And that’s my kind of girl. That abandoned passion. That bottomless commitment. You don’t meet people like her often, and when you do, you never forget them. I couldn’t get her out of my mind before, but now . . .
I glance over at Bristol and Jimmi, who are playing water guns with Rhyson. It’s good to see the siblings laughing. Maybe they worked things out after I dropped Bristol off last night. They seem to be trying to enjoy the little time they have left. She leaves in two days. Why that feels so shitty this fast baffles me.
“Come on, Grip!” Jimmi eyes me over her shoulder as she sprays blindly at the target in front of her. “Grab a gun.”
“Nah.” I munch on the popcorn I grabbed a few booths back. “I’m good.”
Carnivals do have good popcorn. But funnel cake? I ate so much of it with Jade, the smell nauseates me. When they finish the game, the girls want to do rides.
“Ferris wheel.” Jimmi presses her hands together in a plea to Rhyson. “Please ride with me.”
Rhyson carefully considers the girl who has been one of our closest friends since high school. She’s also had a crush on Rhyson about as long as she’s known him. He’s very careful with her heart, though, encouraging her as little as possible. Rhyson gets as much ass as I do, but he’s just on the low with his shit. He knows there should be a huge KEEP OUT sign all over him for Jimmi.
“Okay, we can ride.” Rhyson holds up an index finger. “Once, Jim. I know how you get. All ‘again, again’.”
“Cool.” Jimmi’s expression may be calm, but her eyes dance all over the place. “We can talk about that song I’m working on.”
She knows him well. As soon as she says that, Rhyson is in. Talking music theory and asking about chord changes will occupy them for the whole ride.
“We’re down to ride, too.” Luke, the other guy we’ve been tight with for years and a fellow arts alum, hooks his elbow around his girlfriend Mandi’s neck.
“I ate that polish sausage.” Mandi looks a little green. “Think I’ll be okay on the Ferris wheel?”
I wouldn’t trust it. You can’t ever un-see projectile vomit, and there’s nothing sexy about that.
“So, you’ll ride with Grip then, Bristol?” Jimmi looks between the two of us with a gleam in her eye. Don’t let the blonde hair fool ya. Jimmi’s sharp as a new pair of scissors. She probably picked up on the vibe between Bristol and me last night. We don’t need her matchmaking. I’m trying to figure out how not to complicate this situation more. The last thing we need is be alone on the—
“I’ll ride.” Bristol stuffs her hands in her pockets and looks at her feet. “I mean, if you want to, Grip. Since everyone else is. Up to you.”
She looks up at me, wearing not much makeup at all. Just as beautiful. A threat to my peace of mind.
“Weren’t you scared of heights?” Rhyson asks his sister, a reminiscent smile playing around his lips.
Surprise flits across Bristol’s face.
“Uh, yeah. For a little while. Sometimes.” She laughs, covering her mouth with one hand. “Mother sent me to therapy for it. Remember that?”
“God, yes.” Rhyson’s face lights up. “Didn’t she send you to therapy for biting your nails, too?”
“And for wetting the bed. I was three! Since she was never there, therapy was Mother’s parenting alternative,” Bristol says dryly.
Wow. Their mom does sound like a piece of work, but Rhyson and Bristol are laughing about it as if it’s nothing that their mother sent a three-year-old to therapy for bed wetting. Just two prisoners, reminiscing about doing their time. Only Rhyson escaped, and Bristol stayed behind bars.
The ride is crowded, and there aren’t any available cars near each other, so we’re all spread out, leaving Bristol and me strapped into this small space and relatively alone. At first, the only sound is the whir of the motor and distant squeals from the ground below. After a few moments of quiet between us, Bristol snickers. I glance at her to see what’s so funny, but she isn’t even looking at me. She’s looking down at the ground, which is growing smaller and smaller as we ascend.
“What?” I ask. “You laughed. What’s up?”
She turns her head, and her laughter slowly leaks away until the only thing left of it is a shadow in her eyes.
“I was thinking about my mom sending me to therapy for biting my nails.” She shakes her head. “I spent so much time in therapy, I knew the therapists about as well as I knew my nannies.”
“You had nannies?”
“Sure.” She laughs again, but this time bitterness tinges the sound. “Who else was going to raise me with my parents trailing Rhyson on the road most of the year?”
“That sucks.”
I want to say more, but feel it might the wrong thing. Like how her mom should have stayed her ass at home with Bristol instead of forcing Rhyson to perform most of his childhood or leaving him addicted to prescription drugs. But that might be too much.
We reach the top of the wheel, and both of us look over our respective sides at the ground. When I turn back into the car, Bristol’s face has gone pale, and her breath comes in little anxious puffs.
“Hey, you okay?” I lean into her space, grasping her chin to turn her face to me.
“Yeah. I just—” She closes her eyes and clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip. “I shouldn’t have looked down.”
“Are you still scared of heights?”
“Sometimes.” Her eyes are still closed, and she pulls in deep breaths through her nose and blows them out through her mouth. “This used to help.”
“If you’re still scared of heights, why’d you want to ride this thing?”
When she opens her eyes, I almost wish she hadn’t. There’s a vulnerability at odds with Bristol’s bold persona. There’s a question there that she’s afraid to voice, and I know just as surely as if she’d said it aloud that she got on this ride to spend time with me. She drops her lashes and fidgets, bending her body over the bar holding us in and folding her arms on top of it.
“Just don’t look down.” I clear my throat, looking away from her, too. “We’ll be finished soon.”
Only we don’t move at all for the next few seconds. And then more seconds.
“What’s going on?” Low-level panic infiltrates her voice. “Why aren’t we moving?”
“They just kind of pause sometimes,” I lie. “Probably just so we can get a good look at everything.”
Her laugh catches me off guard.
“They just kind of pause?” She rolls her eyes, looking more like the confident Bristol I’ve gotten to know the last few days. “You’re a better liar than that.”
“I don’t lie.” I shrug. “Ask anybody. I’m honest as Abe. You know how you’re in a group and someone farts? And no one claims it?”
“Don’t tell me.” She giggles, resting her cheek on her folded arms and looking at me. “You claim it.”
“If I do it, then I claim it.” I grin at her, glad to see some of the color returning to her face. “I have no shame, but at least I’m honest about my shit.”
Just as I’m thinking crisis averted, an announcement reaches our ears from the ground that there is a technical problem they’re working on, and we should be moving in a few minutes.
“Minutes?” Bristol peers back over her side.
“Don’t look down, Bris.” I’ve never shortened her name before like that, the way Rhyson does, and I shouldn’t like how intimate it feels.
“Okay. I promise not to freak out unless they leave us up here much longer.”
“And if we are up here much longer?”
“Then I can’t make any promises.” She runs an anxious hand through her hair. “I’m not scared of heights in general. I can go up elevators and stuff. This is the only thing left from my old fear. Being in an open ride like this and suspended over the ground. I just can’t stop thinking that I could fall so easily.”