"The Friday night movie's gonna be The Evil Dead. Wanna watch?"

Teddy's home from college for the first time in what feels like years. It's been even longer than that since we watched movies together on the old Family room couch, flopped over each other, stuffing our faces full of salty popcorn and laughing at the horrible acting.

I always wanted to be like that kid in the Folger's commercials. You know, the ones they play around Christmas? Where what's his face comes home early Christmas morning and surprises her on the stairs and she jumps into his arms and they make coffee together to wake everybody up? "The best part of waking up" and all that?

Well Teddy never surprised me on Christmas, and I'm sure he couldn't pick me up and swing me around the house at 5 a.m. even if he did. But here we are now, getting ready to share the only time we've ever shared by choice: The Friday Night Movie.

I get some cold Pepsi from the basement fridge while Teddy calls to check up on his girlfriend. She's spending spring break at some tourist trap in Mexico. He frowns like an adult, worried for her and maybe their relationship and for a minute I swear he's gonna leave. He doesn't; he sits and I sit--we're together, but at opposite ends of the couch. We murmur about how the popcorn tastes a little stale; I fidget with my napkin while we wait for the flick to start. Somehow this isn't as easy as I thought. I guess you can never go home again.

But then the movie starts and he throws a few puffs of popcorn at me. The fake, yellow butter gets them caught in my hair and on my sweater and he laughs from his belly. And when the ill-fated teenagers arrive at the shack in the woods we start giggling about Jason and Michael Myers and whatever other creepies might be there--like Bob Vila. So we laugh louder, together, and it erupts and now we're both laughing from our bellies.

An hour later, I swing my leg over his and we dream of being young.

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