Every pair of best friends has their “thing,” the activity that holds them together and makes them remember why they’re still BFFs after all these years. For me and Derek, it’s watching bad movies.
We used to invite Evie to our Terrible Movie Nights, but she pretty quickly realized they weren’t for her. “I just don’t get why you want to spend your time watching something bad when you could be watching something good,” she said, and I guess that explains the difference between Evie and me. Evie prefers something that’s perfectly art directed, with beautiful costumes and poetic dialogue. I find a satisfying sense of comfort in watching something that’s full of flaws, like any given Nicolas Cage movie. And Derek enjoys doing things like watching the entire Nicolas Cage oeuvre so he can talk about him on an episode of Deep Dive.
The thing about Terrible Movie Night is that the movies can’t be intentionally terrible. We’re not watching Sharknado, a movie that is completely aware it’s awful and revels in that fact by including scenes like a man cutting his way out of a shark with a chain saw. We like to watch movies with zero self-awareness, where everyone involved is trying their best but still somehow failing. I mean, sometimes you can try your hardest to make a great work of art, and instead you end up making something that two people will make fun of thirty years later. It’s all oddly reassuring, in an existential way.
The movies Derek and I like to watch have titles like The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Manos: The Hands of Fate. On Thursday evening after the twins go to sleep, we decide to watch Staying Alive, the not-at-all-loved sequel to the much-loved Saturday Night Fever. We’re halfway through an opening sequence that’s full of John Travolta wearing spandex and dancing when Derek finally says, “So, are we just not going to talk about you being the lead in the musical?”
I groan. I’d thought that maybe we were just avoiding talking about my starring role the same way we avoid talking about Derek’s dad. It’s uncomfortable, so let’s talk about lemurs and pretend everything’s fine!
“Ugh. Whatever.” I put my feet up on Derek’s lap, not even caring that I’m wearing old socks that have a hole over my left big toe. “I’m just trying to pretend it’s not happening. Do you even remember what happened in the fourth-grade musical?”
“You threw up. I know. But you can’t keep trotting out one vomit-related childhood memory as a reason why you can’t do something.” He rests his hands on my feet.
I scoff. On-screen, John Travolta is twirling around wearing a leotard. I settle into the couch and Derek mutters something about how he doesn’t understand why my feet have to be in his lap, but this is our thing, the same position we’ve always watched movies in, and I don’t intend to change it just because my feet are “gross” or “I need to buy new socks” or whatever.
“That’s a point—write it down,” I say, and Derek grabs his notebook. We have an elaborate rating system for our terrible movies. They get points for having gratuitous nudity (which terrible movies reliably have), an unexpected celebrity cameo, a grisly-but-fake-looking death, bad wigs, a continuity error, or, in this case, a dance sequence. There are about a million other ways to get points because at this stage, Derek and I are basically terrible-movie experts.
After he writes down the point, neither of us says anything as we watch the movie. That’s the great thing about being around Derek. I mean, I love Evie so much that I would probably murder someone for her (not that I can imagine a situation in which that would happen, since Evie takes self-defense classes and could kill a grown man with her bare hands), but when we’re together it’s nonstop talking. And that’s great sometimes. But Derek and I can carry on a conversation without even saying anything.
“I just don’t really understand what’s going on,” I finally say.
“John Travolta’s trying out for a part in some show and he’s wearing a bonkers headband,” Derek says.
“No, I mean with the musical.”
Derek doesn’t pause the movie as he turns away from the screen to look at me. That’s part of the allure of bad movies; it’s not like you’re going to miss some important plot point.
“Like, I keep thinking this is all some elaborate prank, and someone’s going to post a video of my terrible audition online and then the ensuing bullying will get so bad that Good Morning America will do a story all about how teens these days don’t have empathy or something.” I take a breath.
Derek nods slowly. “That’s a possibility. Or—and hear me out—you could’ve just done a good job in your audition.”
I roll my eyes.
“So,” Derek says, and this time he actually does grab the remote and pause the movie. “You said Noah thought you were good?”
“When did I say that?”
“At Applebee’s.” He watches the screen, even though it’s just paused on a blur of pink and purple spandex.
“Uh, yeah.” I shift slightly on the couch. “He was actually really nice about it. I didn’t think he even knew who I was.”
“Wow,” Derek says sarcastically. “The great Noah Reed deigned to know your name.”
“Very funny,” I say. “It’s just … nice to hear a compliment.”
“I compliment you all the time,” Derek says.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, but you have to, because you’re my best friend. It’s kind of a given that you think I’m okay-ish at most things.”
He looks at me. “Okay-ish at Most Things: The Jolie Peterson Story.” Then he runs a finger slowly down the bottom of my foot, sending me into convulsions of giggles.
“Ugh, stop!” I squeal, pulling my foot back and then kicking him in the leg. “You are the literal worst. You know I’m super ticklish.”
“Then maybe stop putting your most ticklish body part directly on my leg. Just a thought.”
I lunge at him—this is normal for us, goofing off and forcing each other to endure tickling. But I guess I’ve forgotten how much stronger he’s become, because he easily pulls me into a headlock, and when I squeal and he releases me, I end up falling right into his lap.
“Hey,” he says with a small smile as I look up at him, and I can’t help noticing how impressively solid he is now. I open my mouth to say something, but all that comes out is an exhale.
Okay, so it’s not like I’ve never thought about what it would be like to date Derek. I like boys and he is a boy, so of course it’s popped into my mind before. And there was this one time last year when I thought that maybe there was something between us.
It was during Brentley’s Movies on the Lawn thing at the park last summer, and they were showing The Wizard of Oz. I guess I fell asleep, because one minute there were flying monkeys on the screen and the next thing I knew I was waking up with my head in Derek’s lap as everyone was picking up their blankets. I blinked a few times as I yawned, then looked up and saw that he was looking down at me and smiling. “You fell asleep,” he said, and he brushed my hair out of my face. I don’t know what it was—the way he said those three words, the way his touch felt different than it normally did, the way he was looking at me—but I felt something, some inkling that maybe there was just possibly something between us.
But then Evelyn was like, “You guys, if I don’t get home by ten p.m. Patricia is going to call the police and report me missing,” and the moment was gone. And a few weeks later Derek started dating Melody, so I figured it had been all in my head. It was a relief, honestly, because Derek and I have spent our entire lives being best friends, and I didn’t want to ruin that, but at the same time, it stung a little. Because part of me does wonder: If I were prettier, would Derek have a crush on me?
But right now, I’m wondering if maybe I was right during that movie at the park, if maybe, just maybe …
Derek’s phone buzzes, and he shifts to pull it out of his pocket, spilling me off his lap and back onto the couch.
“It’s Melody,” he says, waving the phone at me. “I’m gonna take this.”
And then he walks into the kitchen, talking in a low voice. I wonder if he tells Melody when I’m here, or if he tells Melody about Terrible Movie Night, or if he tells her that I was just sitting on his lap. I mean, it’s not like anything happened—obviously—but still. I just wonder if that’s the type of thing a girlfriend gets mad about.
I pull out my phone and scroll through the IMDB page for Staying Alive for a few minutes until Derek comes back into the room and tosses me a half-full bag of jelly beans. “I found this in the kitchen—I think Mom’s been holding out on us.”
Derek’s mom is all about a low-sugar lifestyle, so this is a real find. I pull the bag open and shove a handful in my mouth.
He sits down. “Ready?”
I put my feet back in his lap and with a mouth full of jelly beans I say, “Ready.”
“You’re disgusting, you know that?” he says, but he’s giving me one of his wide Derek smiles, so I know he doesn’t really mean it. I lean back against a pillow and make a face at him, thinking about how I’m glad this is how things are: We’re best friends, I can count on him, we have our spots here on the couch, and that will never change. He presses play and rests his hands on my feet, and just for that moment, it’s like everything in the entire world makes sense.