The Breakup Artist Read online

  “Yeah, well I guess dates can be awkward.”

  “So is he your boyfriend?” she asked.

  There was something about the way she asked that question, something about how practiced and casual and totally nonchalant she was trying to sound that made me think there was something more to that question than simple curiosity.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  I wasn’t sure why it should feel awkward to mention that he was my boyfriend. It was the truth, after all. Why should I feel ashamed that I had a boyfriend? Why should I be worried that I was giving her the wrong idea by saying that I had a boyfriend?

  What kind of wrong ideas would I even be giving her?

  It didn’t make any sense. But then again that strange warm feeling that I got when I looked at her didn’t make sense either.

  “You seem to be having all kinds of trouble today,” the girl said. “I saw what happened with Keith. He’s such a dick.”

  “Keith?”

  “My manager,” she said. “Though he’s really just a shift leader. And he’s on the day crew because he never gets any work done at night.”

  The girl looked around and then leaned in and whispered as though she was letting me in on some huge secret or something.

  “Turns out they couldn’t trust him to do the night shift. He was so busy hitting on any girl who came up to the stand that it caused the line to run all the way out of the theater and into the mall. They got really upset about that.”

  I giggled. It felt good to giggle.

  After all, everything about this day had been so serious so far. There was that business transaction in the food court which had been full of drama, and then there was my disastrous date with my boyfriend.

  “Yeah. That was a little awkward. Would you believe my boyfriend actually got mad at me for getting hit on?”

  “Really? It didn’t look to me like he even noticed that Keith was hitting on you.”

  “I know,” I said. “He can be pretty oblivious, but it turns out he’s willing to turn it around on me when it suits him.”

  “Sounds like a real chore,” she said.

  “A bore?”

  “No, I meant what I said,” she said, a strange gleam in her eyes.

  I was about to say something else when I heard a hand hit the door. My eyes went wide. I guess the terror must have been evident to this strange girl whose name I didn’t even know yet. She reached out and grabbed my hand.

  I wasn’t sure what came over me. Just that I had this overwhelming feeling that it was Steve on the other side of that door, and the last thing I wanted to deal with right now was more Steve.

  He’d come out here and try to apologize. Try to get me to go back into that theater with him. From there he’d probably try to put his hands all over me again, and I wasn’t equipped to deal with that right now.

  But to my surprise this girl whose name I didn’t even know pulled me down the hall.

  Okay then. Unexpected, but not entirely unwanted. I allowed myself to be pulled along, and we moved down the corridor. Away from the concession stand.

  “Where are we…”

  I didn’t have a chance to finish the question. She jerked me around a corner and pulled me close to her. I was suddenly painfully aware of just how close she was. And it felt pretty good.

  Okay then. Talk about crazy things happening in my life. I got in a fight with my boyfriend after breaking up a couple everybody thought was the storybook example of high school sweethearts, and now I had this strange girl pressing her body against me and a finger to her lips.

  She peered around the corner. We were by the entrance to another theater, but I didn’t hear anything going on inside this one.

  But I had other problems. Like the strange feeling that was hitting me. The kind of warmth that never hit me when Steve was pressing against me, but this girl seemed to be doing it for me.

  I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. All I knew was I liked it. That I suddenly got the feeling that this is what had been missing for so long.

  And I’m going to be perfectly honest here. It was more than a little terrifying that I was getting that feeling from another girl. What was happening to me? Was something wrong with me?

  She pulled back, but she was still so close. I looked up and stared right into those beautiful green eyes. Eyes that I could lose myself in. Lose myself in a way I’d never lost myself in Steve’s eyes.

  “That was your boyfriend,” she said. “Good call.”

  “Is he coming this way?” I asked.

  The girl peered around the edge again. She went a little more slowly this time. Maybe she was worried he’d see her. Though given how completely oblivious he usually was to his surroundings that hardly seemed like a huge worry.

  “He’s going towards the concession stand,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Great. That idiot really did think I was interested in that Keith asshole. Now how my supposed to get away? Is that the only exit?”

  The girl looked back to me and smiled. “Not the only exit.”

  “What are you…”

  I didn’t get a chance to get that question out, because she was pulling me along again. Deeper. Towards the back where I’d never been before.

  I had no idea where we were going, but it felt so good having my hand in hers that I realized I didn’t really care as long as I got to spend more time with her.

  7

  Old Projection Room

  Ashley Timmons says

  Have you ever had a moment where you realized you were completely and totally wrong about the way the world works? Because today we’re going to be getting into the pivotal moment in this story when I had that realization.

  It was a moment in a small projection booth where I suddenly realized that maybe the whole way I’d been looking at the world was wrong.

  Don’t get me wrong. I still stand by my conviction that there are some relationships in this world that just need to be over. No matter how much you people tell me what a horrible person I am. But today’s entry marks the point where I started to realize that maybe there was a little more to this whole love thing than I’d been willing to admit.

  If this were some sappy holiday movie then I guess this would be the point where I start to be visited by ghosts in the night. My heart grew a few sizes, is what I’m getting at, even if it was growing a few sizes for a girl which was totally terrifying.

  Then again it’s not like we can choose who we fall in love with, even if there are people who seem to think that all it takes is a roll in the hay with the right guy to make that change.

  Looking at you, Thomas. It’s so wonderful that you’ve decided to continue hanging out in my comments section after I made it clear how unwelcome you were.

  I came to a realization that day in a dark projector booth with a girl whose name I didn’t even know, and it was a realization that completely and totally changed my life.

  Whether I wanted it to or not.

  “What is this place?”

  The girl gestured expansively. Although the room didn’t really deserve it. It was big enough to fit a massive projector, but that massive projector also meant the room was just a little cramped.

  Along the back there was a metal shelf, and someone had also put a ratty looking old couch in here.

  I wondered if that couch had been here since the days when my parents came to this movie theater to make out. Y’know, the sort of thing I was trying to avoid doing with Steve.

  “This wonderful place is the old projection room,” she said.

  I arched an eyebrow as I looked around. “The old projection room?”

  “Yeah, it’s one of the only rooms they kept pretty much like it was, except for the new hotness here.”

  She tapped the giant projector that dominated a good chunk of the room.

  “This is the digital revolution right here. It means all we have to do to start a movie is clicky clicky and they don’t have
to pay someone to be up here keeping an eye on things and making sure the film gets spliced in at the right time.”

  “Neat,” I said. “You know I’m not even sure if I’ve ever seen a movie that was being projected on film.”

  “I’d be surprised if you did,” she said. “Star Wars kind of forced everybody to switch over to digital back in the day. The owner still pitches a fit about that. Apparently they really had theaters by the balls back then.”

  I giggled. I’m not sure why I giggled talking about changes in the movie theater business, but this girl did that to me. To break the awkward I moved over to the metal shelf lined with what looked like old hard drives.

  “So what’s all this stuff?”

  She walked up behind me. I was suddenly painfully aware of how close she was. I was also painfully aware of how I was getting the sort of shiver I’d always heard people talking about in books and the movies, but it had never happened to me before.

  Which presented me with one hell of a conundrum. I’d never felt something like that before and I’d always assumed it was because anyone who told you about how deeply in love they were was full of shit.

  But what if it was something else? What if it wasn’t that love was a lie? What if it wasn’t even that I was broken when it came to love because of the shining example my parents had set? That was a dark thought that kept me up some nights.

  No, what if the whole reason I’d felt broken all this time was because I just hadn’t realized that I was going out with the wrong gender?

  I shivered again, and this time it didn’t have anything to do with how close she was.

  Okay, so that’s not entirely true. It had a lot to do with how close she was. But that sudden realization also had a lot to do with it.

  “This here is the hard drive shelf,” she said. “It’s where they store all the hard drives and backup drives that have all the movies we play.”

  I looked at the shelf. “There aren’t nearly as many as I would’ve figured,” I said.

  The girl laughed. She reached around me and pulled out one of the small bricks. “Yeah, you’d think it would be something cool out of a sci-fi movie or something. At least that’s the image I got when they told me about this room. It was a little bit of a letdown when I’d finally worked here long enough that they trusted me to come up here and I saw it was boring old USB drives. Not nearly as cyberpunk as I was hoping.”

  I turned to her. Arched an eyebrow. “Really? You have to work here for awhile before they trust you to come up here?”

  A grin split her face and I felt another one of those shivers running up and down my spine. I could get used to watching this girl smile. She had one of those smiles that made me want to get to know her better, and it was weird wanting to get to know someone better after I’d gone for so long thinking the love portion of my brain was a burned off stump.

  “Of course they have to be careful with the theater’s secrets,” she said. “After all, you wouldn’t want people to find out…”

  She stopped. Her eyes went wide. She put a hand to her mouth as though she’d said too much.

  “What?” I asked.

  She bit her lip and looked like she wanted to say something, but was trying to hold it in. Or maybe she was trying not to laugh.

  “Come on. You work at a movie theater at a mall,” I said. “It’s not like you’re working national security or something here.”

  “Or are we?” she asked.

  I blinked a couple of times at that. What the hell was she talking about?

  “What the…”

  She shook her head. “I’ve already said too much. If I say any more they’ll come for you. On the bright side you’ll never have to worry about your boyfriend again.”

  “What are you…”

  Her face split into a grin and she doubled over laughing. It was a pure laugh. The kind of laugh that was simple joy. It was nice to hear laughter like that.

  I’m going to be honest. That wasn’t something I got a whole heck of a lot of in my life. I know that probably sounds all sad and pathetic. Go ahead and laugh it up in the comments.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But the look on your face there…”

  I sighed. “I knew it. It is just a movie theater.”

  I totally didn’t believe for one moment that there was something else going on here. I mean it’s not like something as boring as a mall movie theater would be a cover up for some secret government operation.

  “Oh no,” she said. “We totally have a nuclear launch facility located below this place. They hide it here because mall theaters are so boring. No one would ever suspect. And I’m going to have to have the boss wipe your memory now that I’ve told you.”

  I stared at her. It was ridiculous, but she looked so serious. Only there was something about it that tickled the back of my mind.

  “Wasn’t that a line from that Bridesmaids movie?” I asked.

  The girl positively beamed at me. She smacked my shoulder and the contact was electric. At least it was electric for me. I couldn’t tell if it did anything for her, but was that my imagination or did her hand linger on my shoulder for a moment longer than it should for your regular garden variety smack?

  “You passed the first test,” she said. “Great movie, by the way.”

  “It was pretty funny,” I said. “And let me tell you, the backlash those women got for that Ghostbusters movie…”

  “I know! It was so ridiculous!” the girl said. She mimed a crying motion with her eyes. “Poor little man babies on the Internet don’t like the idea of women starring in a remake of a movie they probably didn’t even care about until the studio announced the remake had a bunch of women in it.”

  “I know, right? It’s like the new movie doesn’t take away from the old one!”

  To my surprise we said the last bit at the same time. Then we stared at each other.

  “Did we just become best friends?” she asked.

  I cocked my head to the side. That sounded familiar.

  “Wasn’t that from a Will Ferrell movie or something?” I asked.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Did you just call one of the greatest comedies of the past decade ‘just a Will Ferrell movie?’”

  I shrugged. “My older brother was into it, but I’ve never seen it all the way through.

  “We’re going to have to fix that!” she said.

  “What, like get it on demand or something?” I asked.

  I had to suppress a shiver at that. There was something about the idea of getting a movie and watching it with her at my place, or hers, that really excited me for some reason. Again I probably should’ve figured out there was a reason this was exciting me so much, but I was in a completely different headspace at the time.

  She smiled and hefted the small plastic brick she’d pulled off the shelf.

  “I can do better than that. We have a lot of great movies on here. It’s one of the nice perks about having the digital projector.”

  “You can do that?” I asked.

  I have to admit I’d been intrigued at the idea of watching a movie with this girl. Even if that did sound very close to going on a date. But now I was more curious about being able to watch any movie they wanted whenever they wanted to on the big screen.

  That seemed like the kind of thing big studios wouldn’t be all that happy about, after all, considering how they’d been willing to sue people just for downloading movies.

  “Oh the theater would totally get into huge trouble if anybody had any idea that sort of thing was going on, so you need to keep your mouth shut, but you seem cool.”

  “Like how much trouble?” I asked.

  She plowed on, either not hearing my question or ignoring it because she didn’t like where it led.

  “That’s why we have this whole back room. These projectors are supposed to have all sorts of copy protection and stuff on them to keep us from doing what we do, but we have some tech wizards on the team and it isn’t all th
at difficult to get around that stuff. It never is,” she said.

  “Makes sense,” I said. Besides, there was something about this girl that made me want to keep secrets if it meant spending more time with her. “Consider my lips sealed.”

  Her face split into a grin. “That was the next test, and you totally passed. Besides, I was joking about the nuclear launch facility, but the MPAA? They’ll totally disappear you way faster for breaking copyright law than the government would ever dream of doing for somebody trying to steal nuclear codes or something. Those movie assholes play for keeps.”

  “I’ll take your word for that,” I said. “So you can really watch anything you want up here?

  “Anything at all. Why, you got a favorite?”

  I blushed and looked away. My favorite movie wasn’t something I was all that proud of considering what I did for spare change. Considering how I felt about the whole “love” thing.

  “Come on,” the girl said. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “The Princess Bride,” I muttered.

  “Classic!” she said. “I don’t know why you’re worried about liking that one.”

  Of course she wouldn’t know because she didn’t know what I got up to in my spare time. She had no idea that my hobby was hating on the very idea of love to the point that I made a good chunk of side change breaking up deserving couples.

  I walked over to the projector and looked out over the empty theater. It was a smaller room. Most of the theaters had been remodeled into giant monstrosities that justified the theater charging outrageous prices for a ticket, but this one was more intimate. Like there weren’t even stadium seats in there. Like they hadn’t even bothered to renovate.

  “Those seats look original. Is that why they call it the old projector room?” I asked.

  “Totally,” she said. “I think the owner ran out of money before they could finish the renovation or something, but either way it doesn’t get shown to the public and that’s why we keep our hard drive full of totally illegal stuff up here.”

  “Hard drive full of totally illegal stuff?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “It was named before I started working here. Not very original, but descriptive as hell.”