A Night at the Movies

A Night at the Movies

I didn't want to spend another Saturday night at home eating a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's, so I decided to treat myself to a movie. In a city this big you would think to be lonely was something that rarely ever happened. Not for me though. I've spent the last two months nursing my broken heart, barely going out or interested in much of anything outside of work and Pepper, my little Australian Shepherd. A heart-pounding, suspense-filled flick would be the perfect way to numb my thoughts for at least two hours.

I rode the M train into the city, surreptitiously avoiding eye contact with the obnoxiously "in-love" couple seated across from me the whole way. Honestly, it's just rude to make out and grind into your boyfriend in front of strangers in a subway car. I was beginning to regret my venture out and contemplated going back home. A new record, only took 15 minutes, which is an improvement from the last attempt I made to get out of my Bushwick apartment. I already bought the tickets for the newest slasher flick online and going through the process of getting a refund sounded like too much work, so I kept on towards my destination.

I always loved the theater on 34th street, it had the old-time movie theater feel but has been updated enough to still enjoy watching a new blockbuster movie in blaring Hi-Def surround sound. I made it to the theater with about ten minutes to kill, so decided to get some popcorn. In the line ahead of me, a pretty girl was talking animatedly on the phone. She looked a bit younger than me, probably around 22. She had long wavy, chestnut brown hair, falling to the middle of her back and beautiful olive skin. She was wearing tight blue jeans and a loose-fitting button-up. The fact that I noticed her at all caught me off guard. Even though it had been two months since my breakup, I hadn't really noticed any girl until now. Maybe I was starting to finally get past everything and was ready to start dating again.

It's not like other girls hadn't noticed me, as most would consider me attractive. I was 5'3" with short dark brown hair. I didn't have time or enough skill to do much with my hair, other than put it up in a messy bun. I was slim with a muscular physique. Most people commented on my smile or perfectly apple-shaped ass as being my best traits. I felt oddly ordinary compared to this brown-eyed beauty with my simple t-shirt and skinny jeans on. Just then, she noticed me looking at her, so I quickly averted my eyes.

After getting my popcorn and a large Coke Icee, I went to find my seat. The theater was the kind with the modern lounge chairs built for couples and I found myself hoping I didn't have to sit next to some weirdo throughout the entire movie. I was feeling optimistic when I found my seat and observed the one next to me was empty. I'm not usually a fan of horror or slasher movies, but this was the only choice that wasn't some sappy romance I was definitely not in the mood to suffer through.

As the theater got dark for the start of the movie, I heard a shy voice whisper to me in the dark.

"Excuse me... is that 10 next to you, it's so dark in here I can't see the numbers?"

It was the girl I had noticed in the concession line earlier.

"Uh... yeah I think so," I quickly replied.

She smiled shyly again and scooted in front of me to take her seat.

What were the odds of the first girl I had noticed in two months sitting next to me in the theater? I tried not to look at her shapely ass in those tight jeans as she moved in front of me to find her seat. The movie was starting, so I pushed the thought out of my head and settled back into my seat more.

About halfway into the movie, right when the main character went to check the one place the killer was hiding, waiting to pop out and attacker her, I felt a hand squeeze mine hard. I didn't think about it when I put my right hand on the armrest earlier because even with the close design it was a perfectly natural thing for me to do. I was so surprised to see the girl's hand squeezing mine, that I quickly peeked over to her and saw that her face was partially covered, hiding her eyes.

The image quickly left the screen. She turned to me saying, "Sorry that scared the shit out of me."

I made a small smile hoping she couldn't see my flushed cheeks and said, "It's okay, it did the same to me."

She apologized again and promised she wouldn't do that again.

I found myself hoping that wouldn't turn out to be the case.

Her hand was soft and her nails were manicured and cut short, compared to the knobby little nubs I called fingernails. What was going on? I don't even know this girl from Eve. I made it a point to keep my eyes focused on the screen for the rest of the flick.

About 15 minutes later, I felt a small twinge of excitement when again I felt her hand squeeze mine, harder this time. It was the climactic point in the movie with the killer stabbing the heroine from behind, only for her to make a getaway at the last moment. I looked over to her again and sure enough, her face was half-covered by her right hand.

This time I squeezed her hand back.

"It's okay, I think it's almost over," I said.

She looked over at me and flushed crimson.

"Sorry ... I knew that this was probably too scary for me to see alone," she apologized.

I gave her a weak smile.

"It's okay," I replied.

She gave me a questioning look.

"Really it is," I countered.

Soon enough the end credits started rolling across the screen. She was still holding my hand and I wasn't going to say anything about it laying softly against mine. Honestly, it felt nice to have someone hold my hand, even if it was a stranger: a gorgeous girl, but a stranger all the same. Finally, she extracted her hand and looked over at me apologetically.

Then she said, "I'm so sorry, you must think I'm some crazy person grabbing your hand like that!"

I'll admit I did think that at first, but the fact that she is very attractive quickly made me move on from that thought into more interesting ones. I became focused on her pretty face and how beautiful it would look with my pussy sitting on it.

Where did that come from?

I told her, "It was a really scary movie and I was pretty terrified myself. You're lucky I didn't grab your hand first!"

She gave a hearty chuckle.

She replied, "Well I appreciate you being cool with it, I'm Jess by the way."

"Zara," I quickly replied, extending my hand out to her.

She took it smiling that cute smile again.

"Zara, I do feel pretty bad about forcing myself onto you, a stranger and would like to make it up to you, would you be open to maybe getting drinks with me sometime?" she offered.

Holy shit! Did she just ask me out? My heart started pumping furiously. I'm sure my flushed cheeks were not doing me any favors by this point, so I answered slowly, "Okay, sure that would be nice! Are you doing anything right now?"

She broke into a wider grin and said, "No actually, I'm free for the rest of the night!"

I extended my hand out, gesturing for her to follow me out of the theater.

My mind was racing a mile a minute thinking about where we should go for this impromptu date. Is this a date? I don't know how that just happened, but it's been a while since I've taken an interest in anybody, so why don't I just see where this goes.

Jess followed behind me and once out of the theater she questioned, "Do you have a place in mind?"

"No actually, I'm not that familiar with bars in this area. Do you have any suggestions?" I replied.

She thought for a moment. I took this opportunity to get a good look at her now that we had exited the dark theater. She had pretty, hazel eyes and strong cheekbones that accentuated her face. There was a little freckle just above her lip, sort of like Marilyn Monroe, that I found incredibly sexy.

"... Uh, we could go to this place a few blocks up that I've been to before. It's got a great cocktail menu!" she said.

I agreed and we walked out into the cold together.

The bar looked like the ideal hangout for the college-age crowd (which I definitely was not), packed full of mostly young co-eds. It had jumbo-sized games of Connect Four and Jenga. There was even a single pool table in the back corner. We went to the bar and ordered two beers.

"I'm surprised you didn't go for one of those fancy cocktails," I said to her.

She looked a little shocked like she had been caught doing something she shouldn't have. She replied, "Well you ordered a beer, so I took my lead from you."

Her cheeks flushed crimson again. I liked being able to do that to her. It was an unexpected turn-on.

"Well, I'm not a big drinker and usually prefer a nice beer instead of hard liquor," I replied.

To take away from the awkwardness that began to settle over us, I directed her to a sofa that two girls just got up from, by the Jumbo Jenga table. As we sipped our beers in silence, I struggled to find a topic to talk about with her. It's been a while, (years) since I went out on a date with a beautiful girl like Jess. I was rusty.

Thankfully, she broke the silence, and asked, "What do you do for a living Zara?"

Okay, that was easy, familiar territory. I told her I was an IT administrator for a reputable financial services firm located off Wall St.

"What do you do, Jess?" I questioned. For some reason, I felt the need to use her name as she had used mine when she put the same question to me. Somehow it felt like we were moving pieces across a chessboard, each trying to gauge the other's next move.

She answered, "I'm a Graphic Designer. Well that's partly true, I'm in my final year of school for it anyways." The blush crept across her cheeks again as a timid smiled formed across her full lips.

Her smile was so sexy, it made me lose focus as I began to wonder what other ways I could make her blush like that.

"That sounds cool. Have you thought about what you'll do once you graduate?" I asked her.

"Yeah I interned at a tech startup this past summer and I will be accepting a full-time position with them in the fall," she stated, matter-of-factly.

"Wow, you're better than me Jess. It took me a full six months to land a job in my field after I graduated. You're making me feel like a total slacker compared to you, Jess," I complimented.

A little light shone in her eyes at the praise. She smiled big and leaned into me, placing her hand on my arm.

"No way, I'm sure that's not true. You seem like someone who knows themselves well enough to go after what they want," she praised.

Whoa, no one has ever said anything so direct about me before. Was she flirting with me? In the space of time spent thinking all this I still feel the heat of her hand still placed on top of my arm.

Feeling confident by her praise, I placed my hand against hers and said, "Do you want to play?" I motioned towards the Jenga blocks stacked on the table before us.

She quickly nodded.

We both stood up, the blocks were too big to play seated and decided to rock, paper, scissors, shoot to determine who would go first. Her paper covered my rock and she started by taking the first block off a bottom row, then placing it neatly on the top.

While she was bent over testing blocks to move, I couldn't help but notice her firm ass. It was so perky to be as full as it was. It looked like she had done more than a few squats to get that ass. I moved to the side quickly to take my turn.

"Have you played this game before," I questioned.

She gave me a guilty look, "Yeah, I come in here at least once a week with some of my friends and this is my go-to game in this place."

I gave her a challenging look. "What do you say we make this game a little more interesting," I proposed.

She got a wicked little grin on her face, raised her eyebrows for effect and said, "What'd you have in mind?"

"How about, winner gets to dare the loser to do something. Anything and the loser can't refuse? Ground rules are you can't dare anyone to get naked, but other than that, free reign on the dare," I suggested.

"Hmm, that sounds interesting. Agreed!" she answered.

We shook on it, both with huge grins on our faces. This was already the most interesting night I've had since I don't know when and I wasted no time contemplating what my dare would be if I won. Was it lame that I was thinking of asking her to kiss the most attractive person in the bar, hoping that she would kiss me? Suddenly, I felt like a teenage girl again hoping the bottle landed on me, so I could kiss my high school crush Lydia.

The first few rounds went quickly enough and it wasn't until the tower started to sway back and forth on my last turn, that I was beaming with anticipation knowing that it was likely to come crashing down at the slightest touch. She moved around the table, gently prodding a few blocks at a time trying to find her next piece to move. The tower swayed back and forth but miraculously held as she moved her fingers away, placing her block at the top.

I gave her an exasperated look. Damn! Now it was my turn. I breathed as little as possible as I stepped closer to assess the leaning tower, searching for a block to dislodge safely.

I found one near the middle of the tower, which by this point stood taller than my 5'3" on top of the little table. I took extra care placing it on top. Just as I moved my hand away to clear the tower, my foot grazed the table leg. WHAM! the tower came crashing down in a brilliant cacophony of noise.

She squealed with delight!

Fuck, I lost.

In my excitement to come up with sexy dares for her to do, I didn't once consider what she would make me do if I lost. That was an impossibility in my mind that I'm now faced with. I was suddenly nervous contemplating the possibilities of what embarrassing thing she would have me do.

"I won!" she exclaimed triumphantly, a proud smile lighting up her face.

I looked at her sullenly and waited to hear the dare she would set for me. I was contemplating if it was poor form to back out of whatever dare she concocted if it turned out to be too embarrassing a task.

"Now what to have you do hmmm...," she hummed mischievously, drumming her fingers against her chin. "Okay, I know. I dare you to kiss the cutest person in the room!"

HA! She came up with the same dare I had planned! I liked that way more than I should have.

"Okay," I said rolling my eyes, "I'm going to need a stronger drink and some time to scope out everyone in the bar first".

She seemed a little surprised by that. The slightest pout formed on her face before it quickly disappeared. "Good idea," she replied quickly.

We both walked back over to the bar. As we sat down on two empty seats near the end, I ordered us two shots of tequila from the bartender. I made a show of looking around, checking out a few people at the other end of the bar while we waited for our drinks. Truth was, I hadn't even looked at any other person since we came in here, not really. I didn't want to make my plans too obvious though. I scrunched up my face in a curious gesture and could tell she was watching me out of the corner of my eye.

"What do you think, anybody you'd kiss in here?" I questioned her.

She smiled and made a big show of looking around too.

"Oh, I don't know, there are a few girls in here that are pretty cute!" she countered.

Check: she said "girls".

We both turned around as the bartender placed our drinks on the bar in front of us. She has clearly done this before, licking the salt she placed on her hand and then downing the tequila like a pro. She followed this with a quick suck of the lime wedge. I very much liked how she licked the salt, somehow, she made it look very sensual. I followed suit and downed my shot in one fell swoop. I was ready.

Reading my mind, she said, "You ready?"

"Yes, I'll be right back," I answered. Then, I got up and walked around to the area where a few sorority type girls were playing pool. One of them leaning across the table to make her shot. I had to admit she was attractive in a conventional way. I had always been more into the "not-so obviously" beautiful type. The sorority girls' traditional blonde looks held nothing for me. As I walked around the table, I looked back to Jess at the bar, who was watching me, wide-eyed. Smirking, I kept walking on by. Circling the table, I made my way back to where Jess was sitting.

"Chicken...", she started to say.

I walked right up to her then and kissed her full on the mouth.

The moment our lips met; I felt a Zing of electricity course through me. She was shocked at first, but she caught on quickly and reciprocated my kiss. The kiss was tentative at first, building, both of us finding our rhythm. Then the intensity increased as I felt her lips brush harder against mine. I could feel her tongue press against my lips, tentatively seeking permission, which I granted. Our tongues danced together as I felt her hands cup my face. I wrapped my arms around her waist and after what seemed like hours of our lips locking together in sync, we pulled away at the same time, gasping for air.

"Out?" she finished.

"What?" I asked.

"I thought you had chickened-out as you headed back to the bar," she explained, "I wasn't expecting what happened next." She smiled widely.

"Well, you did dare me to kiss the cutest person in the room and it took some time, but it became very clear to me who that was. I would never back down from a dare," I smiled back at her triumphantly.

"Oh, was that just for the dare, then," she purred.

I replied, "No, that was a good excuse, but I must admit I wanted to kiss you from the moment we sat on the couch together."

"Oh, I see. And how was it, did the kiss live up to your expectations?" she questioned. There was a hint of doubt to her tone.

I smiled again and shook my head. "I don't know, I've only kissed you the one time and I'd need at least two more times to know for sure. I'm nothing if not thorough," I said smirking at her, challenging her with my eyes.

This time she wasted no time. She leaned into me and I got the faintest smell of jasmine (her perfume maybe) as she grew nearer to me and cupped my face between her hands again. Our lips met and started moving in unison again. She tasted like fresh strawberries; it must be her lip gloss. Our faces intertwined together and this time, I placed my hands on her thighs and squeezed ever so slightly. I heard a soft moan escape between her lips and increased the intensity of our kiss. After several seconds, with more cupping and squeezing, we broke apart.

"Mmm... you're a really good kisser," she purred again.

"So are you," I replied in earnest.

She smiled appreciatively.

Wow, this was so unexpected! I had no idea my usual venture to the movies would turn into this. It thrilled me. Building up all the courage I could muster, I asked her, "Do you want to take this back to my place?"

She smiled shyly this time and nodded her head in agreement.

She said Yes! Was it always this easy to invite a woman back to your place? Maybe it was just this city, where everyone is only interested in hookups. I smiled back at her and waved the bartender over, so I could settle the bill. We both got up and walked out of the bar together.

"Where do you live," she questioned once we got out of the bar.

"Brooklyn, around Bushwick Avenue," I replied.

"Okay, I'm closer, if you wanted to come back to my place. I live in the Lower East Side," she offered.

That is definitely more convenient. "Should we hail a cab," I replied.

"Yeah," she said and grabbed my hand as she flagged down a yellow cab.

We got in and after she gave the driver the address, she mashed her lips against mine again. This time there was no tentativeness. She was passionate and demanding with her need. I responded in kind, extending my arms to grip her firm ass. She moaned that sweet little moan again in my mouth and that only made me squeeze her ass harder.