by Dylan Heart
The tension in his arms breaks, the impossibly strong grip he had on me becomes lax, and I slide off his thighs and onto my own two feet. It’s as if I’m learning how to ride a bike again—it’s a chore to stand on my own after being carried into another world.
I’ve been freed.
Chapter Sixteen
We tumble out the backdoor of the attraction. I laugh through the cotton of my shirt as I pull it over my chest. Behind me, I hear Blue fumbling to click his belt buckle together. With my shirt back on, I spin toward him. My shoe slips against the mud and I begin to fall, but my clumsiness is no match for his speed. He steadies me as I chuckle at the physical comedy of it all.
I’m lost in him. Lost in the way he smirks at me with that smile handcrafted by God himself. Lost in those blue eyes that shine like the Milky Way, the neon reflections of the carnival like stars on a clear night.
I mean to speak, but nothing comes out. It’s like I want to say something, but the part of my brain that controls my mouth is defending me from myself. If I said a word, I’d ruin this beautiful moment. The galaxy wants this. I want this. There is nothing in the world that could ruin this moment. The moment that I know, with every fiber within me, that I lo—
“That’s great.”
I hear things now. Blue’s lips don’t move, but I hear him speak. He’s reading my mind. Or I’m reading his. I should probably sit down.
“Really great.”
From behind me? I turn around and everything breaks. The big fucking bang.
“How long have you been standing there?” I say to Dillon, whose head shakes sideways, disdain pouring out of his soul.
“Long enough.”
I brush Blue’s arms off me and step toward him. “Dillon...”
“You know what, Charlie? How about we don’t?”
I shake my head. “Don’t what?”
“Talk about this,” he says, “or about anything ever again.”
His eyes emote more than his words. He’s not crying. I don’t think he could if he tried. Some people are just built strong like that. Or they suffer some disorder where their tear ducts are permanently dry. That’s the kind of guy Dillon is, but his eyes are washed in a whirlpool of emotions, and I’ve never seen him this way before. Not the day I broke up with him and not the day that I stood by his side as we buried his father.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to comfort him, but that seems to be a chore, and I think that’s my fault. Or the Molly’s.
“Don’t!” he barks at me, his voice one decibel away from breaking. He swats his hand at the air, a gesture I’ve seen before. He’s about to take off. And that’s what he does—he turns and hurries from the scene. I ball my hand into a fist, but not out of anger. It’s a feeling I can’t comprehend. My eyes get heavy and the rain begins to build.
Blue rests his hand on my shoulder, giving me a moment of comfort before I rush away from him and toward Dillon. I’m sluggish as I approach him, the weight of my body fighting against the weight of the world. I’m spinning, but this isn’t a carnival ride I can enjoy. Hearts are breaking all around me like thunder, and for the first time, I’m regretting the Molly. I can’t help but feel I’d be better suited to handle this situation if my mind were clear. Never mind the probability that I wouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place.
I catch up with Dillon and reach out for him, but he swats my hand away as he spins to face me.
“Didn’t I tell you we’re not doing this?”
“I don’t think that’s for you to decide.”
“Guess what?” he says, and waves his hands at me. “You don’t get to tell me when I’m angry.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I say as I finally catch my breath. “I didn’t want you to see any of that.”
“I’m an adult. I think I can handle that.”
“Then what are you so angry for?” I ask softly. My gut knows the answer but something inside needs confirmation.
“Because it’s you, Charlie. The only girl I’ve ever been with—the only girl I’ve ever loved.” He’s calmer now. His voice comes down to a level that can just barely be heard above the pumping hydraulics of the tea cups behind us.
It’s the second time in as many minutes that I’ve wanted to speak, but I can’t force the words to come out. I can feel the frustration in his voice. He’s waiting for me to respond. I want to give him the one thing he needs, which, like me, is confirmation.
“I. Loved. You.” He places emphasis on the beginning of each word. “And you loved me.”
“I did.”
“And now you’re stumbling out of a carnival attraction, putting your clothes back on after getting fucked inside?” He looks me up and down, sizing me up, but resting on my eyes. “You look like you’re on drugs, coke or Molly, and I’m not sure which it is because I obviously don’t know you anymore.”
“Maybe you don’t,” I say, deadpan. It’s a revelation that’s the same for the both of us. “Things change. I’ve changed.”
“Don’t I know it.” He’s still shaking his head, and underneath all these layers of mixed emotions, it’s starting to grate on me.
“This isn’t about me, is it?” I ask him pointedly. “This is about Blue, right?”
“It’s about both of you. What does he have on you?”
“I think I love him. That’s what he has on me.”
He huffs. “Well, you said you loved me, too, so I guess that doesn’t mean a lot.”
I feel my tongue roll across my lip. “You have to let me go, Dillon.” There’s a quiet desperation in my voice, as if I need that more than he does. If he lets me go, then I have nothing holding me back. Nothing to leave me so torn.
“I have. Just now. In this moment, I am letting you go.”
It sounds like confirmation, but it actually just makes it sting even worse.
“Why don’t you go back inside and do another line,” he says, dismissing me.
“That’s not fair.”
“That’s great, Charlie. Really. Do you need to be reminded why we’re not together?”
Coming from my side, I hear two kids laughing. I remember those days. The two kids cut between Dillon and me, chasing each other with inflated plastic swords. I’m hoping they cut this conversation short because I already know where it’s going.
“In case you’ve forgotten, you left me.” He begins to close the distance between us. He’s about eight feet away, and I’m beginning to understand claustrophobia. “You said you couldn’t do the long distance thing. That you were going to college, and I didn’t fit into your perfect little plan.”
Everything he says is true.
“When did you know you weren’t actually going? Was it after you hooked up with him?”
“No,” I say. “Of course not.”
“As much as I love you, I was willing to let it go. Willing to let you go and do whatever it was that you needed to do, hoping that someday you would come back to me. But it’s become apparent that I’ve lost you.”
“You don’t have to lose me,” I say tenderly, and then, like drums beating, preparing for war, I continue with, “but you can’t have me.”
The world goes silent.
He pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers, then rolls them into his eyes, wiping away the tears that I’ve just noticed are actually there. I will forever be the first person to ever make Dillon Parker cry. The punch to my stomach is intolerable.
“Fine,” he says, defeated.
“I’m sorry,” I say under my breath. It’s so quiet that I know he can’t hear it.
“Go back to your carnie.” He waves me off. “He’s waiting for you.”
He walks away, probably for good. And I’ve never bled as badly than I am in this moment, watching someone I truly care about walking out of my life against the neon-lit background of a carnival painted against an impossibly black sky.
This is what it feels like to lose innocence.
; Blue’s breath against my skin startles me. I have no idea how long he’s been standing there. He’s fully dressed now and I’m a blank-faced, emotional mess, yet somehow I still manage to notice the way his shirt sticks to his sweaty chest, outlining every muscle in his upper body. Must be the Molly.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah...” I trail off. “Let’s go somewhere.”
His eyes light up. “I know just the place.”
We’re lying in the grass beside Blue’s Jeep. We’re just on this side of the chain-link fence that separates the field from the carnival. Above us, the Ferris wheel cycles perilously close to the fence. A strong wind could topple the six-shot revolver of death onto us. But I’m growing fond of living life on the edge, and it doesn’t even feel dangerous anymore.
In slow motion, faded neon colors brush against the cool skin of Blue’s face. He’s different in this light, and I’m seeing things in him that I’ve never seen before. Just underneath his beautiful blue eyes, underneath the right one, is what appears to be a scar hidden by lapses of time. There’s a story there and there’s nothing I want more than to know what it is.
But how do I bring it up?.
“You’re looking at my scar, aren’t you?”
I guess that settles it. I answer with a nod.
He rubs his forefinger against his tongue, getting it wet, and then rubs it across the skin surrounding his eye. The scar bleeds into life, and time hasn’t really hidden it at all.
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” he says. “One of those in my past things.”
And I guess it’s one of those things I’ll have to wait to find out. There seems to be a pattern here.
“It happened during a bar fight.”
A soft laugh swells deep in my throat. Of course it did. He’s like a bad boy who’s not so bad. Not like all those guys you see on television, covered in tattoos with a bike or two stashed in their garages. Not at all. He has a string of bad decisions under his belt, but who doesn’t?
I scoot across the damp grass to get closer to him. He puts his arm under my shoulder, and he cradles me, pulling me close. He kisses the top of my head and I can’t wipe the smile off my face. I’m one of those girls who have the best boyfriend in the world. And all the other bitches who think they do are just fooling themselves.
“Tell me more,” I say.
“Huh?” he asks, rolling his head toward me.
I look up to his face, where his confusion is prominent. “About the scar.”
“Well,” he sighs, “it hurt like a bitch.”
“Yeah?”
He nods his head. “Ever had a beer bottle smashed against your face?”
My lips purse. “Nope. Can’t say that I have.”
He smirks and brushes my hair back out of my face. “That’s good. I’d hate to have to kill someone.”
Then something passes over his face. I can’t pinpoint the emotion, but the smirk fades.
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re intuitive.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“It’s nothing.” He combs his fingers through my hair. He knows I don’t believe him, probably because I’m a terrible actress. Being a movie star was never in the cards. “Really, don’t worry about it.”
“Can I touch it?” I ask. I’m fixated on his scar and desperate to change the conversation from something he doesn’t want to talk about to something he already has talked about.
He blinks as he nods his head again.
I reach slowly toward his eye. I’m not sure if it’s the effect of the drugs wearing off or just my nature, but I’m being very gentle about the whole affair. Too gentle. My finger connects with the tip of the scar below his eye. It’s raised and uneven. It’s not the most intimate we’ve ever been—hello... House of Mirrors–but this feels different. Sure, he’s been in me twice now, but this is vulnerability right here.
I trace my finger down, over his eye that is now closed, and rub against the bottom half of the scar. Then it hits me. “You wear makeup,” I accuse as I laugh.
He opens his eyes and pushes my hand off him. “Yeah, yeah. Get your laughs in.”
“I didn’t mean to laugh—”
“I get it,” he cuts me off. “It just happens.”
“I don’t think you should.”
“Cover it up?”
“Yeah. It’s beautiful.”
He slips his arm back underneath me and holds me tight. That word, beautiful, is one of the last things most men want to be associated with, but Blue’s not like that. Even though it wasn’t about aesthetics, something else—something deeper. Something about our histories defining us. Something like that, but it’s too complicated to think about in this state, so I think I’m just going to stare at the stars.
Between the glow of the carnival and the dark clouds that long ago settled in the sky, they’re not very visible. In the center of the darkness, there’s a cluster of stars, but it takes some squinting to see, and I’m so not in the mood.
“We should stay here,” Blue muses out loud. “Forever.”
“That’s quite a commitment.”
“For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m home.” His arm shifts under me. “And you’re a big part of that.”
My cheeks flush, filling with happiness—much cheaper than Botox injections.
“I’m being serious,” he continues.
I turn on my side to face him. “What about Vegas?” I question. “We talked about it when we first met.”
“I remember.” A smile hitches up the side of his mouth. “It’s on the to-do list.”
“Could you really spend the rest of forever here?”
His turn to roll onto his side. “Happiness is hard to find, so I think that once you find it, you should do everything you can to hang onto it.”
“I’m inclined to agree.” I pause and think how to say what comes next. “But Lakeside has never seemed like home to me.”
His head tilts sideways. “Then why haven’t you left?”
“I’ve always wanted to leave this place behind,” I sigh, “but after my parents were divorced, my mom was a complete wreck. I kind of figured I owed it to her to take care of her, after everything she’s done for me. Then, out of the Blue,” I smile, immediately catching the unintentional pun, “she gets better and she wants me to go to college, and I don’t know if that’s what I want anymore. And I’m stuck here until I figure it out.”
“At least you don’t have to be alone,” he says. “Because I’ll be stuck in the mud right next to you.”
Emptiness. It’s devastating. Walking through a fresh-cut field and there’s no one around. That’s not the emptiness, though. It’s something else. My five senses are on overload as they try to absorb anything past the thickness of nothing.
I stand still. The world rotates around me, giving me a panoramic view of everything between the moon and me, but something’s missing, and I can’t quite put my finger on what.
The sky above me begins to illuminate and my eyes shift upward. The sky is being painted in neon colors. Happiness floods through my veins as if the mural somehow completes me. A face begins to form in the neon swirls.
It’s Blue, his face formed with brushes of paint that Photoshop couldn’t clone. He reaches out to me, his arm stretching an impossible distance. He grabs me by the hand and lifts me into the sky. Beneath me, the field blurs into a calm sea as I’m pulled into the stars.
Up here, we’re nothing but clouds. Blue places his hand beneath my chin and raises it ever so slightly. His eyes are the perfect storm of neon-blue whirlpools.
The colors of the world swirl around us—wrapping us in its beauty, and pushing us closer to each other. Just as we’re about to kiss, there’s a clap of thunder and everything goes black.
I was in the clouds, and now I’m looking at them. My legs hang over the side of Blue’s Jeep and my body lies against Blue’s bare chest.
I must have been dreaming when Blue carried me over to the Jeep, and I wonder if he did so as he lifted me into the sky.
I turn into his chest and press myself close to him. My head rests just below his, and I tilt upward and land a kiss on his cheek.
The last thing I see before I drift back off to sleep is the clouds rolling away, revealing a picture-perfect rendering of the starlit sky. Nothing in this world compares to being here, beneath this neon sky. That moment when your reality becomes better than your dreams can’t be described. It can only be felt. And I got the feels.
Chapter Seventeen
Everybody talks about how great Molly is—the people adventurous enough to try it, anyway—but nobody ever talks about the day after. It’s like going to heaven and then being ripped out of a world that isn’t ready for you to leave. Once you’ve been to the sea of Molly dreams, reality has a way of pulling you back to reality. I wonder if I would have done it if Blue had warned me that I would feel like an emotional hurricane the next day.
Probably.
All I want is to lie down, even knowing full well I couldn’t fall asleep again. We turn onto my street and a part of me isn’t ready for the night to end. Sure, the sun is well into the sky, but these last twenty-four hours feel like one night divided by artificial definitions of time.
A cool breeze, warmed by the piercing rays of the sun, brushes against my skin. Blue’s hair blows in the September wind. He looks so damn sexy in his knock-off Prada glasses. I could spend the rest of forever in this Jeep. Sex is the furthest thing from my mind—looking at him is enough for me to melt.
All my life, I thought I would marry Dillon. Even after we broke up, I could never shake the feeling that my life would come full circle with his. Then there is this boy who never should have been a part of my journey. Some people look at fairs and carnivals as festering grounds for lost souls. I never did. To me, they were magical places full of memories, especially for youth. Many first dates have transpired in these places. I don’t know the statistics, but I’m almost positive I’m one of a few who have ever fallen this far for a carnie. If my life leads me to the latest Jerry Springer knockoff, then that’s my decision to make.