bruce! I’ll tell him u say hi

As the lights dimmed for the start of the movie, Leo returned and slid past me once again. I tried to ignore my libido’s feelings to retain the reverence of the Evil Dead films. Leo handed me the box of Dots, while he munched from a tub of popcorn. I attempted to remove the clear wrap from around the yellow box in a movie-appropriate manner, but it took me forever to find a weak spot to open the plastic. By the time I was in full crinkle, characters were talking and some people in front of me turned around to glare. I popped a Dot in my mouth and sneered back.

“Ew.” I spit the Dot into my hand.

“What’s wrong?” Leo leaned over and whispered into my ear. He smelled all buttery.

“I ate a green one,” I whispered back. The warmth of his cheek near my mouth begged for a kiss, but I restrained myself.

“Here.” He handed me a napkin from under his tub, and I rubbed the sticky mess from my hand into it.

Each time I pulled a new Dot out of the box, I held it up to the screen in hopes of discovering its color in the darkness, lest it be green again.

“Do you want some popcorn?” Leo whispered midway through the film.

“No thank you. Want a Dot?”

“Are there only green ones left?”

“Yep,” I told him, and he kissed me one, two, three times on the mouth. I wished there weren’t so many people around us.

We watched the rest of the movie as members of an audience, reacting together with laughter and disgust at the appropriate intervals. When the film ended, Bruce Campbell, the lead actor in the Evil Dead trilogy, as well as a cult god, walked out on the stage. He looked paunchier and older than in the films, but still had that great movie star butt chin I admired on him. The audience took several minutes to calm down from our enthusiastic standing ovation, and when we did Leo immediately took my hand in his.

I never was much for holding hands. Most people were so clammy, or our fingers fit together wrong. There was nothing worse than intertwined fingers as a gesture of romance only to realize that the boy’s hands were stumpy and there was barely enough room to lace our fingers together. Leo didn’t weave our fingers, but held my hand on his lap with a grip that tightened every time he laughed at something brilliant Bruce said. Leo’s hand was much larger than mine, with prominent veins. At times, no matter how funny or engaging Bruce was, I was distracted by the force with which Leo would jerk my hand with a laugh. Not a bad distraction, but I wanted to focus on Bruce, maybe learn something for my own movies.

I fished my hand away from Leo’s and pretended to dig something out of my back pocket. He didn’t seem to notice. I spent the rest of the show wondering why Leo didn’t try to hold my hand again.

Bruce was selling and signing copies of his books, posters, shirts, and any other weird artifact people brought to him. When it was time for me and Leo to greet him, I told Bruce, “You are a legend.”

He thanked me and offered to sign an Army of Darkness poster I brought along. “Gimme some sugar, Baby,” he wrote, a classic line. One of my favorites. I asked Leo to take a picture of me and Bruce with my phone, and he did. Then the next person in line, a rather large woman with a Bubba Ho-Tep t-shirt on, asked us, “Do you want a picture with both of you?”

“Sure,” Leo answered before I could decide for myself. When the moment was over, Leo and I reviewed the picture. We stood on either side of Bruce, smiling like dorks, while Bruce produced bunny ears behind our heads. Classic.

If it were possible for me to feel jubilant, that’s how I felt as Leo and I walked back to my car. For two seconds I forgot about my dad and Becca and just reveled in the primo evening.

Leo was bubbly, too, and quoted moments from Bruce’s Q&A verbatim. “Remember when…?” “And then he said…” It was funny how cute and sweet such a big, supposedly scary guy could look. I started the car, and the clock read 10:45. “What time do you have to be home?” I asked.

“One,” he answered.

“Midnight for me. But you can have my glass slipper.” He smiled, illuminated by the parking lot lights. “What do you want to do?” I asked. I knew the question was too open, too obvious. At that time of night, we could go back to someone’s house and worry about waiting parents, go to Denny’s for coffee, which I had previously offered to cover, or find somewhere to park the car.

“How about the Halloween store?” Leo suggested. I hadn’t thought of that.

“Is there one up yet?” The phenomenon of pop-up Halloween stores was always exciting and depressing at the same time. Anything huge and Halloweeny meant awesomeness in my book, but they were always thrown into some giant, dead store space that would become empty again once the holiday ended. Or at least until the pop-up Christmas store took its place.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Where is it?”

“Where the Borders used to be,” he directed.

I drove to the strip mall parking lot and parked in the vast emptiness. We unclicked our seat belts and walked up to the blackened windows. Leo cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in. “I guess we’re a little late,” Leo noticed as we surveyed the dark store.

“They stay open later when Halloween gets closer,” I mentioned.

“Next time,” he suggested.

I mulled over the idea of a next time as we returned to the car. “So,” I asked as Leo hopped in and shut the door. “What now?” I started the car and turned on WVVX, a local station that turned from Spanish to metal at 8:00 p.m.

As I attempted to tug on my seat belt, Leo slid toward me and ran his hand up my arm. At that moment, the streetlight above the car flickered off. “I planned that,” he said. He leaned over and kissed me, his position awkward and sideways, the steering wheel preventing us from getting comfortably close. I gently pushed his chest away from me and crawled my way over the armrest and into the backseat. Leo followed, less gracefully, and stumbled until we were next to each other.

Our hands were everywhere. He pulled my shirt over my head, and I did the same to his. Or was it the other way around? He leaned back onto the leather bench seat, and I rested on top of him. Without taking my bra off, Leo slid his hand inside it and drove me to an embarrassing squeak.

“What was that?” He laughed quietly, as if talking loudly would alert someone outside to our presence.

I bit his lip slightly harder than playfully, which he took to mean I wanted more. I did.

Somehow my hand found its way down to the buttons of Leo’s jeans, and I undid them one by one before fitting my hand inside and feeling him against me. He responded with a moan, and dug around until my jeans were unbuttoned, too. We slithered out of our pants and rubbed our barely dressed bodies together, kissing, grinding, gripping. He hooked his finger onto the top of my undies and started to pull them off.

“Wait,” I breathed. “We’re not going to have sex,” I told him.

“Why is it you keep saying that?” He didn’t sound annoyed, just curious.

“I’ve said it twice.” His finger remained on my undies, which were now halfway down one side of my leg.

“Does that mean third time’s a charm?” He smiled. I smacked his freckled shoulder and shifted onto my knees to pull on my undies. “Wait,” he stopped me. “We don’t have to have sex. I don’t have a condom anyway. Unless you do.”

“Even if I did, I said no.” My undies were back in place, and I was sitting up. Leo pushed himself up next to me and began kissing my ear.

“Can I still take your panties off if I promise we won’t have sex tonight?”

His hands didn’t give me time to answer, and he felt so good I wouldn’t have said no anyway. After my undies were somewhere on the floor of the car, Leo took my hips and turned me so I was reclining on the seat. He slithered down to where my underwear used to be and placed his hands on either thigh, separating them. I grabbed onto his hair, not hard enough to pull him away from what he was doing but enough to steady myself. Even lying down, I felt like I could fall at any moment. He was masterful at what he did, and I squirmed in painful ecstasy. My head started going to that place where I wondered how he got so skilled, but I willed myself to drown in the moment. I gasped and palmed the car seat, reaching for anything I could before I completely succumbed. When it was over, I released my grip and my hands cramped. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think. That must be what heaven is like.

I heard Leo groping around for his clothes, and I opened my eyes. He had a, well, me-eating grin on his face, and I was embarrassed to look at him after how I completely let go. When we were both dressed, I noticed the clock. “Shit. I have to get home,” I said. We climbed into the front seat, a Megadeth song playing as I drove Leo back to his house. When we got there, Leo unclicked his seat belt. I thought he’d slide over for a good-night kiss, but he just said, “I had a good night.”