Junior Year, 93-94. Megan B. March
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had just passed a level they’d been working on for a while.
“Don’t fuck up my guy, Karl,” Jensen warned him. “It took forever to get that far.” Apparently he had been the one to pick up the controller Jensen abandoned, taking over the game. Karl saluted Jensen and went back to the game.
“What movies did you get?” I wanted to know.
“Oh, shit!” Jensen’s hands went to the top of his head. “Gabe was supposed to pick those up. I guess he forgot.”
“I live to serve. Any requests?” I asked sweetly before getting up from the couch. “And yes, I’ll grab some Bullwinkle’s Pizza while I’m out.”
Jensen got up and pulled me close, kissing my lips lightly and stealthily moving his hand around to my behind, cupping me lightly. “Definitely my favorite outfit on you."
I looked at his friends to see if they'd witnessed our exchange, but to my relief they were so engrossed in the game that our private moment remained ours.
"Which movies should I pick up?"
"Just get whatever is new. Let me get you some cash.”
“I can get it,” I protested, but Jensen shook his head and disappeared into his room. A moment later he returned with a wad of cash that I estimated to be close to a hundred bucks or so, most of it for the pizza.
“Guys, what kind of pizza do you want?” he yelled, quickly jotting down what the guys asked for. “And for movies?”
“Singles,” Tyler yelled.
“Candyman,” Karl and Gabe shouted out in unison.
Jensen wrote their selections on the same piece of paper the pizza order was on and handed it to me along with my purse that was on the couch. Turning to leave, I didn’t get very far before Jensen smacked my butt lightly. With a narrowed gaze I turned and instantly melted as Jensen looked at me and mouthed that he loved me.
With money and list in hand, I made my way upstairs away from the commotion. Karl yelled up after me that I was the best girlfriend ever, and the music steadily made its way back to the volume it was at when I first walked in. I made it to the top of the stairs just as Alicia was preparing to rush out the door. She skidded to a stop as we nearly collided and blinked in surprise when she saw I was ready to go.
“Why are you leaving? Too much?” she joked.
“Oh, no, they forgot the two most important things.”
“Movies and food,” we both said together, laughing.
“Come on, I’ll give you a ride to your house. You probably want to change, too.”
Alicia was right. Even though I had one of Jensen’s favorite skirts on, I really didn’t want to be watching movies all dressed up. Hanging with the guys definitely called for wearing more comfortable clothes. She dropped me at my place and sped off to start her night with James. I ran up the steps to my house and unlocked the door, racing back to my room where I found my favorite purple jeans and matching B.U.M. Equipment hoodie. After sliding a sleeveless turtleneck over my head and then the hoodie, I slipped into the pants and a pair of black Keds. Leaving my dress clothes on the bed, I grabbed my keys and purse on the way out and headed to the mall to pick up the pizza and movies.
After ordering five large pizzas and learning I’d have to wait at least thirty minutes, I headed over to the video store to pick up the movies. It wasn’t quite five o’clock, the time when people normally swarmed the joint, and I checked my watch to see I had at least a good ten minutes or so to browse the New Release section first. As I did so, I recalled the last time I had gotten movies. Jensen and I had taken the next big step in our relationship—adding me to his video store membership as he had his own membership that he opened once he’d turned 18. I recalled the day very well as it was the day after his senior graduation party, in the afternoon after we'd gotten some sleep.
“You don’t think it will be weird?”
“It’s not weird if you’re engaged.”
“But they don’t know that.”
Jensen and I had been having a back-and-forth whispered conversation in the middle of the video store. I caught a few stares here and there from other customers and figured they could only guess what we were talking about. Some probably thought we were planning to rob the place, I assumed as I followed Jensen up to the counter with our video selections. As the clerk scanned the tapes Jensen inquired about adding me. It was simpler than I had expected.
“Do I put your last name or mine?” I whispered to Jensen, unsure since we were technically engaged.
The clerk had looked at us funny. “Did you two recently get married?”
“Getting there,” Jensen covered and then whispered to me, “yours for now.”
My face burned as I quickly jotted down ‘Adams’ and then signed my name. After a few more minutes of standing there in embarrassment I was now a part of someone’s video store membership.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Jensen commented as we walked out of the store. He put his arms around me.
“That was totally embarrassing.” I shook my head. “I’m glad you know what to tell people.”
“Feel free to use that line anytime,” he chuckled at me.
I came back to the present and thought about what he’d said … Feel free to use that line anytime. It was like an epiphany and I decided when people asked about my ring and subsequent relationship status with Jensen, I would tell people we were ‘getting there.’
Feeling thrilled, I focused on the task at hand—choosing some movies for my boyfriend’s movie night with the guys; his last sendoff. Since the movies Candyman and Singles had come out the prior year they were easy enough to spot and pull off the shelf. The guys hadn’t suggested anything else, so I also picked up Sliver and Sneakers, also. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind that I wanted to see those two, but after all I was the one running the errands. After shelling out three bucks per movie, I headed back to Bullwinkle’s and waited another ten minutes for the pizza before being called to the counter to retrieve my order.
“Do you need some help out?” the server asked as I reached for the five large boxes.
“Nah, I got it. Thanks.” I put the movies on top the pizza boxes and carefully maneuvered the load toward the door, glad it was propped open already.
Heading to my truck, I had to set the pizza boxes down on the hood in order to fumble for the keys in my pocket. The pizzas and the movies fit well into the front passenger seat, and I used my purse to lodge the boxes in so that they wouldn’t slide to the floor on my way back to Jensen’s house. After pulling into the driveway where my truck blended in well with the other cars that were there, I got out and pulled the pizza boxes and movies across the seat to me, bumping the door shut using my behind. Carefully, I walked up the steps to the door and used my elbow to ring the doorbell. It took two more tries before Tyler, who was out of breath, answered it.
“Oh, hey, let me get that for you,” he offered seeing that my hands were clearly full, my head just peeking over the top of the pizza boxes.
I handed him the boxes and then grabbed the movies off the top. “Thanks!” I beamed. “I got Candyman, Singles, Sneakers, and Sliver.”
“Three movies that start with ‘S,’ that’s kind of cool,” Tyler remarked as I followed him down the stairs. “Hey, guys, the food’s here.”
“And the entertainment,” I added.
Jensen turned the music back down, which had been changed to Aerosmith. Livin’ on the Edge began to play and I found myself nodding my head to the beat and singing along. Jensen took the bag of movies from me and pulled them out to read what I’d