by Cindi Madsen
I arched an eyebrow, warning her not to say it.
“Opposed to heights, I’d think you would avoid carnivals.”
“Well, you’d think wrong. The Ferris wheel might be a no-go, but there plenty of rides with protective cages and security belts and… it’s just different.” I grabbed her hand and ran my thumb over her knuckles, hoping it’d help soothe her worry. “How about we just try a few rides? I’ll hold your hand the whole time and keep you safe, I promise.”
“After the tire and pet-food slinging incident, I know you’re strong and all, but you’re not the Hulk.”
“Are you sure about that? Have you seen me get angry enough to test that theory? I mean I’m not confirming or denying, but I’d also like to point out that you haven’t seen me and Superman in the same room, either.”
She rolled her eyes, but this time she lost the battle to hold back her smile.
“Come on.” I laced our fingers together. “I’ll let you pick the rides.”
She was seconds from giving in, and I lifted our entwined hands and kissed the back of hers to tip the scale. The second she reached for the car door handle, I knew I’d won. “Fine. I hope you like the merry-go-round.”
10 Gwen
The lights of the merry-go-round flickered in intervals, the electronic music sounding like it resented having to play the same notes over and over again. I glanced over at Evan, who sat atop a decked-out, inordinately pink horse. I’d chosen this ride first, just to show him I wasn’t kidding about my distrust of carnival contraptions. Only a yard or so off the ground, ninety percent of the other jockeys belonged in the ten and under age range. (The parents propping their kids on their ponies, bored expressions on their faces, didn’t count). And even then, I barely trusted it.
My stomach dipped and rose along with the horses’ movements, but then Evan reached over and grabbed my hand, and it went to somersaulting. The ride slowed after a ridiculously short time, and several parents picked their kids off their horses, while more stepped onto the ride to retrieve theirs.
Evan dismounted and walked up to my plastic steed. “I noticed you chose the unicorn.” He patted it on the head like he was commending it for being a good horsey during the ride.
“Well, I got sick of waiting for you to get me one on the black market.” I swung my leg over to climb off, and Evan placed his hands on my hips and helped me down, even though I was pretty sure both of us knew I didn’t need help.
As he slid his arms around my waist and pulled my back against his front, I was thinking maybe I should “need” help more often. His lips moved next to my ear, and my heartbeats scattered out of control. “Such little faith. I already have our sketchy back alley meet-up planned.” One hand slid around to my stomach, and his pinky dipped just inside the waistband of my shorts and brushed my skin. “You just need to be patient.”
“Suddenly I’m thinking waiting for things is overrated.”
The fingers still holding my hip gripped me tighter and my pulse rate skyrocketed. Evan’s voice dropped low and husky, and I felt the deep vibrations travel through me when he spoke. “I think we better sidebar this conversation until we get somewhere away from the merry-go-round and impressionable children.”
He didn’t give me a chance to answer, simply tucked me to his side and walked us off the ride. As soon as we were a reasonable distance away, he drew me to him and pressed his lips to mine. It started as a quick, closed-mouth kiss, but that taste wasn’t nearly enough. I went in again, and he didn’t waste any time reciprocating. Shared breaths, tangling tongues, so much heat I didn’t think I’d ever be cold again.
“How far away is this sketchy back alley?” I asked, slipping my hand in the pocket of his jeans and holding him against me, right where he should always be. “I feel like there are some other things I’d rather do in it right now.”
“Gwyneth!” Mock indignance filled his perfect, chiseled features. “You can’t just proposition me in the middle of our first date! At least not until you buy me some cotton candy!”
I laughed. “Fine, I’ll—wait. First date?”
“On our road trip, of course,” he said it lightly, but the playful gleam in his eyes faded, his smile along with it. Then he crossed his arms, basically cutting off my access to him. The mood shift baffled me. Obviously he was kidding about cotton candy, but I’d buy every damn bag at this carnival if I could get back the moment we’d somehow lost.
I wasn’t rambling. I didn’t tell an overly-long animal or work story… Usually I was the one to accidentally kill the mood, but as I replayed the last few minutes, I came up empty.
“My name’s not Gwyneth.” It’d taken me a minute to sort that out in the review.
A hint of fear flickered through his expression as he scrunched up his forehead, and I wanted that light to come on…
It remained disappointingly unlit.
“It’s Guinevere, remember? I told you how my mom was really into stories about the love triangle with Lancelot and King Arthur. Two guys, close as brothers, in love with the same woman. She found it all terribly romantic and saddled me with the name.”
“Ah…” I was sure he was about to make a joke, downplay his forgetting, or change the subject entirely. Not always listening led to those responses a lot, and it always left my feathers ruffled. But this was different. Because when I’d originally relayed the reason behind my moniker, I’d also confessed I was on the fence about my name, and he’d replied that he thought Guinevere was cool. Added something about how he’d be my knight, especially if it meant having a “kickass sword.” It was one of those things I held on to when I felt conflicted about our relationship.
It doesn’t matter. He’s really started listening over the past couple of days. I shouldn’t experience so much hurt over his forgetting something I told him a good month or so ago. Despite my best attempt to let it go, for the first time since we’d had coffee at Sacred Grounds, it made me worry once again that we were doomed to fail eventually.
“I should know that, and I’m sorry.” His blue eyes held so much sincerity, it thawed the ice that’d started to form over my heart.
“Well, I did tell you while you were playing videogames, and I should realize that conversations don’t sink in very well while you’re half in the virtual world.” I guess I should just be glad that he’d responded that he liked my name, even if he obviously hadn’t heard the first half of the story.
“No, that sucks.” Evan stepped closer, gripped my shoulders in his large hands, and looked me in the eye. “I promise you that during this trip, I’ll listen to every single word you say.”
I hooked my thumbs through my belt loops and rocked onto my heels. “I’ll be the first to admit that some of them are just filler, and that’s a lot of pressure. Can you maybe forget the ones I take back after I realize they’re lame?”
One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Sorry, no can do. They’re all getting permanently etched in the memory.” He tapped his temple, then placed his hand on the side of my neck, his thumb against the pulse point that beat more and more rapidly by the second. “But I’ll pretend to forget those ones.”
I threw a hand over my heart. “My hero. Even though I don’t know whether you’re the Hulk or Superman yet.”
I didn’t get as big of a smile as I hoped, but he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and began walking the path that wound around the carnival rides.
I vaguely noticed we’d joined the end of a line, but I was too busy worrying over Evan’s funereal mood to take it in. After a few seconds of silence, I couldn’t take it anymore. “I hope you’re not still beating yourself up about the name thing.”
“Names are… important,” he said, his gaze drifting somewhere far away.
“Okay, so we’ve reached the stating-the-obvious part of the evening? Water is wet. Humans survive on food.”
This time, both sides of his mouth got in on his smile—much better. “Smartass.” His grip on me tightened. “May
be I’m just finally revealing which superhero I am.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “Captain Obvious, pleased to meet you.”
“Ah, yes. An oft-forgotten superhero, that Captain Obvious.” For the first time since our… whatever it was… I took a full breath. We were going to be fine. We simply needed to get back to joking and flirting.
Only my sense of fineness evaporated when we neared the front of the line. For the Zipper. “Um, I think you mean you’re Captain Oblivious. This ride does not fit the agreed upon terms.” I tried to pull away, but he kept me next to him.
“But the heights,” I tried. “Look at how high this thing goes!”
“It’s maybe five stories, and the median lethal distance for falls of that height is about fifty percent, although the cage will not only prevent our fall, but protect us if there was some kind of freak accident. Much safer than the open rails you like to dangle off of.”
My mouth dropped open. “Stats?” My voice pitched higher. “You’re giving me stats? Who even are you?” I left my rhetorical question hanging as I attempted another tug to free myself from his embrace. “The open rail gives me the control, and I trust myself over a rickety machine.”
“Yeah, well after experiencing your ‘favorites playlist’, I don’t trust your judgment.”
I gasped. “A person’s favorites playlist is supposed to be sacred.”
He curled me to his chest, and I pretended to fight it for a second, but the temptation to be in his arms grew too strong. “Come on. Just take a risk with me—it’s a little risk.” He brushed his lips across mine and all the oxygen whooshed out of my lungs.
“Resorting to dirty tricks to get your way?”
“What can I say? You inspire a lot of dirty ideas.” He plunged his tongue inside my mouth and stroked it over mine. I practically melted in his arms, the ache between my thighs that’d pulsed to life several times today turning into an all-encompassing need when I felt his hardness pushing into me.
I didn’t care about the crowd of people around us. All I cared about was more, more, more. I moved my lips to his neck, his jaw, up to his ear. “You definitely feel like the Man of Steel right now.”
He made a raw, hungry sound in the back of his throat and then pulled away, and my hazed, blissed-out state left me scrambling as to why.
The next thing I knew, Evan was handing tickets over to the guy working the Zipper, and I had a feeling he’d situated me in front of him to hide the arousal now pressing against my butt. Then I was being strapped inside a metal death trap.
“Wait,” I said, even though the carnival operator dude was already on to the next set of victims.
Evan intertwined my fingers with his. “Don’t worry. I got you. And you can squeeze as hard as you need to.”
I squeezed, my stomach rocking with the cage as we moved a few feet. “Omigosh, omigosh.”
“Okay, I underestimated your bone-crushing abilities.”
“Sorry, you don’t get to take it back, just like I can’t take back being foolish enough to get on this ride with you. Let the record show, I was coerced. Coerced, I tell you!”
Evan’s low laughter filled my ear, and under other circumstances, I might’ve found it sexy—okay, I still found it sexy.
The people behind us finished loading into the next cage, and the metal slide of the lock sliding into place sent my blood pressure screeching into the danger zone.
Then we soared a few feet higher, our suspended cage level with the nearby buildings and trees. I made the mistake of scooting forward and looking at the ground underneath us. I squeezed Evan’s hand even tighter, tight enough I cut off my own circulation, so I was sure his was long gone by now.
The operator locked up the last cage, which meant this ride was about to shift into holy-shit territory.
“Wait, wait, wait.” I turned to Evan, imploring him with my eyes. “I want off.”
“I… don’t exactly have the power to make the ride wait.”
Panic dug its claws into my lungs. “What kind of a superhero are you anyway?”
“The fake kind,” he replied with a way-too-amused grin. I scowled at him, wincing as the cage swung back.
The whine of the engine grew louder, and tight, ready-to-snap tension stretched my muscles.
Then Evan placed his hand on the side of my face and slanted his lips over mine. I threw all my anxiety into the kiss, and it helped take the edge off.
Okay, it’s not so bad. As long as I didn’t look down, because out of the corner of my eye I saw we now we were even higher than the trees and oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.
“If we live through this,” I mumbled against his lips, “you owe me ice cream. I’m talking multiple scoops and hot fudge and all the toppings.”
“Deal,” he said, and then the ride jolted into motion and my scream was left in the dust.
Five ridiculously intense rides where I’d wrapped myself around Evan later, my legs and body had turned gelatinous after moving too fast for too long.
And I was still wrapped around Evan. That move was like twenty percent the-ground-felt-unsteady-under-my-feet, and eighty percent enjoying-being-wrapped-around-him.
He slowed in front of the booth with a tower of milk bottles people tried to knock over for prizes. “To make up for dragging you along on all those rides—which I know you enjoyed, even though you’ll never admit it—I’m going to win you a prize.”
“One, I enjoyed them as much as anyone who thinks too much about every bolt and rickety part can, and two, these games are all rigged.”
“No faith,” he said, shaking his head.
“That’s what happens when you’re tricked into riding death traps in the name of ‘fun.’”
Evan lowered his lips to mine, and the way my stomach dipped and my skin hummed was a hundred times better than any thrill I could get from even the most insane carnival ride. “And now to wow you with my other talents.”
The guy handed him five balls for his five dollars, and Evan lined up for his throw. He launched the ball through the air, and while the speed and the way it smacked the bottles was impressive, they didn’t go down.
Since I like to be super helpful, I said, “See. Rigged.”
Evan quirked his eyebrow at me, then picked up the next ball and threw it. Another hit, but the bottles barely wobbled.
“I gotta be honest, I was more wowed by the kissing.”
He pinched my side, his grin bringing out the sexy grooves in his cheeks. Determination set his jaw as I handed him the next ball. Three more throws, three more times the stack wobbled but didn’t go down.
“One more round?” the guy working the booth asked. Then he looked at me. “How about I give the lady one throw for free? I won’t even straighten the bottles.”
He pulled a bright-red ball out from under the stand, and with a shrug, I reached for it. Not like I had anything to lose. I studied the ball, noticing it looked bigger than the ones Evan had been using, and it felt heavier as well.
The guy working the booth gave me a secretive smile I quickly returned.
“Do you need me to wrap my arms around you under the pretense of teaching you to throw?” Evan asked.
“Hmm. While I like the thought of that, I think it’d be safer for everyone if you gave my throwing arm a wide berth.”
He took an exaggerated step back and placed a protective hand over his package.
“Very funny.” I sucked in a deep breath, cocked my arm, and threw for all I was worth.
The ball collided with the bottles, and they went down with a loud clatter. I jumped up and down and added a maniacal laugh. The guy working the booth pointed at the stuffed animals I could choose from.
“Way to show me up,” Evan teased as he came up behind me, wound his arms around my waist, and rested his chin on my shoulder.
I glanced back at him. “What prize do you want?”
“You won it for me, huh?” he asked, and I nodded.
“I want you to have a souvenir to
show off to your friends when you brag about how well I take care of you.”
He moved his lips to the column of my neck and dropped a kiss there, and my entire body broke out in goosebumps. “Then I want the unicorn riding the rainbow, of course.”
“Oh, sure. Promise me a unicorn, then rub it in my face when you get one.”
The guy handed me the colorful stuffed creature, and I studied my prize as we walked away. “This unicorn’s more than riding the rainbow; he’s totally humping it.”
Evan’s soft chuckle sent happiness pinging through me. “Horny magical creature.”
That made me snort-laugh, and I hugged the dirty unicorn to my chest, already sure it was going to be my all-time favorite souvenir.
As Evan guided us away from the flashing lights and noise of the carnival, I rested my head on his shoulder. I loved how securely he tucked me against his side, his hand wrapped firmly around my hip, so he could easily maneuver us around the clumps of people.
This wasn’t just the best date Evan and I had been on, but the best one I’d ever been on. It seemed like we were under some kind of magical spell, and I couldn’t help worrying it was one with an expiration date. That I’d be left standing in a tattered dress and pumpkin guts at the end.
It’s just your trust issues flaring. I’d been in a relationship that seemed perfect before, only to discover how blind I’d been, and it made it hard to not only trust people, but also to trust my own instincts.
My brain chose that moment to remind me about the mini rough patch we’d had after he used the wrong version of my name. We’d turned the night back around, though, and if anything, that showed we could handle a few bumps, right?
If I really wanted to see if Evan and I could work long-term, I needed to go all in. Fully commit and give our relationship everything I had, which included trusting myself and trusting him. Then maybe there wouldn’t have to be an end.
“You look like you’re thinking real hard,” he said.