Then Lincoln found himself saying the thing he always said to women, the thing he actually needed to say to Beth.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, looking over his shoulder.
“Don’t,” she said.
She was looking up at him now, direct and determined. Her jaw was set. She must know, he thought, his heart sinking into the concrete floor. She must know that he was the creep. Maybe she was even going to yell at him. Or slap him. He found himself counting the inches between them. Fifteen, sixteen tops. He’d never been close enough to see her ears before. They were perfect.
Beth raised her right hand then, still holding the pen, to his face. To his chin.
Lincoln closed his eyes. It seemed like the right thing to do, no matter what happened next. He closed his eyes and felt her fingertips touching his cheek, then his forehead, then his eyelids. He took a breath—ink and hand soap.
“I”—he heard her whisper, closer than he expected, and shaky and strange—“think I might be a very stupid girl.”
He shook his head no. Just barely. So that only someone who was holding his cheek and his neck would notice.
“Yes,” she said, sounding closer. He didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes. What if he opened his eyes and she saw what she was doing?
She kissed his cheek, and he let his head tip forward into her hands. She kissed his other cheek. And his chin. The groove below his bottom lip. “Stupid girl,” she said near the corner of his mouth, sounding incredulous, “what could you possibly be thinking?”
Lincoln found his mouth. “Perfect girl,” he said so quietly that only someone with her hands in his hair and her lips all but touching his could possibly hear. “Pretty girl.” He found her mouth. “Perfect.”
Kiss. “Magic.” Kiss. “Only girl.”
There are moments when you can’t believe something wonderful is happening. And there are moments when your entire consciousness is filled with knowing absolutely that something wonderful is happening. Lincoln felt like he’d dunked his head into a sink full of Pop Rocks and turned on the water.
He shook his jacket onto the floor and put his arms around her.
All he could think was Beth. All he could do was let this dream come true.
HE DIDN’T HEAR the movie end. Didn’t hear anything for two hours above the thunder of his heartbeat and the occasional click of her teeth against his. But Beth jumped when the lights came up. She jumped, sat up, pulled away from him. It felt like getting up from the warmest bed on the coldest morning. Lincoln pushed forward, not wanting to lose the nearness of her. Afraid that something horrible was happening, that somewhere a clock was striking midnight.
“I’m on deadline,” Beth said. She touched her mouth and then her hair, her falling-down ponytail.
“I …have to go, I have to …” She turned to the empty screen as if there might be something up there still that she could use. The curtains were sliding closed.
She crouched on the floor, looking for something. “My glasses,” she said, “was I wearing glasses?”
They were shoved back into her hair. Lincoln carefully pulled them free.
“Thank you,” she said. He helped her stand, and tried to hold her for a moment, but she broke away as soon as she was upright and started hurrying out of the aisle. “I’ve never done this before,” she said.
She didn’t mean him. She was looking at the screen. “Did you watch any of it? There was dancing, right? I’m sure there was dancing.” Then she looked around, afraid someone had heard her. She touched her mouth again, with her palm and all four fingers, like she was checking to make sure it was still there.
And then she ran—almost ran—toward the exit, walking backward at first to watch him, then eventually turning away.
LINCOLN COULDN’T REMEMBER walking home to his apartment, and when he got there, he didn’t want to go in. He didn’t want to break the spell. So he sat on his front steps and kept reliving the last two hours. Bearing witness to himself— yes and Beth and that just happened.
“What could you possibly be thinking?” she’d asked herself.
What could she possibly have been thinking? She didn’t even know Lincoln. Not like he knew her.
He knew why he wanted to kiss her. Because she was beautiful. And before that, because she was kind.
And before that, because she was smart and funny. Because she was exactly the right kind of smart and funny. Because he could imagine taking a long road trip with her without ever getting bored.
Because whenever he saw something new and interesting, or new and ridiculous, he always wondered what she’d have to say about it—how many stars she’d give it and why.