Is he being serious? I mean, I love Audrey Hepburn, but I just can’t watch Mickey Rooney playing a broadly caricatured Japanese man for goofs and giggles. No thanks. I tell him so. His argument isn’t as strong for this one, but he’s still disbelieving that I’m not singing its praises.
This is so weird. Our film mojo is off. Sure, we disagree online (all the time), but it’s all good-natured. In person, it feels so . . . personal. We go through the classics section, shelf by shelf, but nothing seems to click with either one of us. It’s like we’re two completely different people, and the longer we’re testing each other’s tastes, the less we’re liking each other. I’m starting to sweat in weird places and make awkward flirty jokes that don’t land.
This is not going well.
The worst part is that he notices too.
“Sometimes they have more stuff in the back,” he finally says after we haven’t spoken in several long, excruciating seconds. “Let me go ask Henry if they’ve gotten anything new in. Be right back.”
Great. Now I’m worried that he’s giving me the slip. The first time I get up the nerve to ask a guy out on a date—a guy I’ve been fantasizing about for months—and it goes hellishly wrong. If he doesn’t come back in one minute, I’m seriously considering sneaking out myself.
“Breakfast at Tiffany’s is an overrated piece of fluff.”
I freeze. No one’s around. I glance down the aisle in both directions. Did I just imagine that? Or did someone overhear Patrick and me talking from before, and now I’m overhearing another conversation?
“It’s not supposed to be a love story, you know. Which is the ironic thing in this particular situation, actually.”
“Hello?” I whisper.
A DVD moves aside. I’m now staring at a pair of eyes. Someone’s in the other aisle. I move another DVD and reveal more of the face through the wire shelving: scruffy jaw, slow grin, wild, sun-kissed curls. Porter. My hand clenches. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s my day off.”
“And you’re following me around?” I say, exasperated.
“No, you’re following me around. I was in here when you paraded in with Patrick Killian on your arm.”
I stand on tiptoes to peer over the top of the shelves. He raises his head to meet me and cocks both brows, a smug look on his face. My heart starts pounding, big-time. Why does he have this effect on me? Can’t my body just be normal around him?
“How do you know him?” I whisper hotly, glancing around to make sure Patrick isn’t listening. I don’t spot him, so I guess he’s either in back or has flown the coop.
Porter casually rests an arm on the top of the video rack. “I’ve known him since we were kids. He thinks he’s a movie snob because his family is one of the local companies that sponsors the annual film festival. Big whoop.”
Wait one stinking minute. Big warning bells ding in my head. I definitely think Alex would have mentioned if his family sponsored the festival. That’s something you’d brag about to your film-geek friend, Forbidden Zone personal-detail restrictions aside. No way would he keep that from me. This is all wrong. But I don’t think Porter is lying, because now I’m remembering when Patrick gave me the film festival brochure: “hot off the presses,” he said. He got an early copy of it because his dad’s a festival sponsor? It’s still in my purse, and I’m fighting everything not to pull it out and scan the sponsor page for the Killian name.
Inside, I’m quietly panicking that Patrick isn’t Alex, but all I can say to Porter is, “Oh, and you know better.” It’s a weak taunt, but my heart isn’t into it.
“I know that you were right about Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” he responds. “Truman Capote’s novella is about a gay man and a prostitute. Hollywood turned it into a romance. And don’t get me started on Mickey Rooney. That was an embarrassing shambles. But…”
“But what?”
“I still think it’s worth watching for Hepburn’s performance. What? Don’t look so shocked. It was my grandma’s favorite movie. You don’t know everything about me.”
Apparently, I know nothing. Who are you, Porter Roth?
“And I’m not sure if you know everything about your date—”
“Jesus, do you have to talk so loud?” I whisper. “He’s not my date.” Not at this rate, anyway.
“Whatever he is, I’m telling you this because I hate to see you wasting all that primo flirt material on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.” He leans across the rack, beckoning me closer. “Patrick has a boyfriend in Guatemala.”
My eye twitches. I blink. Stare at Porter.
Holy shitcakes . . . I think back to when I first met Patrick in the Pancake Shack, and him talking about Cary Grant and Randolph Scott being lovers. Patrick hesitating when I asked him to come here today. No wonder he was asking me about Dupont Circle; if I’d let him talk instead of running my nervous mouth, he’d probably have been seconds away from asking if I’d attended the annual Capital Pride festival there.
I don’t say a word. I just slowly sink back down onto the flats of my feet, the top of Porter’s face disappearing from my view. I straighten my skirt and turn, resigned, adding up my tally of humiliations for the morning. (1) My so-called date is a bust. (2) I’m a loser who can’t tell straight from gay. (3) I’m no closer to finding Alex than I was weeks ago when I first came to town. (4) Porter witnessed the whole thing.
Patrick is striding toward me. “Nothing new in the storeroom,” he says. His gaze darts to the second aisle, where Porter emerges from a section marked BLAXPLOITATION AND KUNG FU FLICKS. He’s dressed in long gray board shorts and an unzipped army-green jacket with the words HOT STUFF embroidered next to a cartoon baby devil on a tattered breast pocket. His curly mop seems longer today; the bottom of his hair kisses the tops of his shoulders. His gaze connects with mine and sticks for a second, which does something funny to my pulse.
“Oh hey, Porter,” Patrick says cheerfully. “How’s Lana? Heard she was hitting the pro circuit.”
“Indeed she is,” Porter says, all lazy and casual. Still looking at me.
Patrick’s eyes flit back and forth from Porter to me, like he’s suspicious we’ve been talking behind his back. Great. Now I feel guilty on top of being humiliated. “Hey, Bailey, it’s been fun, but my dad texted from the boat, so I probably should get back to work. Coffee sometime?”
He seems to mean it, surprisingly, and it hits me for the first time that, unlike me, he never thought this was a date. He just assumed we were two like-minded people hanging out. Does that make me an even bigger jerk if I walk away from this never wanting to see him again because he prefers another man’s ham sandwich instead of my lady bits? I decide that yeah, it does. Add that to my never-ending list of major malfunctions.
“Coffee would be great. Or tea,” I amend. “You want my phone number? Maybe we can catch some of the film festival together, or something.”
“Sure,” he says, smiling, and we head to the front of the store together, exchanging digits, before he waves good-bye, heads off into the fog, and leaves me standing outside with a tiny scrap of my dignity intact.