by Kat Pace
“And what do you call last night’s additional harassment, huh?” I shake my head.
“Terrible defense?” Brooks asks, frowning.
“Offense is shit too.”
“I’m an ass, I know.” Brooks grins. I roll my eyes, but can’t stop from smiling back.
“Fine.”
“Fine I’m an ass or fine you forgive me?” Brooks asks.
“Sure. I forgive you.” I shrug, pushing into his arm. “Now do me a favor and walk over there.”
Travis and Nate are on the other side of him. Trix and Meg are walking with Alex ahead of us. We are walking together, in sync, the way we’ve spent most of the summer.
Brooks pulls me up to the worn and torn merry-go-round. Carousel? Whatever it is. I laugh as he pulls me up onto the spinning platform. Trix and Travis follow us. Travis lifts Trix onto a horse and starts kissing her in front of the crowd.
Zero cares in the world.
I catch Brooks looking at me and I shrug. We’ve gotten used to the two of them making out incessantly. Their affection is nauseating but part of me might miss it when I leave.
“I still can’t believe you’re leavingggg,” Trix coos, sadly. Her hair floats behind her as the carousel spins. “How has it been three weeks?”
“I know. I know,” I sigh, resting my head against my horse’s pole. “Time flies.”
“When you’re… you know,” she whispers so only I can hear. I can’t help but grin.
“Stop it,” I mouth. I can’t help my smile on the inside.
“Let’s plan your next trip home!” She squeals.
Travis rolls his eyes.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Brooks says above me, squeezing my waist. “I’ll plan mine too.”
“Yea?” I raise my eyebrows.
“We can coordinate,” Brooks grins.
Trix laughs with delight. “Great. So I am thinking once a month from now on, right? Not enough? We can do twice a month if you want.”
“No way!” I laugh.
“Come on!” She insists.
“Trix,” I laugh, rolling my eyes.
“Be easier if you just cave now,” Travis says. He’s laughing too, an obvious laugh.
Me, cave? I look up at Brooks behind me. Too late, Travis.
“Never.”
Ferris wheel.
Funnel cake.
Games.
Snow cones and cotton candy. Yes, BOTH.
Live music.
Ferris wheel again.
Maybe we kiss on top the Ferris wheel.
Maybe we’re that basic.
8:39 PM
Our group dissipates toward the end of the carnival. I’m grateful to be alone. Well, not alone. I’m angry at myself for wasting the last two days being mad at Brooks.
It is the last real night of summer. The heat is still sticky in the air and it makes us all the more tired and all the more dreamy. With it, the dusk brought fireflies and they twinkle overzealously, envious of the stars above.
The band strikes up a slow tune to help end the night. It is quiet and soft and oddly reminiscent of the 40s. Brooks pulls me onto the field and I lean against his chest.
The smell rolling off his skin is making me dizzy again. Or I’m being weak again. Goddamn.
“Stay.” Brooks breathes into my hair.
“I already stayed an extra week.” I remind him. “So did you.”
Day 21 is tomorrow. Seattle is tomorrow. But I still have tonight.
I close my eyes. We need to enjoy the last song.
We’re swaying on the field like some romantic comedy wannabes but hey it’s working for us.
“Plus you leave in three days, don’t you?” I ask.
“I don’t have to be in NC until next month. Think of all that time. You know, maybe we can visit–”
“Let’s not go there.” I interrupt him. We must avoid this discussion. “We both have lives to get back to.”
“I forgot. God forbid we have a real moment.”
“I just don’t like the idea of it,” I tease, smiling. I can tell he is trying to resist.
“Ok. Ok. I’ll drop it,” Brooks says.
“Glad we’re on the same page.” I nod.
He just rolls his eyes and tightens his hands on my waist.
We danced into the night, until our shoes became one with the field, until the music died out and we became surrounded by nothing more than the still silence of night.
We walk hand in hand back up the hill to his truck. Brooks unfolds a sheet and spreads it to cover the metal. He hoists me up into the truck bed and I let my legs dangle over the edge. He sits beside me and puts his around my shoulders.
“You’ve been waiting to get me up here all alone, huh?” I laugh at him.
“You caught me.” He tosses me his hoodie.
“Thanks,” I say, catching it. I pull it over my head.
We can see the entire fair from the hillside: The lights of the Ferris wheel slowly moving around in a circle. The sound of dying carnival music breaks the silence between us. The remnant smell of funnel cake wafts toward us on the light breeze. The fairgrounds start to clear out with people trickling through the front gates –parents carrying kids and kids carrying their new stuffed animal prizes.
Here we are: The last night.
“Still against a real moment?” Brooks asks, looking at me sideways.
“I’ve never been against it, not really. Not ready to face it maybe.” I answer honestly.
I can feel my heart swelling to ten times its size just looking at him now, next to me, the same boy I surrendered my heart to almost a decade ago. But we had such different lives then. We have such different lives now.
“We’re never really ready to face it. You know, we never even talked when we broke up.” Brooks sighs, rubbing his hands through his hair.
“Because there wasn’t much to talk about. We needed it to end. At that time, it was right. And then, well. You know.” I remind him.
“Yea, I know,” he says quietly. I can almost hear the hurt in his voice. “And now? This time?”
“What do you mean this time? It’s… still not right for us,” I almost laugh. “Brooks, we have different lives now. They don’t intersect.”
“What do you call these last three weeks? I think we intersected many times.” Brooks’s hand squeezes my thigh. Is he really doing this right now?
“I call them a catch-up. A beautiful one. The last three weeks we never got.” I smile. It’s a sad smile because:
1. I’m still a masochist and
2. The look on his face is crippling.
“That’s what you want it to be?” Brooks asks, his face suddenly intense.
I think of a million answers –each one more true than what I feel myself about to say.
“It’s what I need it to be.”
Oh yea and 3. I’M LYING.
“Come on, Ems. You’re talking like how we were. Not like how we are. We’re so different now. Better now.” Brooks says it and I know he means it.
“Better? Better! It only seems better because of how shit it was before. That’s no reason to try and make this real.” My voice sounds harsh, I know. Words harsher.
“How shit it was before?” Brooks repeats my words, staring at me. “It wasn’t ALL shit!”
“Didn’t say it all was. Although, must not have meant shit to you anyway,” I say.
I can’t help it. Every time it comes up I just remember he cheated on me anyway. Our relationship was a sham anyway –the good parts too.
“So this is because of me? Because of before?” He asks.
“Of course it’s because of before, Brooks! Just because your 26-year-old self has stopped acting like a douche bag long enough to fuck me again, doesn’t mean you’ve changed!” I try to keep calm.
“That’s not fair. I have changed,” Brooks says, arms crossed. We’re sitting on opposite ends of the truck bed now.
“Right. Yea, I bet.” I look away
from him.
“You don’t trust me?” Brooks asks, quietly. Hmm. He is half accurate. “You still don’t trust me?”
“Yes. And No. I don’t trust you, but Brooks I don’t trust myself either. I don’t trust us! We kind of make terrible choices. You know that,” I say, leaning into him. His hands are on my neck.
“We don’t have to be terrible anymore. Let’s break the pattern,” he mumbles against my hair. “We could make this work, if we wanted it to. I know I want to.”
“Brooks,” I whisper, warningly.
I don’t know what else to say so I hope he doesn’t ask for more. Not right now.
He doesn’t say anything. Just sighs. He takes my hand in his and raises it to his lips. His free hand tucks a loose piece of hair behind my ear, my ponytail a salty mess. I breathe in his smell as his hand rests on my cheek. Our eyes lock.
“One more time?” Brooks utters so V quietly against my lips. Waiting for my green light.
I respond with a kiss. A deep hot fucking wild kiss. Brooks jumps from the truck bed and stands between my legs.
The kiss awakens both of us. The goodbye in both of us. The goodbye we don’t want to say. Me more than him because I’m afraid. His grip tightens on my waist. I moan into his mouth. His fingers slip beneath my shirt as I unbutton his jeans. Brooks tugs on my hair and kisses my exposed neck. He reaches down between my legs and slides a finger in me.
I squeal at the light touch and lift my hips ever slightly toward him. I’m ready. I can feel him smile against my bare neck. He pulls away and pulls his finger out at the same time. I look at him, at his finger in front of me glistening in the flickering carnival light. He sucks his own finger and I swear I’m going to die.
This is goodbye sex. Not the time for teasing.
I wrap my legs around his waist and press my chest against his. My nails ~lightly~ dig into his hair as I hold his head to me. My free hand slides down his chest to his jeans again. He feels so good in my palm. I will savor every single second of this last time.
“Fuck me.” I command.
Brooks’s hands hold me in place. He enters me fast and hard. With one last kiss I move away from him and arch my back. I lay against the truck bed, my legs still wrapped tightly around his waist. His hands are under my ass, on my hips, and grazing along the top of my clit.
Again with the delicious torture.
My chest heaves up and down with each of his movements. Brooks rubs me tenderly and then faster. He picks up my hand and places it under his. He rubs my own hand over myself.
Fuck it’s hot. His eyes rake me in and I can see the satisfaction all over his face.
I’d stay like this forever, maybe. Definitely.
I will remember him like this. I know it. I promise it to myself. I won’t harp on the emptiness or the brokenness of our high school relationship. I won’t wonder all of the time WHAT IF. Instead, I’ll remember him like this. Pushing into me, breathing into me. The slight curve at the corner of his lips when he smiles. The look in his eyes when he collapses on top of me.
And then it’s over.
The unspoken end.
Of the sex.
Of the summer.
Of us.
It’s been unreal living my life the last three weeks like I never left this place. Caught up in a summer fling that was years overdue. We earned it –the two of us. It was great, but realistically we both knew what it was.
It’s happening again. The soundtrack is building.
These last few weeks flash through my mind in images and voices and a blur of colors all dancing to Good Times, compliments of All Time Low.
I’m leaving this sunset town. Tomorrow. It feels like the end of something that never really had a beginning. It’s the end of what was already the end. But now when I think of us, it won’t be of heartbreak, of two sad teenagers who lost love. It will be of two 26-year-olds who said goodbye.
Maybe the heartbreak can stay.
Halloween
“No seriously, you hang up.” I laugh into my portable Internet box.
“No, YOU!” Brooks says back to me.
Yes, we’re having this argument. The very nonsensical you hang up first argument.
“Brooks,” I sigh.
“OK. OK. I will hang up if you agree.” Brooks finally says. I can practically see the smirk on his face.
“No way! I won’t give in that easily.” I say. This has been my answer every time he has asked to visit me. I keep denying him, saying it as if I have the power to ban him from stepping foot in Seattle.
“Tell me you’re still thinking about it,” Brooks laughs.
“Maybe thinking,” I say, smirking to myself. I stop just out front of Go Zen. Zoë waves at me from the windows, where she’s currently rearranging the spider webs I hung up. I hold up two coffees and she gives me a thumb up.
“Em?” I hear Brooks on the other end.
“OK. I actually have to go now. Duty calls.” I don’t wait for his response. It’s what we do. We hang up on each other. We’re not big on goodbyes, the two of us.
It started on our first call. I was walking into my loft and dropped my phone and accidentally hung up on him. I called him back later that night and he said he liked it. It wasn’t final –like hanging up the phone without ending the conversation was somehow proof there would be another conversation.
And another.
Every now and then we video chat… until 3 AM.
But it’s not the norm. We aren’t dating. God, what a terrible word. I don’t even like thinking it. It’s a scary word. But today is meant for scary.
SPOOK SZN.
It’s spooky season. No, the zenith of spooky season, the culmination of a month’s worth of spook. It is Halloween.
First up tonight is a costume party at some bar in center city. I am meeting up with Zoë before at her friend’s apartment. We coordinated. We’re going as Catdog. NO weird human centipede shit going on. I’m cat. She’s dog. We’re cute.
I’m not like a cat cat. Think cat meets sexy cat meets stilettos.
I bought this skin-tight black leather bodysuit, matching black stiletto boots, pointed ears and belt that doubles as a tail. I used my eyeliner to paint a cute button nose on my own, complete with whiskers. OK, so it’s a pretty standard cat costume.
I get to her friend’s place –some huge apartment in a high-rise down town. I’ve only been here once before for a pregame. It’s sick. Also sick: The blood (festive) orange martini someone puts in my hand when I walk through the door.
“Sweet cat,” the guy says, walking past me.
“Thanks,” I say, “and for this.” I raise up the martini in a cheers kind of way and sip it.
Immediately this ‘pregame’ looks more like a full-on party. An entire bar is set up directly inside the door. I am assuming this is so that no one walks around empty handed. Thank God. There’s got to be a fog machine in here somewhere; the dense air is pressing against the glass walls like hot steam fogging a shower. I walk further into the apartment, under strobe lights (in lieu of regular ones).
It’s got all the trappings of a festive Halloween party: Faux spider cobwebs draping the tables, women (and some men) in aggressively slutty costumes, and tons of booze. There’s candy too. I reach the kitchen and find a fairy I recognize mixing a batch of punch. She owns this palace.
“Witches’ Brew,” she says, indicating the neon red colored liquid.
“Yum,” I nod.
“You’re Zoë’s friend, Emmy, right?” She asks.
“Yes, hi. You’re Tinker Bell, right?” I smirk.
“Yes! Thank you! My boyfriend says I’m not a fairy.” She rolls her eyes, stirring the pot.
“That’s because men are clueless,” I say without catching myself. She just laughs.
“I’m Sophie.”
“Great party, Sophie,” I say, sipping my blood again.
“Thanks, just a pregame,” she says.
I watch her pour in a pou
ch of Pop Rocks and a crackling issues from the brew. Def trying this shit later.
“Hell of a pregame.”