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decorated the room; no posters hung with push pins in each corner, only naked brown paneling. She smiled at the similarity to her own room. “Do you live alone?” Her wandering eyes cut back to him.
    “Yes.” Bryant casually answered.
    “Do you enjoy it?” Cara raised an eyebrow seemingly interested.
    “Sure, when I have time to enjoy it. I work almost full time and still go to school.”
    “But you’re so young! Wouldn’t you rather enjoy life than settle down with all that responsibility?” Cara impatiently waited for a response.
    Bryant suddenly became indignant, defensively retaliating. “How can you lecture me about experiencing life? I can guess what you do every Saturday night. You sit in your room listening to pretentious music while reading a book and thinking about how much the world sucks because not everyone is smart like you!”
    Without warning she turned around and quickly walked toward the door. Again, he had intuitively found her weakest point and attacked it. Again, she fled from him out of embarrassment. As she grabbed the tarnished doorknob, she shot a fierce gaze at him. “I came over to apologize, you bastard!”
    Bryant realized what effect his comment had on her and rushed to prevent her departure. His hand pushed the door that his fleeing guest had halfway opened. His face hovered inches from hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .” He trailed off noticing how close their bodies were, almost touching. She stood, back pressed against the door, facing him. Her eyes contained a hint of fear and a flicker of something else, something wanton. A dead silence filled the room with the exception of their breathing which was quite loud at that distance. The boy nervously licked his lips in a quick motion. “Do . . . do you think that I could give you a kiss?”
    Before she could stop herself, Cara laughed. The pair of them had never had a conversation in which they had not criticized each other. Quickly coming to the realization that her laughter probably wounded Bryant, she spoke. “I found the situation funny, not your advance.” She paused. “I’ll make a deal with you. Saturday night, we can hang out and if we can still stand each other afterward, you can kiss me.”
    Bryant smiled. “Sure, I’d enjoy the challenge of putting up with you for a whole night.” He nervously shifted from one foot to the other. “So, are you still running off now?”
    Cara tilted her head, eyeballing the door, and then smiled coyly at him. She still felt a little apprehension, but if he wanted to kiss her, surely he had forgiven her. “Well, I think I can stay a little longer.”
    Bryant tried vainly to hide his excitement. Nervous energy coursed through him as he sat down, stood up, walked around the room, fidgeted with his hands. “Would you like to watch a movie or something? I have a few on the shelf.” Cara sat on the floor in front of the entertainment center and perused the titles as Bryant spoke. “I have Star Wars, all of the Evil dead trilogy, and . . .”
    Cara interrupted. “I can read. I get lots of practice every Saturday night.”
    Bryant’s face reddened. “I’m sorry.”
    Cara smiled in a good-natured fashion. “Oh no, don’t worry about it. It’s in the past. I’ll get over it after three years of extensive psychotherapy.” She asked, “Do you have any Blu-rays?”
    “Some of us live on a budget. Besides, I don’t even have a high def TV. “ He watched her slender fingers pull a title from the shelf. “Airplane! That’s one of my favorites.”
    Cara flipped the case over, examining the plot synopsis on the back. “It looks interesting. How long is it?”
    “I guess about ninety minutes. Most comedies are pretty short.”
    The pad of her finger lightly touched the open/close button and she gently placed the disk into the DVD player. The pair of anti-social teens spent the remainder of the afternoon together laughing over the silliness of the movie. Both thought about