“Actually…” she began slowly, reaching into the handbag she dumped on the ground next to her, “I might have come prepared.” She pulled out a video copy that was all too familiar.

“Christ, O’Reilly. Not again.”

“Oh, Alex, please! We haven’t watched it in ages!”

“We watched it two weeks ago!”

Connie pouted, batting her eyelids. “Please, pretty please?”

“Fine,” I muttered, and made a show of storming over to where she was before grabbing the box from her. “Heathers it is, then.”

It had only been a handful of months since Heathers had first shown in cinema and while it might have flopped in the box office, Connie was quite surprisingly engrossed with it in a way I had never seen her obsess over something before. We weren’t planning on even seeing it at all, that first time, but it was the only film on show in the Savoy that night and we hadn’t had very much else to do. As soon as it was released on video, she bought her own copy, afraid she might wear Blockbuster’s down, and she made a habit of watching it at least twice a month—and that was only with me. I was certain she watched it at least a dozen more times on her own.

“Stop pretending you don’t like it,” she muttered through gritted teeth. She whacked me with a cushion. “I know you do.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t she look in the cup? Like, it’s very clearly blue.”

“You like Star Trek, Ryan. Don’t complain about things being unrealistic.”

“Star Wars. And that’s science fiction, it’s supposed to be unrealistic!”

She nestled up close to me a few minutes later and rested her head on my shoulder. I began to toy with her curls distractedly, twisting them around in my fingers. “What do you think of her?” she asked, nodding at the screen.

“Who?”

“Winona Ryder.”

I shrugged. “I dunno. She’s a good actress.” I kept my eyes on the screen, glued to Winona Ryder, and tried not to think of all the times I caught myself staring open-mouthed at her picture in magazines, on billboards.

“Do you think she’s pretty?”

“I—well—I guess so. You know. As girls go. For a girl, I mean. I guess you could say she’s pretty.” My voice caught and I coughed, clearing out my throat. “Do you?”

“Of course. I think she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. She’s gorgeous.”

I thought about saying something else but wasn’t entirely sure what. My cheeks started to tinge but I kept my gaze trained ahead of me, even as Connie glanced up at me from the corner of her eye. When the film ended, I gently eased her off me and switched off the TV, pulling down a record player from the shelf that once belonged to my father. My hands were sweaty so I wiped them on my jeans, and when I sat back down it was a little further away from Connie than before. The eerily soothing sounds of The Cure filled the room, quiet enough that we didn’t have to raise our voices but loud enough that Claire, who I assumed was busy in the kitchen, wouldn’t hear us.