24. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jackie
“ N o way,” I say. “That is such a bad idea.”
Silas plunks the antique (okay— vintage ) cotton-candy machine in the middle of the table.
“It’s a fantastic idea.”
I’m trying hard not to lose my patience, but I am already stressed enough without Silas unleashing a really, really messy, probably defective appliance that he doesn’t have the first clue about operating. In a ten-foot by thirty-two-foot enclosed space. Ten minutes before opening.
I take a breath and remind myself he is only trying to help. He is being nice.
“This isn’t the kind of thing you suddenly launch into, totally unprepared, at a time when things are already off the rails.”
“You didn’t plan for us to try this machine today. Or to sell cotton candy,” he says. “I get that.”
“It’s not that we didn’t plan for it…”
Okay, it totally is. But he would never get that.
”It’s that we’re not prepared for it.”
“Isn’t that the same thing as not planning for it?”
I don’t answer him, because he could be right.
“Even if it works,” I say instead. “We haven’t decided how much we’ll sell it for, or—”
“Two bucks a pop.” He shrugs. “There. Done.”
“We don’t have the special sugar for it. ”
Silas unleashes that mischievous grin again.
“Ahh, but we do.” He squeezes behind me and opens the large cupboard where I keep all my baking supplies. “Check it out.”
He removes two huge bags of floss sugar. Then a bag of narrow paper cones. His grin widens.
I really, really like his grin.
“The guy who dropped the machine off at the Book Barn gave them this stuff, too. They threw it in for free. And another three bags of the cone handles.”
I glance at the clock: the gates opened seven minutes ago.
“C’mon Jax…” he coaxes. “Lemme try it. Worst thing that can happen is it doesn’t work.”
Worst thing that can happen is he’ll cover the entire kitchen in sticky pink sugar. But I don’t say that. I don’t get a chance to, because he continues:
“I know you like to plan stuff, and that’s cool. But the worst stuff that happens is shit you didn’t plan for. Like, that you couldn’t possibly plan for. Like what happened with our parents. No one saw that coming.”
I can’t believe he just brought that up. I can’t decide if that’s a good sign or a bad sign. I definitely don’t see how he’s proving his point, though.
“But the best things are also stuff you didn’t plan for,” he continues. “I mean, usually. Not always… But come on, it’s a freakin’ cotton candy machine. Maybe it’ll bomb and make a huge mess. But maybe it’ll be a huge hit. Maybe I’m a future gourmet cotton candy chef and you could be ruining that life for me if you shut this down right now.”
I can’t help laughing. “There’s no such thing as a cotton candy chef, you goof.”
He holds up his index finger.
“Yet.”
And I laugh again.
“Okay,” I nod. “Sure, yeah. Go for it.”
“Holy crap,” he grins. “This is gonna be epic.”
As it turns out, Silas’ worst case and best-case scenarios are accurate:
The cotton candy is a huge hit.
And also, it makes a huge mess.
Actually, “huge mess” is an understatement: the entire inside of the camper is covered in strings of pink, sticky fluff. Possibly the outside, too. I just haven’t had a free second to step outside. It hangs like pink spiderwebs from the cupboard handles, the cookie racks, the edges of the table, the ceiling… Geez, the ceiling… it’s the worst. I can barely make out the paint color underneath the cloudy puffs of pink.
So - it turns out that spinning cotton candy isn’t as easy as Silas had predicted. It’s a trial by error sort of endeavor. Not that this seems to bother Silas one bit. He struggled with that thing for an hour straight before he finally figured it out. And just in time too, since we sold out of cookies a couple hours into the afternoon.
Trudy is the busiest she’s been this entire road trip. You’d think that cotton candy would be something mainly parents would buy for their kids. But it turns out, the later it gets, and the more the festival kicks into high gear and families with young kids leave for the day, the more customers we have. I’m guessing weed and liquor make the childhood treat even more appealing. Whatever it is, it’s good for business, and the two of us settle into a rhythm. I call out the number of orders, Silas spins them, and I hand them to customers and take their money.
Silas takes a brief five-minute break at ten to check in with Richard, but then he gets right back to spinning. And by the end of the night, we are a well oiled (sticky) machine. I am stunned when there’s a lull in customers and I glance over at the clock and see that it’s just after midnight; the lull is actually the final stragglers spending the last of their change before heading home.
We serve our final customers, exhausted and delirious from the giddiness of success. Silas turns off the outside light and I close the order window. When I turn back around, I bump into something solid.
Silas .
He must have just walked up behind me .
“Here,” he says, holding out a cotton candy almost twice the size of my head. “Made it special for you… Last one of the night.”
“It’s huge!” I laugh, taking it from him.
“That’s what they all say.” He grins, that same cocky smirk, and I roll my eyes.
I tear off a piece and pop it in my mouth. It melts almost immediately, and it’s… heaven. I forgot how much I love cotton candy. And now I get why we had so much business tonight.
“Wow,” I say, tearing off an even bigger piece. “Maybe you should become a cotton candy chef.”
“Already am.” He leans in and bites into the cloud of sugar. “Best in the country.”
After that, it’s quiet for a bit while we both stuff our faces with cotton candy. The high chatter of voices wafts in through the screen windows as the last of the concert-goers holler and laugh and call out their goodbyes to each other, still high on the lingering notes of the band’s upbeat encore.
“Hold on…” Silas lifts his hand to my face. “You got some of it in your hair.”
He tries to tuck it behind my ear, but now the strand is stuck to his fingers. He leans in closer, using his other hand to free it, but of course the fingers on that hand are sticky, too.
“Crap,” he chuckles. “Made it worse.”
He’s so close I can feel his breath against my forehead. His eyes lower and they collide with mine.
He looks… nervous.
“It’s fine, just yank if you need to,” I tell him.
“I don’t want to have to… shit. Yeah, I’m gonna have to—”
“ Ow! ”
“Crap.” He winces. “Sorry.”
His hand is on my shoulder now. It might get stuck there; I don’t care - all I’m aware of right now is the fact that his face is just a couple of inches away from mine.
He doesn’t step back.
“You okay? ”
I try to answer, but my mouth is suddenly dry. Also, really sticky. So I nod instead.
Silas tears a piece of cotton candy off and holds it up to my mouth.
“Here. Peace offering.”
“Mmmpf…” I bite it from between his thumb and forefinger, laughing, and he brings his thumb up to his own mouth and licks it. Now my eyes are glued to his lips and I’m sure my heart must be doing a hundred beats a minute. His eyes still haven’t left mine and I wish I knew what he was thinking right now.
I watch as his gaze lowers, his long lashes hooding his eyes as they sweep across my face, like he’s taking in every little detail.
“You turned out real pretty, Jackie Delaney,” he says, in a jagged voice I could listen to all night.
“You didn’t turn out so bad yourself, Silas Carmichael,” I grin. And I swear he blushes.
“Not sure about that, but… I’ll take it.”
There’s an intense look in his eyes. He’s on the edge of something, but I’m not sure what. I want to know though, because I want to be on the edge of it with him.
“There’s something I want to do,” he says in that same voice that sounds like he just woke up. “But you’ll probably say no.”
“Okay… What is it?” I ask. But I think I already know.
I hope I do.
“I want to kiss you,” he says, and something warm unfurls inside me, because it’s exactly what I was hoping he’d say. And yes yes yes, of course he can kiss me!
I swallow.
“Um… That’s… It’s—yeah.”
He chuckles and part of me wants me to melt into the floor because I am acting like such a Grade A dork about this. But another part of me doesn’t care. Because it’s Silas . He knows me, and he knows I’ve never been cool, or smooth, or eloquent with words.
“Was that a yes? Or…”
“Yes. ”
He flashes that grin again. But then it’s gone, and he’s leaning in closer and his lips are on mine. They taste like cotton candy.
If I had to choose any flavor for a kiss, this would be it.
His right hand slides from my shoulder to the back of my neck, and I can feel the sticky sugar on the pad of his thumb against my skin. His other hand pulls me in closer with his palm against my back, and he makes this low sound in his throat that is so… alluring and sweet and sexy all at the same time.
And thank God I did not say that out loud.
I’m not sure how much longer we kiss, but it’s a while. Long enough that the voices outside have died down to just the occasional holler or whoop of laughter. Silas eventually pulls away and looks down at me, his hands on the counter where I’m leaning now, boxing me in.
“Wow…” he chuckles.
“Yeah,”
He blows out a breath, then pushes back, dragging one hand through his hair.
“Well, that was unexpected.”
I nod, looking away; suddenly self-conscious.
“Sorry…” he says, and when I look back at him, his eyes seem almost sad. He glances off for a split second, then back down at me. “I hope you aren’t gonna regret that.”
I have no idea why he would say something like that. It almost ruins the moment.
Almost.
“Why would I regret that?”
I’ve only kissed one other boy before. Trent Milton, last year in tenth grade. We were sort of dating for a few months. He was my first… well, my first everything. We never went all the way or anything. Still, I don’t have a lot to compare this to. But kissing Silas was… amazing.
And then a thought suddenly occurs to me.
“Wait—do you ? Regret it?”
Please say no… Please say no …
He smiles.
“No.”
“Okay.” I let out a breath. “Okay, good.”
Somewhere nearby a trailer door slams. Muffled laughter rings out in the warm night and then it’s quiet again.
I let my eyes roam from his lips to his eyes, then further up. And I burst out laughing.
“You’ve got so much cotton candy stuck in your hair! You look like a granny who just came back from getting a rinse or something from the salon.”
He rolls his eyes. “Wow. Sexy.”
And then he looks down at my hair and cracks his own smile. “You’re not entirely cotton-candy-free yourself, Ms. Delaney. Just what have you been getting up to this fine evening?”
We both laugh this time, and then I lean into him, up on my tiptoes, and kiss him on the lips. He still tastes like spun sugar and laughter.
“Thank you,” I say. “For tonight… For saving my butt, and for helping me out.”
He grins.
“Thanks for not kicking me to the curb when you first found me passed out on your bed.”
I come down off my tiptoes. “I don’t suppose the generous cotton-candy machine guy also happened to throw in a jumbo-size bottle of spray cleaner, did he?”
Silas mashes his lips together, like he’s actually thinking about it.
“Can’t say that he did,” then he grins, and adds: “That stingy bastard.”