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Derek fidgeted with the key chain in his pocket. He would take it out, play with the key ring by spinning the ring itself around his finger or spin the keys themselves. Then he would put it back in his pocket, rotate the ring with his hand still in his pocket, only to remove the keyring and start all over again.
“What are you doing?” Anne asked him after ten minutes of this. “Is something the matter?”
“Do you want to go to the movies with me tomorrow night?” Derek blurted out.
“The movies?”
“On a date,” he added just in case Anne wasn’t certain of his intentions.
“On a date?”
“Yes?”
Anne looked at him with her head tilted to the side. He had already kissed her; she had kissed him back. There was no real reason to be this nervous about something that was a given. “Is this why you’ve been so nervous for the past ten minutes?”
Nodding his head, he wasn’t certain that he’d be able to speak without nerves strangling his voice. Why wouldn’t she just answer the question already?
“I can’t tomorrow night,” Anne answered him, finally. “Aunt Cassandra is dragging me to some business dinner. I’m supposed to talk to some man’s teenage son,” she replied with an eye roll, “and play nice while my aunt butters up his father and gets him to sign some deal.”
“Seriously?” Derek mumbled.
Anne wondered what was going on in his brain. Finally, she asked, “What about Saturday?”
“What about Saturday?”
“We can go to the movies then,” Anne stated. “It’ll probably be less crowded since everybody else will be at the beach.”
“Yeah, okay,” Derek nodded his head.
Laughing, Anne shook her head. “Wanna go to the boardwalk and get some cheese sticks? I might even be willing to share.”
“Cheese sticks are not something you share,” he answered her. Getting up and holding out his hand, Derek helped Anne to her feet.
“Well, we’ll just have to get two orders then. You can have my marinara sauce,” she grinned as she dropped her pencils into her bag behind her sketchbook.
What she never mentioned was that Anne did like marinara sauce with her fried cheese sticks. She just gave them to Derek because she was amused by the way he would lick the inside of the containers once he had used the cheese sticks to get most of it up.
After picking Anne up, Derek led her to his truck. “How did dinner last night go,” he fished.
Rolling her eyes, she carefully answered him, knowing full well that he was fishing. “I was bored out of my mind. Gregory, the son, only talked about football and how he’s this great quarterback back home. His father hung all over my aunt. I swear he was literally drooling at one point. So, I sat there smiling pretty while Aunt Cassandra pretended to fawn all over Gregory Senior.”
“Did he at least sign whatever it was your aunt wanted him to sign?” he asked as he opened the door for her.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did,” he replied as soon as she had entered the cab.
Crossing over to the front, he slid into the driver’s seat and asked again, “Did you aunt get him to sign?”
“No,” Anne sighed, shaking her head. “He wants to think about it a little longer and will let her know on Monday.”
“That’s unfortunate.” Changing the subject, he asked her what movie she wanted to watch.
Freezing in place, Anne shook her head. “I haven’t been paying attention to what’s in theaters.”
“There’s that new movie with the wizards out,” Derek supplied.
“There’s also the one with the superheroes, the sappy romance, the romantic comedy, the drama that may or may not be a tearjerker, and some animated thing. And probably something with animals.”
Derek glanced over at her for a moment. “I thought you didn’t know what was playing.”
“Derek,” she sighed dramatically, “there is always one of those playing.”
“There isn’t always...” he trailed off, thinking. “Oh. Right. There is.”
Anne nodded her head sharply in victory. “I’m not caught up on the superhero movies; I’m about four movies behind and this one won’t make sense until I’m caught up.”
“I’d rather not watch something that will make you cry.”
“There are a time and place for those types of movies,” she pointed out. “But you’re right. Not tonight. Any clue what the cartoon is?”
“None,” he replied. “And my sister pulled my brother to watch the romantic comedy last week and said it sucked.”
“Movie about wizards it is.”
“Did you see the previous one?”
“When it was in theaters before. My best friend, Robin, and I went and it was crazy. There were kids dressed in costumes and were carrying wands and...”
“Really?” Derek interjected.
“Well, there was a small handful. Maybe three or four. They looked like they were part of a birthday party.”
“Too bad I didn’t buy us any wands,” Derek mused.
“You couldn’t guarantee that we’d go see the wizard movie.”
“I could have been prepared. Stashed them in the console,” he pointed towards the storage space dividing them. After a moment he asked, “Do you think we’ll see any kids with wands?”
“Who knows,” Anne smiled at him. “Besides, you can’t pick my wand for me. The wand does the picking.”
Derek’s face lit up as he realized that Anne was just as much into the franchise as he was. They’d have to discuss it later.
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Shaking her head, Anne couldn’t help but laugh at the energy Derek expelled arguing that the book was better than the movie. She couldn’t argue with him that the movies lacked something that the popular book series had in spades.
“And then that fight scene,” he threw up his hands. “They completely ruined it!”
“I’m not disagreeing with you, but it’s been a while since I’ve reread that book.”
Then he went on a rambling trip where he described the scene perfectly, stating that he had to put down the book and reread the scene several times to grasp the full impact that fight scene had left on him. “My dad thought that I was going crazy,” he admitted. “I was pacing and then I’d sit down and pick the book back up and put it down and start pacing again.”
Shaking her head, Anne could almost see the scene in her head even though she had never met Derek’s father. She had never even seen a photo of the man. But she could see it based on the way Derek was currently pacing as he told her his story.
“But then the movie just completely ruined it for me. I was so invested in that scene and they ruined it.”
“It isn’t always easy bringing books to life,” Anne interjected.
“But they could have done it. They could have had them run into the right rooms, the overall audience’s appearance of the defeat as the final battle took place. The drama of the book...”
“The movies are never going to make it perfectly right,” Anne interrupted. “Come on. I was in the theater when the house was destroyed in the sixth movie and turned to my friend Robin, and said, ‘That didn’t happen in the book!’ She shushed me, but all I could do was repeat, ‘But that doesn’t happen in the book!’ Robin,” Anne laughed as she shook her head, “turned to glare and me and threatened to dump my popcorn bucket on my head if I didn’t shut up. I kind of get why they made the change now, but then all I could think was, ‘That didn’t happen in the book!’ And it seems like you’re still having that issue.”
“But they could have done it correctly and it would still have had the same impact!” he insisted.
“Maybe,” Anne responded. “Maybe not. We won’t know because they didn’t do it according to the book. They made changes and we can’t go back and undo those changes.”
Derek was silent for a long moment, plopping back down in his beach chair next to Anne. It took him a while to calm back down, something that made Anne smile even as she sketched the scene that had just happened.
It took her a while before she realized that he was watching her transform the blank page into an image of him pacing back and forth, his arms and hands frozen in mid-gesture as the wind tossed his slightly too long hair around.
“Why?” he finally asked as she started in on the tiny details that could capture him in motion.
“Because I want to remember this,” she simply answered, her pencil gliding over the page as she made several sharp motions with her wrists.
“But we were just discussing books and movies.”
“We were discussing something you were passionate about,” she corrected.
