Audrey gave me a perplexed look, but Diego shouted, “Fuck that! I’m gonna live forever!” as the ride fired up and the room lurched into motion. Diego howled—earning us glares from the preppy parents who probably presumed we were drunk—and the wave of bad music continued to assault our ears as Creed blurred into Nickelback.
The trucker-hat-wearing scarecrow at the controls continued yee-hawing like anyone cared. We were swept up in the spin and in the smell of metal and vomit and bleach. I was swept up in Diego Vega. In the way he sounded like he honestly believed he’d never die despite my telling him the whole world was on borrowed time; in the way he looked at me like I was someone other than Space Boy, a way that was impossible and endless. Diego looked at me and saw me. No one had seen me since Jesse.
The ride spun faster, so fast that gravity squatted on my chest and pushed the air from my lungs, and then faster still. Jesse fought the centrifugal force and flipped onto my panel, straddling me, his curly blond hair hanging in my face, his body pressed against mine. Audrey glared at us, disgusted, and the conductor yelled for Jesse to return to his slab. Jesse ignored him. Rules didn’t apply to Jesse Franklin, and I loved him for it.
We were whirling around so fast that Jesse couldn’t hold his head up any longer and buried his face in my neck, his chapped lips grazing my skin. He was insane, and I told him so as I wrapped my arms around him so tightly that nothing would ever tear us apart.
I nipped at Jesse’s ear and ran my hands up the back of his shirt. His skin was sticky with sweat. He smelled like the ocean.
“Never stop,” whispered Jesse.
“I don’t plan to,” I promised, and meant it.
The ride slowed, and our bodies began to separate, but that only made me hold Jesse closer. He kissed me so hard that I cut my lip on his teeth.
Jesse and I disappeared into a world where we two alone existed.
“Honestly,” said Audrey as the ride slowed to a stop, “can you stop dry humping my best friend?”
But we pretended we didn’t hear her, and I wrapped my arms around Jesse’s neck, and he kissed me like the world had fallen out from under our feet. We were two bodies floating in space, brighter than stars.
? ? ?
When the ride ended, Diego left me and Audrey hanging out by the Tilt-A-Whirl while he hunted for a toilet. I didn’t say much, and neither did Audrey. I was pretty sure we were both thinking about Jesse. Audrey picked at the peeling paint on the side of the ride and kept repeating that she was having so much fun. After the hundredth time, I craned my neck to look for Diego.
“How long have you guys been together?” Audrey asked.
I was standing on my tiptoes, looking over the crowd, and her question didn’t register right away, so I said, “Yeah, sure.” Then, “What?”
Audrey had this way of making you feel like the dumbest person in the room. She didn’t do it on purpose, but when she looked at you, you knew her brain worked on a level many times greater than yours. “I’m glad you’re not with Marcus anymore. If he doesn’t roofie someone before graduation, I’ll be shocked.”
“Diego and I aren’t together. He’s straight.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
Audrey furrowed her brow like she was staring at a math problem that had been marked wrong when she was certain it was correct. The calculations didn’t make sense, and Audrey hated for things to not make sense. “The way you were looking at him on the Gravitron . . .”
“I was thinking about Jesse.”
“Oh. But you like Diego, right?”
I wanted to tell Audrey how conflicted I felt. How I sometimes thought about Diego while jerking off; how, when I tried to recall memories of Jesse, Diego appeared in them instead. Jesse was dead, he’d committed suicide, but I still felt like I was betraying him for liking a guy who wasn’t even capable of liking me back. Audrey was maybe the one person who could have understood, and I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t. “Drop it, okay?”
“Fine. What do you want talk about?”
I spotted Diego walking toward us, but he stopped in front of the bumper cars, and I couldn’t see why. “I don’t know, Audrey.”
“Come on. Don’t be like that.” Everything about her was pleading with me to let it all go. Her eyes and her lips and the way her shoulders slumped.
“We did fine not talking at all for the last year,” I -mumbled.
“Maybe you were fine, but I needed you.”
Diego had clearly run into someone, but I couldn’t see who it was. “I was here. I’m not the one who left.” I just needed that stupid kid with his stupid balloon to get out of the way so I could see who Diego was talking to.
“I was hurting too, you know.”
Standing in the middle of the fair was not where I wanted to have this argument. I didn’t want to have it at all, but Audrey was maddeningly persistent. “Yeah, you were hurting so bad you took a three-month vacation to Switzerland. That must have been horrible for you.”