The last time that Ophelia tried to set up a double-dating situation with dreams of she and I falling for one another, it didn't really pan out in my favour. This was a few years after the fact, and, this time, it was me that was setting things up between us. But, considering who I am...it should have been obvious that the past would somehow repeat itself.
It was summer, in the middle of a heat-wave, and my parents had abandoned me for two weeks while they were off on an Alaskan cruise. While most teenagers would have chosen to throw some rave of a party, I never really enjoyed having people up in my business, so I decided to just have a choice few people over.
Since I was a little hung up on Ophelia at this point in time, I thought it would be best if I invited her, her close friend Rachel, and the choice of meat that Rachel had recently decided upon for herself.
When asked what it was I had planned for the four of us, I suggested a movie night, because, what could be more fun than a movie night with friends...and the possibility of getting some? Nothing, was my answer, and Ophelia and Rachel seemed to agree. The girls took it upon themselves to choose the movies, and I agreed that I would pay for the pizza delivery that night, and we would be set for a great time.
When the three of them showed up at my house, Ophelia proudly announced that they had "just spent over two hours at the video store!" And, yes, they had rented VHS tapes, because that's what we watched back in the day. "How could you have POSSIBLY spent two hours choosing movies?" I asked...and that's when I noticed the stack of videos that John, Rachel's rent boy, was carrying up the driveway. Now, let's assume that we would be watching movies from 6:00pm until 2:00am. That's a solid eight hours if we don't stop for anything else. Assuming each movie is roughly two hours, we would have time to watch four of them. How Ophelia and Rachel decided on renting eighteen movies (each of which was due back a day later) I have no idea. Math is hard, I guess.
They also showed up with the pizzas, because apparently they were so hungry that they couldn't wait, and as we were eating them, sweating like pigs in the heat-wave, we realized that, maybe, hot food wasn't really the greatest of choices.
We drew all the blinds in the house, shut off all the lights, covered the windows as best we could with anything that might allow us to keep the light, and the heat, out of the house, but it was still blisteringly hot inside, and each one of us was covered in a sheen of sweat. This wouldn't have been quite so bad except that, apparently, John had not yet heard of deodorant.
Even though the three of them had been dropped off by Ophelia's father, that didn't stop Rachel from bringing an ass-ton of booze into my house. I'm fairly confident that she was blitzed for the majority of the time that I knew her in high school, and this party was certainly no exception. While Ophelia, John and I were watching one of the first movies, Rachel had disappeared from the room. After it became increasingly obvious that she wasn't coming back, I excused myself and went looking for her. I found her in one of the other rooms, sitting on the floor, in the corner, her head resting against the wall, a half-empty bottle of liquor at her feet, and she was blathering on the phone to her boyfriend Jason. The same Jason from the last time that Ophelia tried to set herself up with me.
I stared at Rachel for a few seconds, she had paused her conversation to stare at me, and finally I pleaded "I really hope that's not long-distance." Rachel shook her head. "It isn't."
It totally was.
So the next few movies were spent in my sweltering bedroom with Ophelia and John, Rachel wouldn't reappear until halfway through the third movie, and she would be so drunk that she would almost immediately fall asleep, so there was really no point in her even being invited to the party.
Somehow, the night seemed even warmer than the day, but it had the effect of nullifying any fear we might have had while watching a slew of horror movies. At some point during Halloween 2, Ophelia decided it would be a good idea to use a ouija board, which I happened to have, but had never used. She set everything up, with a bunch of candles surrounding us (which, really? HEAT-WAVE!) and set herself up with the pointer, and John and I on either side of her.
And then she had a minor freak-out about the possibility of her becoming possessed like in the Exorcist, and then she insisted that John be the one to use the pointer, and then she abandoned the entire plan stating that "this is too dangerous, let's just keep watching movies."
The idea of being possessed by the ouija board made Ophelia so paranoid that she couldn't sleep for the rest of the night, which meant that I wasn't allowed to sleep. While Rachel had drunkenly passed out hours earlier, and John eventually slumped down beside her, Ophelia and I remained awake, downloading music on the computer and growing more and more delirious by the minute in a combination of sleep-deprivation and heat-induced idiocy.
At some point Ophelia and I were making a great deal of noise, and John came in to see what we were doing. All I remember is wandering toward my bed while John was singing along to Bryan Adams's "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You," and Ophelia was droning on "my mom used to sing that to me, it's my favourite song."
The next thing I know, I looked up and saw John and Ophelia groping each other, covered in dried sweat.
John and Ophelia started dating the following week.
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