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(show him what he's missing)
* * *
Every weekend, James and I had a movie night.
It had been a tradition for as long as we could remember, dating back to the days when all we watched were crappy animated movies. Depending on how our schedules were looking, we'd pick a day—usually Friday or Saturday, since Sunday tended to be our designated homework day—and watch whatever movie we'd been dying to see (or dying to make fun of, depending on what we were in the mood for).
Since the tradition started when we were young, we originally stuck to genres that our parents would approve of. This usually meant we would watch whatever the latest Disney movie was, and subsequently make fun of it the whole time. Then, middle school came and brought with it a new sense of independence, giving us the ability to make the switch to horror movies. Since then, we rarely ever strayed from them.
That didn't mean we stuck to only that genre—horror movies tended to get a bit repetitive and predictable after a while, and some of them had horrible special effects. It's just that they tended to fill up most of our weekends.
This weekend, however, was different.
Usually, the movies we watched served no purpose; they were just a source of entertainment, a way for the two of us to get some much-needed relaxation after a week of meeting impossible deadlines and dealing with asshole professors.
That was going to change, though. Tonight, I was going to show James what he was missing by staying with someone as awful as Chuck.
My words wouldn't accomplish much. I'd never experienced a healthy, stable relationship (if we exclude my relationship with The Office); how could I possibly talk about the benefits of one? To solve this, I rented out a pile of romance movies for the night, hoping that at least one of them would do the trick.
If anything, actually seeing what a proper relationship looked like would have more of an impact than listening to someone talk about it. Those were my thoughts on the matter, anyway.
Although the movie selection was different this time around, this movie night was almost identical to the rest. That was because for us, it wasn't just about the film we chose to watch; the ambience mattered too.
The most important part was the food. It was essential that we had good snacks, otherwise the whole night would be a bust. We typically stuck to popcorn with cookie dough candy, which we considered to be a timeless classic. Ice cream was also a must; it wouldn't be a proper movie night if we didn't have a tub of cookie dough ice cream.
That wasn't all, though. Drinks were pretty important too. Usually, we stuck to sodas—they were cheap (especially if you didn't get brand-name soda) and they went with just about anything. However, we'd managed to score fakes over Thanksgiving break, so ever since then, we stuck to alcoholic drinks—not straight hard liquor, but mixed drinks. They tasted good and would ensure we didn't get totally plastered.
