I chuckled, shaking my head as I entered the shop. “Good to see you’re still talking shit!” I yelled out, pulling my phone out from my back pocket.
Gengy’s shit talking stopped and his attention came to me. He gave me a shit-eating grin. “Oh! B, my man!” Then he leaned over the counter and pulled me in for a hug. “Where you been, broki? I could slap you upside your head not coming to visit me more!”
“I know, homie, that’s my bad. You still haven’t gotten that sign fixed though…”
“Hey!” He shook his finger in front of himself. “Don’t come up here in your rich pretty boy sports car and your clothes and throw money at me like I’m some stripper and about to give you a lap dance, I told you, I can handle my own.”
“You’ve been telling me that since I was ten, and how much would that lap dance cost me? I got a couple dollars in here…”
“Smart shit!” He laughed, tossing a dishcloth over his shoulder. Gengy was a sixty-year-old, beer belly, pot smoking, foul-mouthed, stubborn son of a bitch. But he and I bonded from day one and the rest was history.
“Whatchu want, B?”
I yapped off the pizza’s I wanted to order and he went about making them. I looked down at my phone, catching up the texts from these idiots.
Nate: Why?
Jase: We haven’t been there in a while, B.
Eli: Got blunts?
Cash: Can I bring Cindy?
Hunter: Who the fuck is Cindy?
Cash: She’s the chick I’m fucking
Eli: What like right now?
Cash: Someone take this kid to school…
Eli: Who the fuck you calling a kid? I had your mom under me last week.
Brantley: I’ll gather the children and be there.
I shook my head. Fucking idiots. The lot of them. Sliding my phone into my pocket, I caught Gengy up on all my bullshit from the past year, paid for the pizzas, and then went back to the car.
“Just saying,” Tate mumbled through a yawn. “If I catch salmonella poisoning—I’m totally blaming you, B.”
I snorted. “Don’t let the outside fool you. He’s cleaner on the inside than most of those pretty thousand dollar strips we go to.”
“Huh, uncanny,” Tatum snickered, more to herself but I caught it. I was on edge about how this was all going to pan out come tomorrow. I’ve kept big fucking things from everyone, and eventually, those big fucking things turn into mountains. You water shit for long enough and it will help plants grow. I had a feeling Nate was about to lose his shit. I don’t know what game Nate was playing with Tatum, but I could see it fucking with her head. Aside from her, he always tried to brush off his feelings for Tillie, but we never bought it.
It was easy to say you don’t love someone when your feelings weren’t being shoved in your face every day by that person breathing the same air as you. It was why long distance relationships never worked. You don’t see that person for long enough, the illusion that your feelings slowly start to dissipate into thin air begins, then suddenly you wonder if you ever really felt anything at all and how could you fall so hard so fast and then just poof, feel like it’s nothing. You move on with your life, put it down to making memories, and live happily. Until you see her again. The air electrifies between you, eyes collide like comets shooting through the sky, and in those moments, your world has flipped fucking upside. Gravity unleashes you and once again, you’re falling. I don’t know about soul mates and all that bullshit that people like to bring it down to, but I know a bit about connection, and that shit never lies. The space between the next time you see each other can be as long as you want, and yeah, maybe you do subconsciously build a shield that gives you false security, making you think you never really had feelings for them to begin with, but that’s easy to do when you’re not seeing them day and day out. Feeling the magnetic pull that brought you together to begin with. It takes a second for two souls to connect. Connections never lie, and that’s why when their eyes attach again after so long, I know for damn sure that Tate will be fucked.
I pulled out of the parking lot and drove us towards CK’s. When we got there, I watched Madison’s face morph into horror.
“Bishop. I swear to God, if I get a riddle text, I’ll kill you. I’m not playing around anymore.”
I chuckled because her paranoia was valid. “Get out of the car.” I opened my door and stretched out. The old parking lot had hay barrels drifting in the wind and old dirt was kicked up in the air from us driving in.
Madison got out of the car, holding the pizzas. “Wow. How did I not know about this place?”
I walked around to her side and took them from her. “This place used to be the spot to hang out when we were kids. They shut down years and years ago, no one really knows why because business was always good. Tate climbed out, straightening her skirt.
“I haven’t been here in years.” Then she opened a pizza box and took a bite.
Madison was still staring at the old amusement park. I followed her line of sight. The entryway to the park was a rainbow-colored sign that read “Cranksy Klanksy’s Fun Park” in circus font. There was a single chain that linked one side of the entry to the other that had a panel with the words: “Trespassers will be prosecuted” on it.
“Come on.” I took Madison’s hand in mine and walked toward the entry, just as a few cars pulled up behind us. Doors shut and then Hunter and Eli ran up to us, taking a box of pizza as the rest of them laughed, heading deeper into the amusement park. I rolled my eyes.
Madison cranked her head over her shoulder to check on Tatum but she was already under Nate’s arm. I shook my head and sighed. He was walking on dangerous ground unless he was serious when he said he was over Tillie
“Is it safe here?” Madison asked me as I led her deeper into the gloomy park. It was a full moon, so it wasn’t too dark and the boys had torches and were running around like a pack of hyenas in heat.
“Yeah.” I pulled her under my arm and kissed her head. Dropping the rest of the pizzas onto a small table, I grabbed one box and jerked my head toward the old Ferris wheel.
“Nope.” She shook her head. “No, Bishop. I don’t do heights.”
I grinned. “Do you trust me?”
“No. Yes. No and yes.”
I stepped closer to her until I could smell her sweet perfume covering the old musk smell of the park. “What is it, Kitty, do you, or don’t you trust me?” I tilted my head. My eyes fell to her lips when she licked her lower one and tugged it into her mouth. My dick swelled in my pants. “Fuck,” I cursed under my breath, stepped forward and yanked her in the direction of the Ferris wheel.
“Promise me we will stay low.”
“I promise.” This time. The next time I brought her here, we were going to the top. She finally relaxed and stopped fighting against my hold. I ducked under the chains and she followed.
“Bishop…” she warned as we got closer to the floating chairs.
“Get in, Kitty.”
I stepped in first and sat down. It swung from my weight, but I was forty percent certain it was safe. Madison slowly stepped onto the thick plastic. When it moved, she squealed and then pounced on my lap.
“You’re cute as fuck.” I swiped her hair out of the way from her face and she blushed before sliding off my lap and sitting beside me. After a few seconds, I felt her body visibly relax from under my arm.
“Not so bad, huh?” I asked her, my eyebrow quirked.
She looked behind us, her eyes running over all the metal and hinges—that were no doubt rusted. “I guess not.”
“Next time, we’ll go to the top.”