Page 65 of Taking Sides

“Yeah, I thought I should finally see it.” I hold up a bag of Reese’s Pieces in one hand and Sour Patch Kids in the other. “Do you like candy?”

She nods, and I toss her the Reese’s.

“What about our Denzel marathon?” D-Low asks. “I was looking forward to rewatching The Equalizer.”

“We can watch it tomorrow after practice.”

He sighs heavily. “Fine. Fine. Don’t mind me. I’ll grab my food and head to my room.”

Whitney looks to me like maybe she feels bad he’s running off. I try to discreetly shake my head. Her sympathy is unwarranted. The number of times he’s switched up our plans for a girl are too many to count. I never held it against him, and I know he wouldn’t either. He’s totally playing her.

“You can stay if you want,” she says, obviously not reading my nonverbal cues.

“Are you sure?” He opens the fridge and pulls out a container of leftover veggie fried rice. “I don’t want to ruin the mood or impose or anything.”

“We’re really going to watch the movie, not fuck on the couch while the TV happens to play a movie,” I say. “That’s your thing. Not mine.”

Another thing I can’t count: the number of times he’s had a girl over to watch a movie and I’ve walked out to find a whole other type of show happening in our living room.

D-Low smiles bigger. “Bummer. My thing sounds better than yours. But Erin is at work until nine, so I guess a movie with you two will kill the time.”

Whitney giggles, clearly finding this more entertaining than me.

“Only if you promise not to overanalyze the plot,” I say to him, then to Whitney, “D-Low gets really invested in the storyline.”

“No, I don’t. I only point out when the plot is stupid,” he says.

“The only thing you two will be overanalyzing when it comes to Dirty Dancing is how much you wished you’d become professional dancers instead of hockey players,” she insists.

I highly doubt that, but I am excited to hang with her, no matter what we watch. “I’ll get it set up.”

From the living room I hear him say to her, “Not as much as I would have been wishing I were black ops, kicking ass Denzel-style. Are you a fan of action movies?”

“Sure. The ones with a decent plot.”

“You two share that in common,” I call over my shoulder. As long as I’m entertained, I don’t really care much about the storyline.

“Denzel makes even bad plots look good. Have you seen The Equalizer?” D-Low asks her.

“No,” Whitney replies.

“Oh no,” I mutter loud enough that only I can hear.

D-Low proceeds to give her the full rundown of the movie, arms waving around excitedly the entire time, and finishes with, “Shep hasn’t seen it either.”

The two of them join me in the living room. D-Low takes his usual spot in the right corner of the sectional with his legs propped up in front of him.

“It’s one of four of his movies that we have left,” I say to her.

“I can only think of two or three that I’ve seen,” Whitney says.

D-Low lets his fork clatter against the side of the glass container. He looks at me with a faux serious expression. “I don’t know how to tell you this, buddy, but I think you have to cut your new girl loose.”

I smile—not at what he’s saying but at the way he called Whitney my girl. I like it.

“You two haven’t seen Dirty Dancing, so I could be as concerned about him as you are about me.” She waggles a finger at him.

“I guess there’s only one way to solve this,” he says as he picks up his fork again. “We have to watch both.”