“You need an arm around the shoulder? A handhold, perhaps?” He was smiling that overconfident, got-this-in-the-bag smile. I could hear it.
“Shut up. I find it necessary to point out that you haven’t eaten a single Twizzler all day.”
He didn’t say anything. With a swell of bravery and desperation for headache relief, I opened my eyes.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
For future reference: Telling yourself to not look down only encourages you to look down quicker. Yeah, I looked down. And screamed. Out loud. At a shrieking decibel I didn’t know I was capable of. We were stopped somewhere in the middle. We hadn’t even reached the top, and I was ready to sing my hallelujahs and bow out.
“Shhh.” Snake laughed, trying to calm me. “It’s okay.”
I made an inhuman noise.
He grabbed my hand and laced his fingers through mine. “You win, okay? I’m the one who needs it.”
I looked into his eyes. They were smiling back at me. “But you’re not. You’re fine.”
“It’s not heights I’m afraid of,” he whispered, his breath cloudy against my skin. “Trust me, you won.”
The ride started up again, pulling us toward the blue-blackness of the sky. I dug my nails into Snake’s hand. He groaned in the back of his throat, but tried not to show it. We stopped again, two spaces from the top. I was shivering, from cold or fear or Snake. I hadn’t figured myself out yet.
I had to admit, disappearing into the sky was a whole lot easier holding Snake’s hand. He felt like a vision. He felt safe.
“I haven’t gotten the urge,” Snake said, gently rubbing his thumb against my hand.
“The urge to what?”
“Chew. You said I hadn’t eaten a Twizzler all day. I haven’t gotten the urge.”
“Where does it come from? The urge.”
“I don’t know. Depression, I think.”
The ride kicked into gear again, and I knew the next destination was the top. Once we made it, I was used to the feeling of suspension. It didn’t bother me so much. I could notice things my fear wouldn’t let me.
The air was chilly. We were next to the lake. It was a full moon. Orion and his belt marched across the skyline. Stars. Lots of stars.
I turned to Snake, and he was watching me. I knew that face too well. Desperate wanting. Excessive needing. Desire. He leaned in, his lips parted.
“You can’t kiss me on top of a Ferris wheel,” I whispered into his open mouth.
“No?” he breathed.
“It’s cheesy. They do it in every chick flick.”
“That’s why we have to do it. It’s expected. So expected that the predictability of it is undone when you do it aware of the expectation. It’s reverse irony. It’s so expected, it’s unexpected.”
“That makes no sense.”
He let go of my hand and wrapped it in my hair, clenching tight. His eyes were hungry. Enlivening. Unusually interesting. I leaned into his touch, into his waiting body. I leaned because I wanted to. I needed to.
“We don’t make sense,” he said. A smile escaped him, and his lips touched mine so softly I wondered if I’d imagined it. “Now, shut up and let me kiss you before I’m out of my moment.”
He drew my lips against his in one smooth tug. His breath was hot against the cool wind, seeping into my anxious, eager mouth. He traced his fingers along the back of my neck, and my whole body chilled.
I remembered the first time we kissed, how simple he’d kept it, how it was just an awkward first kiss to get to the slightly less awkward second. But this was the second, and there was nothing awkward about it. There was nothing routine about the way he stroked the skin along my neck or how he gently grazed my lower lip with his teeth or how he tasted like boy instead of candy. He had been holding back on me the first time. Damn him.
We began to descend from the top, or at least I thought we did. We could have been sitting on a park bench or lying in the grass or floating aimlessly through outer space, and it wouldn’t have felt any different than riding a deathtrap in the sky. I could only feel his curly hair tickling my cheeks, his silky lips mastering the curvature of mine, his hands . . . well, everywhere.
When his lips released me, we sat with only a cold, powdery breath between us. His hand was still gripping my hair, and I felt motion sick, or dizzy, or something that had nothing to do with the ride. His eyes were amazing. How had I never noticed how amazing they were? The blue alone was more alive than I ever was, the only difference being his eyes didn’t have a heart trying to claw its way out of its chest.
Of course, my heart was its own monster. A selfish one that kept only itself alive. The rest of me, on the other hand, hadn’t fared so well. I died on top of the Ferris wheel exactly as I’d thought I would. Just not from the kind of falling I had predicted.
Snake and I ran up to his room the moment we got back to his house. I sat on the edge of his bed as he dug through his dresser for a pair of pants. I wasn’t ready to go home yet. After last night, I’d be grounded for life. I figured there was no better way to spend my last moments of freedom than hiding out (see: making out) with Snake.
He yanked out a pair of mesh shorts from the bottom of his drawer. “These okay? They’re the smallest pair I have.”
“Ugly, but they’ll do.”
He moved to the edge of the bed. “Funny. I could say the same about you.”
“Jerk!” I yelled. He was close enough for me to reach him. I grabbed him by the waist and tackled him to the bed. Unfortunately, my sneak attack backfired. He landed directly on top of me, my chest crushed beneath his weight. “Can’t breathe,” I mouthed.
He pushed up on his elbows. His hair was dangling in my eyes, a leg perched on either side of my waist. Passionate eyes, the eyes from the Ferris wheel, regarded me through wispy curls. But it wasn’t his eyes I was focused on. It was his lips. His soft, skillful, capable-of-anything lips. I wondered just how much he was still holding back.
“I don’t mean it,” he whispered breathily. A finger glided along my cheek, making an agonizing journey to my neck. His eyes were focused on something too. And it sure as hell wasn’t mine. “You’re crazy beautiful.”
“As beautiful as Carla?” I quipped.
Great. I had brought her up again. I must have been trying to break the record for most stupid comment to make when you’re about to make out with a guy. Bring up his ex-girlfriend—?that’ll do the trick.
His fingertip paused at the bottom of my neck. “Stop talking about Carla. That’s not fair.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You want an answer? No. You’re not as beautiful as Carla. Come on, the girl’s worked seventeen years for that title. She earned it. To compare you would be to put you in the same category as her, and I can’t.”
“Then what am I?”
“You’re terrifying,” he whispered, stroking my face. “And destructive. And overwhelming. And, let’s face it, a little violent.”
“So all horrible things?”