He’s already there when you arrive, hands in his jacket pockets, and the second he sees you his whole face does something helpless and unguarded that he clearly doesn’t mean to let you see.

“Hey.” His voice comes out rougher than usual.

“Hey yourself.” You look up at the marquee.

FOOL’S RUSH IN — ONE NIGHT ONLY.

“Okay. Late 90’s rom-com. Bold choice, Abbot.”

“You know it?”

“I know of it. I was, what, one when it came out.” You watch his jaw tighten, anxious. “Relax. I’m messing with you.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You’ve checked your watch 4 times since I walked up.”

“That’s a medical habit. Occupational hazard.” But he’s fighting a smile, and he holds the door for you, and inside the theater is nearly empty… a scattering of other people, mismatched velvet seats, the kind of hush that only exists in old buildings that have outlived their purpose and don’t care. Inside it smells like butter, candy, and old dusty carpet with something underneath that might just be decades of other people’s first dates.

You end up in the back row because Jack Abbot, apparently, is a back-row person, and you don’t dislike that about him. Or anything whatsoever.

“So why this one,” you ask, once you’re settled, his arm already finding its way along the back of your seat like he can’t help it. “Out of every movie in the world.”

He’s quiet for a second. Current trailers are still running, throwing blue light across his face.

“My sister loved it. When I was in my residency, when I never had time for anything, she’d make me watch it whenever I came home. Said I needed at least one thing in my life that wasn’t a medical journal or a chart.” He shrugs. “Haven’t watched it in years but I saw it announced on my way to work and thought maybe—” He stops.

“Thought maybe what?”

“Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“Jack.”

“I thought maybe I could watch again with another person I care about.” He says it fast, like ripping off a bandage, eyes on the screen instead of you. “That’s it. That’s the whole reason.”

You don’t say anything right away, because your chest has gone soft and full in a way you’re not used to, and you’re worried if you open your mouth it’ll come out as something bigger than you’re ready for. So instead you reach over and lace your fingers through his on the armrest, and you feel him exhale.

“I like it already,” you tell him. “And it hasn’t even begun.”

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

The movie is exactly as ridiculous and charming as you’d expect. Las Vegas neon and impulsive marriage and two people who have no business being together making it work anyway.

The plot feels extremely relatable.

Almost at the end you find yourself humming along under your breath to It’s Now Or Never by Elvis Presley.

“You know this song?”

“Of course,” you whisper. “I have an unreasonable amount of music knowledge from decades I wasn’t alive for. It’s a whole thing.”

He shakes his head, staring at you like you’ve short-circuited something within him. “That’s my exact music taste. That’s disturbing.”

“Weird disturbing, or regular disturbing?”

“Don’t,” he says, but he’s grinning now, wide and unguarded, the kind of grin that makes the almost 20 years between you feel less like a gap and more like a coincidence of timing. “You’re supposed to be nice to me. I’m nervous.”

“You said you weren’t nervous.”

“I lied. Occupational hazard of that too, apparently.”

You laugh, and somebody in the row ahead shushes you both, and you spend the rest of the movie with your head on his shoulder and his thumb tracing slow, absent circles against your hand, and it is, without question, the best old romcom you’ve ever seen.

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

The credits roll. The lights come up slowly, like they’re giving everyone a second to remember where they are.

Neither of you moves. A couple minutes pass and then he turns to look at you.

“That line,” Jack says, staring straight ahead at the blank screen like it’s easier than looking at you. “Near the end. Where he tells her he loves her so much it hurts and he realizes he doesn’t want the version of his life where he doesn’t take the chance on her—”

“I remember.” You do… it had landed somewhere under your ribs a few minutes ago and hadn’t left.

“I know it’s too soon but I’ve been thinking about that line for three weeks.” He finally turns to look at you, and for once there’s nothing careful in his expression, none of the hallway-glance restraint, just him. “I don’t want to live the version where I don’t ask. So. I’m asking. Be my girlfriend, sweetheart.”

It’s not smooth. It’s not the speech he probably practiced in his head on the drive over. It’s better than that, because you can tell it’s real and the same man who checked his watch four times and texted you three panicked messages about a movie theater, laid bare in the worst lighting a single-screen cinema in the middle of Pittsburgh has to offer.

“Yeah,” you say, and your voice comes out steadier than you feel, which feels like its own small miracle. “Of course. Yes.”

He kisses you like he’s been waiting ages to do it properly, and somewhere behind you the ancient sound system is still playing the last few bars of the classical rendition of an old song neither of you can name.

And you think, for the first time, that you’d sit through every movie in the world if it meant more nights exactly like this one because you love him too. So much it hurts.

—