"How is no one here?"
The drive-in clearing was entirely open and dark from the night sky overhead as Monica pulled in and parked her brown sedan in the very middle of the empty space. "They probably heard Billy was coming and shredded their tickets," Monica jests, earning a small laugh from Robin as she pulls the handbrake.
But the second Monica was settled, her brain travelled back to that image of her living room. It had happened some time ago by now since the both of them stopped to grab a bite to eat before heading here to watch a movie. "I still can't believe the audacity of that douchebag."
"At least you've escaped. They're where they are and we're where we are...watching Karate Kid."
Monica smiles. "I'm not ashamed to admit that I've seen this a good handful of times."
"No," Robin gawks.
"It's the best movie of the year. I wouldn't have seen it if the kid I babysit didn't force me to go, but it's still easily the best movie of the year."
"I don't know..." Robin wavers. "I'm gunning for Footloose."
Monica's eyes almost bulged out of her head as she leaned forward. "That came out this year?"
"I know right?"
"That felt like forever ago," Monica sat back, looking ahead at nothing in particular. "These past couple of weeks have felt like an entire year in and of itself."
"It hasn't felt real," Robin smiles. "You know, after Tina's,"
"Mhm," Monica rolled her head onto her cheek, smiling as she listened to Robin.
"I endured half an hour of complaining from Milton about Mark Lewinsky's terrible pick-up lines and his constant refusal to go outside and smoke which really drove him up the wall because of his really bad asthma, but then when I got home and went to bed... I smiled harder than I can ever remember doing before."
Monica watched Robin recall every detail with emphatic gestures moving around in the corner of her eye.
"I kept trying to stop because it would get to the point where it would physically hurt my face," she held her cheeks, "and I was scared it would ache into the next morning, which it did and it was totally worth it because no matter what I did, I just couldn't stop."
Monica searched every inch of Robin's face as her hands settled.
"I guess what I'm trying to say is I've never been happier to not have a license or a working bike for that matter. I just can't imagine my life any other way now and I really don't want to."
"Walking is a healthy mode of transport," Monica teases, knowing exactly what her friend means but is still glad to see her laugh anyway, no matter how quiet and small. "Oh, another car," she points, and Robin follows her eye and finger.
"Someone with a profound appreciation for real cinema," Robin says.
"Given how far away they're parked, I don't think it's the cinema they've come for," Monica says.
"Well, that's their loss because they're going to miss the ultimate catharsis that is Johnny getting sucker-punched in the final tournament"—Monica gasps dramatically—"after two hours of running his annoying little mouth."
"The kick!" Monica remembers.
"No, no, no. We have to enjoy it in real time and get live reactions," Robin says.
"Okay, okay."
A comfortable silence falls between them, even in spite of their hearts hammering against their ribcages.
"After Tina's I went to Billy's because his parents weren't home," Monica says, her voice filling the space of the car, "and after we had sex I went to his bathroom to kind of... I don't know," she shrugs, "breathe I guess."
Robin turns in her seat, sensing that this was about more than just Billy Hargrove and whatever they got up to in their spare time.
"And I must of been in there for, like, ten seconds max when someone starts pounding on the door super loud. I thought it'd be Billy, but when I open it up, it's his thirteen-year-old sister and I'm stood there in his shirt that barely goes all the way down my thighs and I just felt so..."
Robin watched her rack her brain.
"Caught, I don't know," her eyes narrow. "She was totally sorry, even though she had zero reason to be, and also dressed up as Michael Myers which I'm surprised never made me shit my pants."
Robin laughs through her nose.
"But... I guess I was just surprised by how embarrassed I was. It was like I wanted this middle schooler's approval or something."
"Because you like him?" Robin suggests.
"No," Monica shuts down instantly. "Trust me, it's not that at all. I just get in my head sometimes about that kind of stuff and what other people have to say about it. It's stupid."
"No, it's not," Robin says sincerely, her eyes not leaving Monica once, even as her eyes fall to her now fidgeting fingers.
"I don't even know why I'm telling you any of this," she nervously laughs.
"You can. You can tell me anything really," Robin shrugs.
Monica looks up at Robin through her eyelashes, her eyebrows pushing together sceptically. "Really?"
"Yeah. I want to know everything."
Monica looked between Robin's eyes, really observing them, then straightened her head, scoffing with incredulity. "In school you were so fucking unapproachable and it's moments like this that I just don't get how."
"What do you mean moments like this?"
"Just us, you know," Monica pinched one of the many bracelets riddling Robin's arm and began to play with it. "These days it's all I find myself really wanting. I've never had a friend like that before. It's total sandbox behaviour."
"Well, for the record, same. After all, if I was trapped in a sandbox with a whining, snotty, boundaries-deprived baby, I would want that boundaries-deprived baby to be you."
Monica scrunched up her nose, laughing into Robin since they were huddled so close across the middle of her car, when Robin heard tires against the gravel outside. "Another car," she points out, causing Monica to have to look over her shoulder to see it. "Guess it really isn't just us this time."
Monica turned back around, reciprocating Robin's smile. "Bummer."
By the time the movie started, the both of them were sat back, watching it in a comfortable silence, but it was safe to say that neither of them were focused on the plot. Not really. All they could think about was the fact they were in the presence of one another and it was palpable.
Once Daniel and Ali were hidden behind red and white polka dotted curtains at a Halloween dance, Monica couldn't help but sneak a glance at Robin. Her blue eyes were fixed on the movie ahead, reflections of the screen visible in them, but the second Monica looked away, Robin sneaked a glance of her own.
And Monica smiled, feeling Robin's eyes on the side of her face as much as she felt it leave.
'Well I thought maybe you were still angry with me,' Ali says.
'Why?' goes Daniel.
'Well, because of what I said last time I saw you.'
Monica turned her head side on, tilting it low. Her eyes flickered up at Robin for only a second, and then back down to her hand sitting on the armrest wedged between the both of their seats.
The sound of Daniel and Ali's conversation was as dead as white noise in her ears by this point, her heart picking up the closer she let her hand get to Robin's. Her eyes flickered up to Robin again, noticing her swallow back, and it made her smirk, then she flickered her eyes back down to her hand where she rested it on the armrest, too, leaving an inch of space between them.
'So, where have you been hiding?' Ali asks.
'I haven't been hiding,' says Daniel, and they continue to go back and forth in the same way Robin had heard a good handful of times.
'I haven't seen you around.'
'You been looking?'
'Sorta.'
'Sorta?'
Monica noticed Robin's finger inch towards her, and she breathed a steady laugh at the same time as Ali Mills' beaming smile coincidentally. Monica let her pinky barely graze Robin's before retracting it back to the rest of her fingers. But it made not an ounce of difference because Robin looped them anyway, breathing a sigh of relief once she finally allowed herself to.
And that's when Monica knew exactly what it felt like to smile so hard your face begins to ache, because in that moment it was all she could do.