It Only Happens in the Movies

  Eventually, among distractions, all of them involving Harry and either his hands or tongue, we made it to the pier. It was all lit up, the neon lettering blurring in the drizzle, but most of the kiosks were shuttered down.

  “I don’t think it’s open,” I said, looking around dubiously.

  “Of course it’s open.”

  We ducked into one of the arcade halls and found other human beings. The aggressive honking of the machines greeted us, especially as two younger teens appeared to be involved in some sort of elaborate dance-off on the dance game. We stood and watched, warming up from outside, as the two of them ignored us, ignored each other, and leaped around the dance pads, their arms up, spinning and twirling while the machine occasionally shouted out “WOWSERS” and “YOU DID IT”. I stared longingly at the stuffed toy crane machines, even though I’d learned, over coming here most summers since childhood, that it is scientifically impossible to grab a toy.

  “Come on,” Harry called, pulling me ahead.

  It didn’t really feel like a date.

  That was the niggle that kept pushing into my mind. It felt like we’d skipped all the courting, the nervousness, the uncertainty, and jumped right into, well, by the way Harry kept pawing at me through my several layers, intense physical contact. He’d run off ahead, darting through the over-eighteens fruit machines where a few crusty-looking oldies stood mesmerized, pumping in coins, jabbing buttons, waiting for it all to be worthwhile. I stopped for a second, an invisible force holding me in my tracks. What did I really know about Harry? Somehow, with a late-night cinema showing, a headbutt, and a kiss in the car, I’d made myself vulnerable. Just like that. Like the last six months hadn’t happened. I wanted to feel his vulnerability too. Otherwise…otherwise… LouLou’s voice came back to me. “Harry’s flights of fancy don’t tend to last. We had another girl who quit.”

  Harry turned back and fixed me with his very best grin. “I’ve made a decision,” he said. “We are going to go on the log flume.”

  I walked over and when he tried to put his arm around me, I ducked. Giving myself the space I needed to work through what was going on and why.

  “Harry, it’s November.”

  “It is November, Audrey. Right you are.”

  “Harry, it’s cold and dark.”

  “That is why we should do it. Think of the log flume man! Think of how sad he must feel at this time of year – everyone spurning his ride because ‘It’s not the right time’. Think of him, Audrey, coming into work every morning, thinking, Today, maybe today will be the day I’m not discriminated against. Today I will get to bring joy to the hearts of people who want to go down a log flume.”

  There was no way it would be open so I just said, “Okay, whatever.”

  It was even colder and darker and windier at the end of the pier. The wind hit me so hard I literally squealed. The place looked like the apocalypse had hit it. There was no one around, just a few disgruntled employees, hugging steaming flasks, staring at us gloomily as we walked towards them, all like, What the hell are you doing here?

  Harry beamed at them, seducing them with his smile. “Hello,” he said to the man behind the central counter. “We want to go on the log flume. How do we make this happen?”

  The man raised his eyebrows. Well, I think he did. He had so many hats on it was hard to tell. “Ha ha, very funny.”

  “Seriously,” Harry said. “It’s only 6 p.m. The rides are still open for an hour, right?”

  “Mate, it’s minus two degrees. And you want us to start up the log flume?”

  I pulled on Harry’s sleeve. “Harry, come on.”

  He shrugged me off. “Is it closed?”

  “Not technically.”

  “So, we can go on it?”

  “Well, yes, technically.”

  “Well then, two rides, please.”

  Harry turned back to me, beaming. “You ready?”

  My delayed onset of emotional whiplash was catching up on me fast. What was happening? This time yesterday, Harry was just a work colleague. Now he was kissing me, groping at me, whisking me off to Brighton and demanding I get on a log flume in the middle of winter. He took my silence as a yes. And before I knew it, he had grabbed my hand and tugged me over to the ride. While the guy followed us, muttering and, yes, actually swearing under his breath. “Fookin’ youth of today. Have to get the whole ride going…almost home time.”

  I felt so embarrassed as we waited for the ride to start up. It looked dormant in the dark – sleepy and lurching and just plain creepy really – all the logs stood clogged up along it, like a constipated intestine. There was a crank and the ring of a bell and then, slowly, the sound of water gushing. The logs began to move.

  “It’s happening, Audrey.” Harry pulled me into him, trying to get me to snuggle in but I stiffened.

  More logs clogged round, some starting to swoop and splash as they hit the bottom of the drop. It was so dark you could hear them more than see them.

  The grumpy guy appeared at the gate. “It’s all ready, you nutcases,” he said, and stepped aside.

  Harry pulled me after him. I wanted to have it out with him, but now wasn’t exactly the best time. So I just sighed and let him hold my hand as I lowered myself down into a log, coldness seeping through the bum of my jeans. Harry clambered down behind me, opening his legs so his were around mine. With a jerk, we were flung forward, our log floating out into the blackness. Harry put his arms around my waist, pulling me further into him, his crotch completely touching my bum. “Here we go, Audrey,” he whispered into my ear, then he kissed my neck as we jolted along.

  This time I didn’t simper or swoon, I just felt a warm rush of anger. I held it in though, thinking, This is something I have to tackle face-to-face not groin-to-butt. So I looked out at the gorgeous lights of Brighton – how they reflected off the dark water and stretched out for ever in the cold, clear night. Until I was suddenly tipped upwards, my body squishing into Harry as the log made its ascent.

  “Woah, Audrey, please, come on, it’s only our first date.” He grabbed me tighter, and that’s when I lost it.

  Just as the log teetered on the edge of oblivion, I twisted my head and shouted, “Oh for fuck’s sake, Harry, how stupid do you think I am?”

  We plummeted down, down, down into the darkness and freezing water erupted either side of us, drenching every inch of me. I screamed as my skin erupted into goosebumps. I heard Harry coughing violently behind me – he must’ve had his mouth open in shock when we landed. We juddered to a shivering halt, crashing into the log in front of us and Mr Grumpy stood, hand out, ready to help us up.

  “I hope it was worth it,” he murmured.

  I took his hand, said thank you, and then I stormed off, leaving puddles of water behind me before Harry was even out the log.

  “Audrey? Audrey?” he called. But I kept walking, my fists clenched, my lip wobbling with shivers. I ran to the warmth of the arcade dome – pushing through the doors, letting them swing madly. I heard an oomph as they crashed into Harry. He was catching up with me. I picked up my pace. The arcade lights blurred past me, the carpet squelching underneath my soaked Converse.

  “Audrey? What’s going on? AUDREY?”

  Then Harry was in front of me. Blocking my path. Holding my arms to stop me. I batted him off. “Audrey, what’s going on?”

  The cold made me more angry. “Sorry, was I supposed to find that CUTE?” I yelled. “My apologies for not melting into your quirky, let’s-go-crazy, romantic, whimsical, carpe-diem, ooh-let’s-go-on-a-log-flume BULLSHIT!”

  He tilted his head. “It was colder than I thought it would be. Sorry.” Then he raised an eyebrow. “I know what we can do to warm up.”

  I pushed him with all my might, and stalked past him – thumping a machine as I passed, just to let out my anger. Then I stopped and turned back.

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” I asked. “You’ve taken girls on the log flume before?”

&n
bsp; His face, the shock on it, confirmed my suspicion. Of course he had done it before. How else did he know it would be open? In midwinter? That the flume even closed at seven.

  “Does everyone else fall for it?” I laughed. “Do they think this is a special, unique thing you’ve shared? When it’s just engineered NONSENSE? I really thought…” My voice broke then, I passed it off as a shiver. I really thought what? That maybe I was different? That maybe, because we’d had time to get to know each other, he would treat me differently? Fall for me? Change for me? When I’d been so very warned otherwise.

  “Audrey, please. Look, let me explain.”

  I’d already turned my back on him, looking frantically for a toilet. I needed space, and to dry off and warm up and to not have him say or do anything that made me lose myself. A female icon appeared overhead with an arrow and I turned abruptly left, following it until I found a matching icon on the door.

  “Audrey?”

  I swung through the door and it slammed shut in front of him.

  Thank God for hand-dryers, that’s all I’m saying. I turned it upside down and blasted my hair first, vaguely remembering some fact that you lose most of your body heat through your head. Once I was only damp, instead of drenched, I put it the right way again and squatted underneath it, taking it in turns to shove random body parts underneath so my insides didn’t feel like ice any more.

  I pushed down the loo seat and sat there for a while, my face in my hands, trying to catch up on the past twenty-four hours. Too much had happened, that was all I was certain of. And somehow, from just a moment of wanting to kiss Harry and accidentally headbutting him, he’d grabbed the steering wheel and driven me over several canyons. My power – that I’d finally started to grow back after Milo – had been ripped off me like a sticky plaster. And what made it worse is I didn’t think Harry even knew, or cared, that he’d done it. Or what giving it up meant to me.

  Well, I didn’t think he cared, until I opened the bathroom door. And there. There he was. Shivering so hard he was practically a blur.

  I paused in the doorway.

  “Audrey.” He looked up, his jaw shuddering.

  “Harry, you’re freezing.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No, but I can’t yell at you until I know you’re not going to die of hypothermia.”

  He grinned, but as he did, his teeth chattered. “I didn’t think this through, did I? Getting us to go on a water flume in midwinter?”

  I raised both eyebrows. “The problem is, Harry, I think you DID think it through. That’s the whole thing.”

  He scratched his head, blinked slowly, then he sighed and said, “Look, let me just dry off, then I’ll drive you home. I’ve obviously messed up here. I’m not quite sure h-h-how.”

  “Oh, come on, Harry. You’re not stupid.” It was my turn to sigh. “Look. Go dry off. If you haven’t figured it out by then, I’ll at least explain to you why you’re a massive arse before you drive me home. If you really want me to?”

  “I mean why else would I take Audrey Winters on a romantic date to the seaside? I’ve been waiting for this bit all night.”

  I crossed my arms, reluctantly smiling. Impressed at his ability to constantly regain snippets of power, even in the most undesirable of circumstances. He asked me to wait for him and I moseyed around the mostly-empty arcade, shoving a few ten-pence pieces into the 10p machine.

  “Screw you to hell, 10p machine,” I said, a pound down later. “Will I never learn?”

  “It appears not.” Harry appeared at my side, looking slightly warmer and drier.

  “Some things I learn.” I looked at him pointedly and his face literally fell, like his nose was a dimmer switch and I’d grabbed it and turned it off. He stuffed his hands deep into his pockets.

  “Okay, so I can drive you home now.”

  I didn’t want him to drive me home. I wanted his arm back around me, his mouth on my neck, his whispers in my ear. But I wanted him to MEAN it, I wanted it all to mean something. I wanted the Harry behind the grin. The one I’d seen so many glimpses of until this date. The Harry who could sense I needed more time before a take, the Harry who backed off when I told him to, the Harry who told me I needed to start embracing my pain rather than hiding from it. I could sense us becoming an us, but a real us. An important us. A good us. But he was suddenly treating me like I was just another conquest he’d get bored of. Maybe I was…

  “Do you want to drive me home?” I asked, trying to coax something back out of him.

  “Well, not particularly. Especially as we have to work together tomorrow, followed by our first ever kissing scene. And, charming as I may be, I don’t like awkwardness, it hurts my vibe.”

  “Did you just say ‘vibe’?”

  “Yes, because I probably have the first stages of hypothermia. Can we please, at the very least, go somewhere warm for you to tell me I’m an arsehole?” He took off his beanie and ran his fingers through his hair and, for one moment, his face was the picture of genuine upset. The actress in me could sense absolutely no acting in him. He was hurt. Maybe that was too big a word. But I’d spooked him at the very least. Could I explain? Could I say anything to get him to understand? To want to understand? Could this still be something?

  “Okay,” I relented. “Let’s go for a drink.”

  “So, hit me with it.” Harry’s arms were thrown wide, his chest puffed out. A pint in a warm pub with a crackly fire had truly revived him.

  I sipped my wine. “Hit you with what?”

  “Tell me what I did wrong.”

  I eyed him over the rim of my glass. “Do you actually care?”

  Harry lowered his arms, picked up his pint and took a sip. “Yes, I do, actually,” he admitted. Once again, his mask had fallen. I pointed at him. “You see, there, that.”

  “What?” He touched his face self-consciously.

  “You weren’t bullshitting me. Just then, for that one whole sentence, I didn’t feel like I was getting rained on with bullshit.” I tilted my head to one side. “To be fair, it’s very well branded, tied up in a pink ribbon bullshit, but it’s still all bullshit, Harry.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  I took another sip of my red wine while I pondered over my words. “Look, you know I was warned off you. Multiple times, in fact,” I added, as I saw him about to protest. “By people who I respect and trust. And more than anything tonight, I think I’m mad at myself. For thinking I was different…”

  “But you are different.”

  I held up my finger to show I wasn’t finished. “For thinking, maybe, you liked me for me. Not because you couldn’t win me.” He went to interrupt. “Please, let me finish… Last night, with the film. And, well, how it’s been with the filming, and working on the script. I thought maybe there was something… But now, you’ve taken me here to Brighton, and this is so obviously a thing you do, Harry. You’ve so obviously taken girls here before. And you’re not being the Harry who walked me home last night, or who respected my wishes to be left alone. It’s like the old one is back. The one I’ve been warned off. And, well, I’m not interested in him.” I bit my lip. “I feel like I’m just someone you’re trying to win over, rather than someone you’re trying to get to know.”

  He reached over and took both my hands. His touch made my tummy squiffy but I still yanked them away.

  He sighed and smacked his forehead down on the table. “I am trying to get to know you, Audrey.” He spoke facedown into the wood.

  “Tell me, honestly, that you’ve never taken another girl on the log flume before?”

  He swung up. “It’s a good place for first dates!”

  “But it was a routine. I was just part of it!”

  “No. Argh!” He finished his drink in three gulps, glowering, then clashed the glass back down on the coaster, empty.

  I pointed to him again. “See, real Harry. Angry Harry.”

  “I AM angry!”

  “Wh
y?”

  “Because you’re making it so hard for me!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, is this usually easy?”

  He looked me right in the eyes. “Yes,” he admitted.

  “And how did things work out for the last girl it was easy with?”

  He laughed, shook his head, but the anger had broken. “Okay, so not great for her. She doesn’t work at Flicker any more…”

  I raised a triumphant eyebrow. “You see!”

  “Oh stop gloating!”

  We both stared at each other. I felt realness bubbling to his surface. This was what I’d felt last night. I took a breath. “Look,” I said. “I’m not asking you to declare your undying love. I just…can’t…when you’re being all…on. I need to know that a tiny bit of this is real. Even if it comes to nothing.”

  He took my hand again and this time I didn’t have the strength to pull away. In fact, I squeezed his fingers, hating myself for how it made my heart go berserk.

  “The annoying thing, Audrey, is that how I feel is real,” he said. “I just don’t know how I can prove that to you.”

  “It’s actually quite easy. You just need to be vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable?” He said the word like it was dirty.

  I nodded. “Yes. You know? Drop your own barriers, rather than spending all your time dismantling mine. Let me get to know you. Be interested in getting to know me, and not just the inside of my pants.”

  “Can I not be interested in getting to know both?”

  And, even though it was a Harry line, it was coming from a better place.

  “Tell me three things about you that make you vulnerable.” I extracted my fingers, picked up my wine glass and took another sip.

  “What?”

  “Go on.”

  “I can only have one pint, I’m driving.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  I thought maybe he’d tell me to piss off. Or just drive me home. Or come out with something like, “I’m vulnerable because of how much I fancy you.” Instead he muttered about needing another drink, went up to the bar, ordered a lime and soda, sat down in a huff and said, with no introduction, “All right then, Miss Shot-Caller. One, I had ADHD as a child. Two, my parents hate me…” He counted them off on his fingers. “And three, I want to make movies so much and the thought that I won’t get my big break fills me with dread.” He downed half his drink, wouldn’t meet my eye and sat back heavily into the leather chair.