Page 29 of Tangled Up In You
She did, and let out a gasp when the screen came to life. “Amazing.”
He submitted their food order and then watched in amusement as, through a process of trial and error that inadvertently took them to the adult movie section and quickly back out, Ren navigated to the free movie options.
“What’s good?” She paused on Clueless. “A retelling of Emma? This looks fun!”
“It’s pretty good. Hit it.”
She fell back to the bed, starfishing her arms and legs like she was making a snow angel. “I’m sure you know what I’m about to say!” she called loudly, as if he was in the other room and not eight feet away from her.
“That you’ve never been on a bed that big?”
The opening credits started, and Ren bolted up at the sound, sitting cross-legged on the mattress. Fitz dug around inside to find that kernel of annoyance at every little thing she did, but at least for tonight, it seemed to be taking a break. Their food showed up quickly, and Ren patted the mattress beside her, laying down some towels and insisting they set up a little burrito picnic on the bed. At her first bite, she let out a moan so suggestive, Fitz had to bite his cheek to keep from reacting with a laugh, a joke, something to diffuse the way his brain went haywire at the sound. One look at her, and he knew she had no idea what she’d just done.
He blinked away, back to the TV, uneasy with how quickly he found himself softening to someone who, only hours ago, was deep on his shit list.
And as if some power in the universe knew he needed to remember how annoying she could be, she hit play on the movie and peppered him with constant questions.
“Have you ever been to Beverly Hills?”
“Do you skateboard?”
“Was your high school like that?”
“Does anyone really have a closet like Cher’s?”
“What do people do at parties?”
When she asked Fitz to explain the joke about balls flying toward faces, he grabbed a pillow and pretended to smother her with it. “All right,” he said, laughing in spite of himself, “let’s just watch the movie.”
Thankfully after that Ren fell quiet, grabbing the pillow and hugging it to her chest as she watched with wide, absorbing eyes until the credits finished rolling.
Fitz walked into the bathroom, pulling his toothbrush out of the toiletry bag and running it under the water. In the other room, the TV turned off, and footsteps padded across the tiled entryway floor.
“That movie was so good,” she said, walking into the bathroom with him and running her own toothbrush under the water. “But as an adaptation of Emma?” She jammed her toothbrush in her cheek, speaking around it. “I found it a little lacking.”
Fitz raised his brows, watching her begin to brush, her mouth turning foamy. “By all means, join me,” he said wryly. He’d never even had a girlfriend long enough to create a bedtime routine with, and here Ren was, standing with him at the sink in her pajamas, unselfconsciously opening her mouth wide to reach her molars.
“Shher ish sho cwearwy bootiful an schpecial,” she garbled out, and then bent to spit.
“I caught none of that,” he said.
“Cher is so clearly beautiful and special,” Ren repeated.
“So?”
“So,” she said, leaning back against the counter to face him, “Emma is a book about a girl who is considered prized and special relative to everyone in the tiny, isolated town around her, but who is otherwise completely average.”
“Okay,” he said around his toothbrush.
“It was a cute movie but makes me think whoever wrote that missed one of Jane Austen’s most important messages.”
He bent, spitting his toothpaste into the sink. “Go write about it in your notebook, Ren, I honestly don’t care this much about Emma or Clueless.”
She followed him back into the bedroom with a brush in her hand. He hadn’t noticed during the movie when she took the towel off to let her hair air-dry, but it fell down to her butt now in gleaming metallic waves that she began to painstakingly brush through.
“I may be the first to mention it,” he said, sitting in the desk chair and spinning back and forth in a slow arc, “but your hair is super long.”
She laughed a playful har-har sound. “You don’t say.”