Flower(30)

I lick my lips, then bite the bottom one. I hear Tate inhale. “Charlotte...” he says, his voice pleading.

“What?”

“Just...don’t do that, okay?”

“Why not?” I say, and to my surprise, I’m comfortable again. I’m enjoying this. I take my lip back between my teeth, bite down gently. Knowing his eyes are on me makes me tingle all over. Like he’s touching me, even though he’s not. Like it’s his teeth on my lip.

“Charlotte. I don’t think I can handle it,” he tells me, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “You’ll make me crazy.”

So he’s not the only one with power here, no matter what he says. I lean back in my seat, smiling to myself.

The car comes to a slow stop and I realize the sounds of the city have dulled. We’re not on a main street anymore.

I feel a sudden swirl of wind when the car door opens—it coils around me and sends chills rushing down my arms even though the air is warm and balmy. Tate’s hands touch mine in a burst of electricity, and he guides me out of the car. A horn honks in the distance. I have no idea where we are.

We walk only a few steps before moving through a doorway into a building that smells faintly of dust and upholstery.

Then the toe of my shoe meets with something hard.

“Steps,” Tate says beside me.

I lift my right foot, tentative at first, afraid I’m going to careen forward and land on my face. But Tate holds me firmly—one hand on the small of my back, the other laced through my fingers—as we move up a series of carpeted stairs.

“Where are we?” I ask when we reach the top, my free hand extending forward to feel for anything that might give away our location. But my fingertips feel only open air. And Tate doesn’t answer. Instead, he leads me forward, then releases me completely. I feel unmoored, like I could fall at any second.

“Tate?” I whisper again, reaching my fingers up to touch the blindfold covering my eyes, but he is suddenly beside me, his hands trailing up my arms, slowly, slowly. I hold in a breath, feeling his fingers glide up my neck to the back of my head, where he finally loosens the blindfold and it falls away.

I have to blink to bring the dimmed expanse of the room into focus. It’s a theater, grand and ornate, with gold rimming the arched ceiling and red curtains draped all the way to the floor. We are on a second-floor balcony, overlooking scores of empty seats below and a massive screen at the front. There are ladders against one wall and cans of paint and white cloths spread out across the floor. The theater is under construction.

“It’s called the Lumiere,” Tate says beside me. “Have you heard of it?”

I shake my head, looking at him for the first time since he untied the blindfold. He looks almost anxious, like he’s hoping I’ll like the surprise. “It’s incredible,” I tell him.

“It was one of the original theaters in Hollywood. It’s been open off and on over the years, mostly showing second-rate films. But they’re finally restoring it.”

I walk toward the railing, touching the cool metal bar with my palms, and peer down at the first floor below. Some of the chairs are missing from the rows. “Are we supposed to be here?” I ask.

Tate’s mouth softens into a smile. “I made arrangements.”

I turn, noticing a small table set up beside two of the front-row chairs facing the railing. A fancy bottle of sparkling water, a massive bowl of popcorn, and little glass dishes with an assortment of colorful candies sit arranged on the white tablecloth.

He leads me to the two chairs and we sit. Almost immediately, the lights begin to dim, controlled from somewhere I can’t see. All perfectly choreographed. I can’t believe I’m sitting here with him—Tate Collins—in a theater that’s not even open to the public. How does a person rent out a place like this? And how much did it cost him? But I wouldn’t ask any of these things. Instead I say, “What are we watching?”

His left eyebrow lifts, a silent challenge. “You’ll see.”

As if on cue, the massive movie screen flickers ahead of us, the pale light playing across Tate’s face. The black-and-white images take shape on the screen: a map of Africa, then it shifts to a grainy, distorted scene of a busy marketplace. The audio has that distant, echoed quality of an old movie. I smile, remembering our night at Lola’s—he’d been so surprised when I told him I’d never seen Casablanca. And now we’re about to watch it...together.

In the darkness of the theater, I can feel Tate’s eyes on me. He seems so still, reclined back in his seat, his gaze palpable as he watches me during the first kissing scene between our hero, Humphrey Bogart, and his lost love, Ingrid Bergman, in a flashback in Paris—where they first fell in love. I wait for Tate to touch me, expect his hand to lift and cover mine where they’re folded in my lap. Once, I even think he’s going to brush my knee when he leans forward to pour me some water, but he never touches me, not once. He’s keeping his distance. Only his eyes have managed to slip across my skin.

When the movie ends and the two lovers say their good-byes, the plane rising up into the dark horizon, the screen turns black and the lights against the theater walls illuminate once again. Tate turns in his seat. His eyes trail over my lips. “Did you like it?”

I touch a finger to the armrest separating us, a divide that cannot be crossed. “It was wonderful,” I say, not sure how honest I should be when he’s arranged this incredible surprise.