“If you say so.”

Ruby stuck her tongue out at me and pulled away. The tension that had built up between us was like an elastic band pulled tight; the farther away she got the more I thought I might snap. She got on the bed and lay back. I resisted the urge to follow her and I leaned against the wall, hoping I looked devastating in the stream of moonlight from the window.

“So meet cute, then they have a falling in love montage of picnics and dates and general merriment, but oh no, what’s this contrived conflict? Big fight, hero realizes he’s a twat, then grand gesture and happily ever after. These guys wouldn’t have to work so hard if they didn’t act like twats in the first place, but I guess that would be anticlimactic.”

“OK, that’s the formula. All stories have formulas. It’s the characters that make them special.” Ruby looked thoughtful. “And there are hardly any gay romantic comedies, so our rules might not be the same. We could reinvent the genre.”

“Oh, they’re definitely not the same. If this was a lesbian film, unfortunately, one of us would have to kill ourselves at the end.”

“Drastic.”

“I don’t make the rules. Do I wish there were lots of nice happy rom-coms with girls? Of course. We deserve as many glossy, high-budget films as anyone else. But there are, like, two and they kiss four times total across both films. Not even any . . .” I make interlocking gestures with my fingers.

“There’s definitely never enough kissing,” Ruby said, meeting my eyes. The way she said it made me want to leap across the room and kiss her, but somehow my feet were glued to the spot. What was wrong with me?

“Right. I mean there’s like two kisses in one film,” I said, vaguely aware I was repeating myself.

Ruby nodded. She got off the bed.

“And you can’t even really call them big budget. I just mean you actually recognize some of the actors in those ones.”

Ruby walked toward me keeping her eyes on mine.

“I saw this lesbian movie once,” I blathered on, “where a girl jumps off a building and it really looks like she turns into an eagle and . . .”

Ruby stopped walking when the toes of her glittery flats knocked against my scuffed military boots. The rest of my sentence got stuck in my throat.

“You talk a lot,” she said.

I nodded.

She flipped her hair over to the opposite side. My stomach flipped over to its opposite side.

“I think we should kiss now. You got me the star, after all.” She gestured at the night sky. “And I get the feeling you’re nervous so maybe we should just do it.”