At 8:47 PM, the projector flickered and Mateo’s hand slid up under my hoodie and found bare skin. His thumb went over my stomach, slow, back and forth, like he was reading something.
“This okay?” he whispered.
“Keep going.”
He kept going. His hand went down instead of up. Over the waistband of my leggings. Over the front of them, where I was already hard and not hiding it, because there was nobody to hide it from. He pressed his palm there and I let out a breath that was way too loud for a movie theater.
“Shh,” he said, smiling. “Bogart’s talking.”
“Fuck Bogart.”
He laughed into my neck and squeezed, and I grabbed his wrist and held it there.
At 8:58 PM, my hand was in his lap. He’d been hard since the armrest. I’d felt it every time he shifted. I got his zipper down and my hand inside his jeans and wrapped my fingers around him, and Mateo put his head back against seat 60F and stared at the ceiling and said “Oh,” just like that, like he’d remembered something important.
“Can I,” I said. “With my mouth.”
He looked at me. In the flicker light his eyes were enormous.
“Here?”
“Nobody’s here.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Please.”
The floor of the Highland campus cinema is sticky. I want that on the record. I knelt on it anyway, in the gap between row 60 and row 59, my knees on whatever three years of spilled soda becomes, and pulled his jeans down to his thighs.
He was thick and flushed and already wet at the tip, and when I licked it he grabbed both armrests.
At 9:03 PM, Casablanca hit its most famous scene and I had his cock in my mouth.
I went slow. I wanted him to feel all of it. Down as far as I could, back up, my hand twisting at the base, my other hand flat on his stomach feeling his breathing go ragged. The movie was so loud. Ingrid Bergman crying, the music swelling, a plane somewhere, and under all of it the wet sounds I was making and Mateo trying to breathe through his nose.
“You’re—” he whispered. “God. You’re so good at that. Since the bus? You’ve wanted this since the bus?”
I pulled off long enough to say “Since before the bus,” and went back down.
His hand found my hair. Careful at first. Then less careful. He pushed, a little, testing, and I moaned around him to tell him yes, and he pushed again and held me there, deep, his thighs shaking under my palms.
When the projector bulb flickered and the room went dark for three seconds, Mateo pulled me up off the floor and into his lap, both of us breathing like we’d run here, and kissed me like the world was ending. The Highland campus cinema is a joke.
It’s a single screening room in the student union. Sixty seats. Sticky floors. A projector that hasn’t been upgraded since 2014. They show movies on Tuesday and Thursday nights for three dollars. Nobody goes. The student film club runs it and they’re lucky if they get ten people.
On the Thursday it was showing Casablanca. I went.
I didn’t go for the movie. I went because Mateo — the guy from the bus, the one from The Oaks, the one with the Alamo poster — said he was going.
“I love Casablanca,” he’d texted me. “you should come.”
“I’ll be there,” I’d texted back.
I was there at 7:45 PM. The movie started at 8.
The cinema was empty. Not ten people empty. One person empty.
Mateo was in the back row. Seat 60F. He had popcorn. Two cups of soda. He’d saved the seat next to him.
“Hey,” I said, sliding into 60E.
“Hey.” He handed me a soda. “You’re early.”
“You’re early.”
“I wanted good seats.”
“The whole place is empty.”
“I know. But these are the best empty seats.”
He was right. Back row. No one behind us. No one in front of us except three rows of empty seats and then the screen.
The lights dimmed. The projector flickered to life. Casablanca started.
I didn’t watch it.
I watched Mateo watching it. He was smiling at the screen — the soft, genuine smile he gets when he’s enjoying something. His curly hair was catching the projector light. His hand was resting on the armrest between us.
At 8:17 PM, his hand moved. From the armrest. To my knee.
I didn’t move.
At 8:23 PM, his hand moved again. From my knee. To my thigh.
I still didn’t move.
At 8:31 PM, Humphrey Bogart said something famous and Mateo leaned in close to my ear.
“You’re not watching the movie,” he whispered.
“I’m watching you.”
“You’ve been watching me since the bus.”
“Since before the bus.”
He smiled. His hand moved higher.
“You wanna get out of here,” he asked.
“We just got here.”
“I know. But the back row is —”
“Private.”
“Yeah.”
I looked at the screen. Looked at Mateo. Looked at the empty seats in front of us.
“No,” I said.
“No.”
“We’re staying.”
“Okay.”
His hand stayed on my thigh. My hand moved to his knee. We sat there. Watching Casablanca. Touching each other. In the back row of an empty cinema.
At 8:47 PM, the projector flickered.
At 8:52 PM, Mateo’s hand was under my hoodie.
At 8:58 PM, my hand was in his lap.
At 9:03 PM, Casablanca hit its most famous scene and neither of us was watching.
Row 60 had terrible acoustics at 9:07 PM. The sticky floor absorbed a lot of sound. Mateo didn’t absorb any. When the projector bulb flickered and the room went dark for three seconds, Mateo kissed me like the world was ending.
At 9:34 PM, the door at the back of the cinema opened.
Light flooded in.
Mateo and I froze.
A guy walked in. Middle-aged. Wearing a janitor’s uniform. He had a mop bucket. He looked at the screen. Looked at the empty seats. Looked at the back row.
Looked at us.
We were — to be fair — not in a position that could be explained as “watching a movie.” I was straddling him in seat 60F with my leggings around my knees. His jeans were around his ankles. Both of our hands were around both of us.
The janitor looked at me. Looked at Mateo. Looked at the mop bucket.
He didn’t say anything.
He just backed out. Closed the door. Turned off the hallway light.
And walked away.
Mateo and I sat in silence for ten seconds.
Then he started laughing, helpless, his forehead against my collarbone, and his hand started moving again on both of us at once, his cock and mine pressed together in his fist, slick from my mouth.
“He turned off the light,” he whispered. “He turned off the hallway light for us.”
“So don’t stop.”
He didn’t stop. He jerked us off together in the dark back row while Bogart said goodbye to everyone, and I came first, all over his fist and his shirt, biting down on his shoulder so I wouldn’t yell in a student union. He followed me a few strokes later with a sound he muffled in my hoodie.
We sat there tangled for a while, sticky, breathing.
“Was that—” Mateo started.
“Yeah.”
“He saw us.”
“He saw us.”
“He didn’t say anything.”
“He didn’t need to.”
Mateo put his head in his hands. “I’m never going to that cinema again.”
“Yes you are.”
“I can’t.”
“You will. Because next Thursday they’re showing The Godfather and you love The Godfather.”
He peeked through his fingers. “You remember that.”
“I remember everything.”
He smiled. Put his hands down. Looked at the screen. Casablanca was ending.
“Same time next Thursday,” he said.
“Same time.”
“I’ll bring the popcorn.”
“I’ll bring the hoodie.”
He laughed. The projector flickered. The credits rolled.
We sat in the back row until the lights came up. Then we walked out together. The janitor was mopping the lobby. He didn’t look at us. We didn’t look at him.
We walked out into the November air. Mateo’s hand found mine. I let him hold it.
“Hey,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for not watching the movie.”
“Thanks for buying the ticket.”
He smiled. Squeezed my hand.
“Next time,” he said, “I’m buying two.”
“Why.”
“Because if someone else comes, I want them to have their own seat.”
I laughed. “You’re so selfish.”
“I’m very selfish.”
We walked to the bus stop. The 11:47 was coming.
We got on. Sat in the back.
Earl nodded at us. We nodded back.
And as the bus pulled out into the night, Mateo’s hand was on my knee again and I was watching him watch the streetlights and I was thinking: this is what it feels like to sit in the back row of an empty cinema and not care who sees.
