Friday Night Movie Club Part III

I laughed in spite of myself, shaking my head, “You’re such an arsehole-”

“-and you can’t bloody well leave me up there alone,” He added, leaning in closer to whisper, “Once I do my belly rolls, the auld lassies at the table behind us might eat me alive.”

It didn’t take me much more convincing. Once the woman got us up and tied the coin fringed belt around our hips, the alcohol took over. We were swinging and swaying around the room for a good wee while until the music was turned off so the belly dancer could start her own part of the performance, now that we were all lubed up for the night ahead.

It was a brilliant night.

We’d been there a few times after, with friends in tow, hiding the big event of the night away from them until the music started. It was a great wee set up, us two in it together, thick as thieves as we threw off their attempts at trying to work out why we dragged them all the way over to the other side of town for a ‘fancy kebab’. It was gleeful to see the surprise on their faces, to watch them shimmy around the room. Our pals! Professors, solicitors, a funeral director – the most serious folk in the world. We couldn’t stop laughing when Jimmy pulled up his crisp white and light blue pine-stripped shirt, opened up a few of the bottom buttons and twisted the material into a crop top, all the better to display his pasty white, hair flecked beer belly that he was desperately trying to ripple. It was a moment we’d bring up again and again on nights out, dinner parties and then actual parties for them and their kids.

Then we found out the place closed down about a year ago. We’d stopped heading out on Fridays that much before then, mind. You’d told me that you tried to book a table one night a few months ago when you were trying to make up with me after that big fight, only to find out it didn’t exist anymore. You decided to order in instead. Worked out cheaper anyway, didn’t it?

We started the movies a while before that, though. It slowly crept in on us, like when you stopped wearing your jacket. Every once in a while, we’d decide it was nicer to cuddle up on the couch, order in some noodles and watch a movie. Wasn’t it more cozy? Us in our PJs, a wee bottle of something nice, our limbs entangled together as we laughed, or cried or screamed at some movie together? It was better this way, we agreed. Especially when you’d take off one of my fluffy socks, your eyes still on the screen as you massaged my feet, almost like you were on autopilot, doing this for me without any thought. You’d sit for the rest of the movie, your thumbs pushing into the balls of my toes, murmuring some prediction about what would happen next.

I could swear back then that our little front room was heaven.