Chapter Twenty-Four
Stephen
Iwas not allergic to fun. I was simply not a fan of places like Coney Island, packed full of people barely secured into towering rides and screaming as they plummeted towards the ground. Elle wasn’t to know that though, so I was doing my best not to sulk about her comment on the train.
We got to the Boardwalk as the sun was setting; the coloured flashing signs a garish contrast to the soft pinks and peaches spilling across the sky.
We walked along the wooden decking and the pop music blared so loudly I couldn’t hear the sea but I could see it, lapping at a sandy shore, glittering with the fading summer light.
Would I be able to convince Elle to take a walk down there with me, or would she be too suspicious of my intentions?
‘Oh wow, d’you smell that?’ She breathed in a deep lungful, and looked at me with that smile she had, like she’d figured out some secret to life no one else had.
‘Fried onions?’
‘No, the sea. Fresh air. Isn’t it so much easier to breathe now?’
‘Definitely.’ After a stuffy hour crammed onto public transport, anywhere would have felt more refreshing than a subway carriage but there was a tang of salt beneath the waft of food, which helped me shake off some of the fatigue from work.
Perhaps I would be able to convince her to walk down to the shore after all.
‘So, where is this office we’re supposed to meet him at? ’
‘He said to head for the margarita hut and take a left by Hook a Duck. It’s a prime location.’
Only if a prime location could also be a small tin shed, down an unlit alleyway between the games and beverage huts. There was also no one there.
‘Great,’ I muttered. ‘It’s the bar all over again. This was a long way to come to get stood up. Or worse.’
When she offered to call the man, I’d forgotten that I’d made her agree not to meet up with people anymore if they could provide us with the information over the phone.
And then she’d gone ahead and made the arrangement.
I could hardly leave her to go on her own after the incident at the bar, even if I suspected the only reason we were here was because she wanted an evening at the fair.
‘He’s probably just gone to fix a ride. That’s his job, right?’ She shook her head and turned on her heel. ‘Let’s give it a half hour and try again. We can get margaritas and corn dogs. You ever had a corn dog?’
‘No. I don’t think so,’ I said warily, following her back the way we came. I avoided looking at the swooping, spinning cars of the ride in the distance, but the shrieks fading in and out carried over to us and made me just as tense.
‘Oh, you have to try one.’ She was practically bouncing along, wearing a bright green sundress that tied up with a bow at the back.
I wanted to hook my finger in it and pull her back against me.
To get her to stop focusing all her happiness on the crazy, clichéd madness around us and maybe concentrate a bit on me.
I wished I could show her I enjoyed fun too, but nothing about this situation was making me relaxed.
We had time to kill at a fairground, so she was no doubt going to suggest taking a turn on the rides until we chased up the lead for my no-account father again.
I was between a rock and a hard place and she was the only soft thing nearby.
‘You weren’t kidding about loving funfairs, were you?’ I commented, dragging myself by my bootstraps out of my introspection.
Margarita Island was bustling with customers queuing and standing around the small shaded tables.
She beckoned for me to catch up before she began threading her way through the crowd to find the end of the queue.
There wasn’t a lot of room and it was hard to avoid brushing up against her, just like on the subway train.
‘My family come here at least once every summer,’ she said once we’d joined the line.
‘And when Lucy, Tim and I got to middle school, Mom and Dad would let us travel here by ourselves. We’d spend a couple of weeks saving up all our allowance, then blow it on those rigged games and cotton candy and make ourselves sick. It was brilliant.’
‘Lucy and Tim are your brother and sister?’
‘Yeah. Well, two of them. Lucy is oldest, then me, then Tim.’
‘He was the one who called you at the bar the other day.’
‘Yep.’ She averted her gaze and we shuffled closer to the window, which was bordered by rope lights.
So, she still wanted to avoid talking about dating, did she?
I might have taken some pleasure in persisting on that topic, just to rile her, but tonight I found I had no desire to ruin her good mood.
Fond family memories were precious things.
When we got to the bar, she ordered and when I went to pay, she grabbed my hand before I could tap my phone against the reader.
‘You know I was only kidding the other day,’ I said. ‘About you getting free food and drinks? I’m happy to foot the bill. We’re only here because you’re helping me.’
‘That’s not strictly true. You’re helping me, too.
’ She used her free hand to pull out her bank card and I would have had to wrestle myself free to beat her to paying.
It didn’t sit well with me but I sensed that any further debate about it could easily veer off into something heated and not in a good way.
We took the drinks over to a table near the edge of the boardwalk and I took a healthy gulp of the alcohol. ‘Who are your other siblings, then?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
She shrugged a little and licked some salt off her lips. ‘After Tim, it’s Sam, then the twins, Alfie and Teddy, then there’s Daisy, the baby – who is now thirteen.’
‘Are you close?’
‘There’s no option but to be close, growing up in a modestly sized house, as one of seven.’ She laughed.
‘Now, I’m not sure that’s strictly true.’
She cocked her head at me like she didn’t understand, and it occurred to me that maybe she didn’t.
For all her smarts about people, she couldn’t fathom not being close to her family.
Something like envy filled me. I had my fair share of love with my immediate family, so I understood it, but I also knew that family didn’t always have to love you.
That was the whole reason we were here after all.
‘It must have been a challenge, though. How did your parents manage when you were small?’
‘Oh, organised chaos I suppose you’d call it. And we all had to pitch in. We still do.’
‘You helped a lot with the younger ones?’
‘Helped, dangled them out of windows by their ankles, whatever you want to call it,’ she joked.
Or I assumed she was joking and when she saw the concern in my expression, she laughed.
‘I’m kidding. I mean, that happened once, and it was Tim doing it to Sam, but we got there before he dropped him.
’ She wrinkled her nose as she thought about it.
‘I think it was hardest for Sam, actually. He’s naturally quiet and kinda stuck in the middle.
Lucy, Tim and I only have a year between us each.
Then Sam’s four years younger than Tim. He’s closest in age to the twins but obviously they are their own little unit, too. ’
‘What about Daisy?’
‘Yeah, she’s a lot younger, but Daisy…well, let’s just say, nothing fazes her. I reckon she could handle anyone or anything.’
She sounded a lot like another Kingston woman I knew.
I looked around and experienced an odd sense of detachment.
My father had been here. He’d walked by this beach and these rides.
Worked on them. I drained the rest of my cocktail, eager for the sharp tang of citrus to cut through the dull feeling in my chest.
‘Take it easy there, bud.’ Elle raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to carry you back to the train if you drink too much on an empty stomach. Ready for a corn dog, yet?’
‘Is there nothing…healthier available?’
‘We’re at the funfair, Stephen, live a little.’
‘That’s why I like healthy food. To increase my probability of living a lot.’
‘Pssh. A little of what you fancy does you good too, y’know.’
‘Oh, I’m aware of that,’ I said softly, as my eyes grazed over her face.
A pink flush stole across her cheekbones and my momentary thrill at her response immediately crashed as I remembered what I’d promised her.
No flirting. I cleared my throat. ‘Look, I’ll eat the corn dog if it’s that important to you.
But…only if you beat me at one of the games. ’
Her eyes immediately lit up. ‘OK, you’ve got a deal. What game?’
‘You can choose.’
‘So sure you’re gonna win, huh?’
I just smiled. I had what I wanted from earlier – her excitement focused on me – so it felt like I already had.
She finish her drink and dragged me around the stalls, deliberating between hook a duck, the coconut shy, basketball tossing and the shooting gallery, finally settling on the latter. ‘Ladies first.’
‘Great.’ She picked up the rifle and tucked it into her shoulder, squinting down the barrel at the sliding targets inside the booth. She blew impatiently at the wisps of hair straying across her face and I reached out without thinking, smoothing them back and tucking them behind her ear.
Her eyes widened and caught mine. I dropped my hand and stepped back.
She took a deep breath and proceeded to shoot down every single target, like a secret assassin or the terminator I’d likened her to the other day.
A siren went off, red lights flashing, proclaiming her as a winner.
She lowered her weapon, an impression left from the butt of the rifle in the soft skin of her shoulder.
She bit her lip, trying to control the huge, proud grin on her face.
‘You hustled me,’ I accused her, but I was smiling, too.
‘This was your idea, and I did tell you I came here loads when I was a kid.’
The attendant came over to ask her what she wanted to claim as her prize. She turned to the kid who was playing next to her, a little boy of nine or ten, struggling to hold the long rifle in his skinny arms, and offered for him to pick what he would like.
‘It hasn’t put you off kids, then?’ I commented when she turned back to me finally after an in-depth discussion with the boy and his parents about how they’d been enjoying their day out.
‘What hasn’t?’
‘Having to help out so much with your younger siblings all the time.’
‘Of course not. And the thing is, the helping out goes both ways. For all the support I give, whenever I need it, they’re always there for me, too.
’ She picked up my rifle, attached by the long wire to the counter, and passed it over.
I lifted it to my shoulder, looking through the little glass sight-finder, which was scratched and blurry.
Not that there was much point in the exercise.
‘What could you possibly need help with?’ I asked, only half-joking. ‘Don’t you know everything?’
She moved closer, my senses suddenly full of the scent of her coconut sunscreen and the warmth of her body.
She put her hand around mine, guiding me to slide it into a better position along the barrel, and I almost swallowed my tongue.
My skin was still tingling from the touch of hers even as she quickly stepped back again.
‘We all need a little help from time to time, Stephen.’