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Her nose crinkled. “Was this like a The Swarm situation? Or a Winnie the Pooh and honey situation?”
“It was an Anna Chlumsky situation.”
“The pregnant woman in that Anna Delvey series?” Felicity said. “Veep?”
Derek’s hand went to heart as if shot by an arrow. “Oh honey. In our day, she was one of the biggest child stars. Olive convinced me it was a tragedy that I hadn’t seen My Girl.”
“A nineties classic.” Dylan nodded. “Not sure I ever saw it though.”
“Derek, you’re officially the worst storyteller when you’re high. Accelerate.”
“You good with spoilers?” Derek asked.
“For a movie that came out a million years ago? Yes.”
There were only a couple things Derek had extremely strong opinions about—how to put the toilet paper roll back, socialized medicine, squirrels, capitalism in general,… okay, maybe there were more than a couple. But at the center of his mess of extreme opinions was the movie My Girl.
He stood and paced the only empty square feet of floor space. “So—spoiler—at the end Macaulay Culkin is literally murdered by bees. And we see his nine- or ten-year-old lifeless corpse in a goddamn coffin. Anna Chlumsky crashes his funeral and sobs that he needs his glasses because apparently her undertaker dad didn’t give that dead, pale white kid his glasses. But she keeps crying that he can’t see without his glasses and that he needed them.”
Felicity grimaced. “I’m sorry, you’re sure it’s a kid’s movie? Sounds really dark.”
Derek gestured to Felicity in a vindicated, open-palmed sweep. “EXACTLY. Thank you. Seriously.”
Felicity squinted at her phone. “Rated PG? What the hell, 1991 MPAA? What the hell?”
“The early nineties were dark, Lissy. Bees murdering a child? Not as scary as a Cold War during a Bush presidency.”
“It should’ve been rated NC-17 for the minimum of seventeen years of therapy I needed after watching that bullshit.”
Felicity threw her phone down onto the mattress. “So can you finish explaining how watching a Kevin McCallister snuff film led to the rom-com obsession?”
“I was inconsolable… for an hour.” Derek grabbed his sparkling water and downed it like it was whiskey, but the excess carbonation caused a coughing fit.
“Aw…” Dylan grabbed his hand and rubbed his back with the other.
When the throat spasm stopped, he choked a laugh. “Olive’s parents aren’t the adults you’d want managing an intense adolescent emotional breakdown, so Olive called my dad. I cried for two more hours at home.”
Felicity clasped her hands like a therapist facilitating an intervention. “How old were you exactly when this event occurred?”
“Uh—like twelve?” Derek thumped his chest with his fist. “I feel things. That okay with you, Dr. Marcia Fieldstone?”
“Dude, I love the feeling vibes.” To emphasize, Felicity booped him on the nose before sliding off the bed to cuddle with a groaning Gus, who seemed annoyed that the volume of Derek’s opinion had interrupted his nap. “So rom-coms…?”
“I like happily ever afters. I want Heath Ledger—RIP—wearing a tight gray Henley waiting at my cool vintage Dodge Dart with a fancy Fender guitar while Letters to Cleo plays on my school’s inexplicably dangerous-looking roof stage. I want those exact vibes in an ending.” As Derek relaxed, he found himself nestled between Dylan’s bent knees with his back against Dylan’s chest. “And absolutely no goddamn bees.”
“Amen.” Dylan swept the smallest of kisses along Derek’s neck, but then Dylan went rigid. He craned his neck as if verifying Felicity’s attention was still fixed on Gus, and his hand slid away from Derek.
Derek tried not to react, staring at the TV without registering anything happening on the screen.
“Are you still afraid of bees?” Felicity said.
“No… I’m not.”
“How’d you get over it? I need something to fix my fear of snakes.”
“I guess I just stopped at some point.” Derek slid off the bed to throw his empty can into recycling.
Meg Ryan sang off-key into a karaoke machine on the TV while Derek leaned on the kitchen doorway. His fear of bees had been debilitating for months, but until this second, he didn’t realize he could pinpoint the exact moment he stopped being afraid of them.