Chapter Twenty-Five
Elle
By the time we’d eaten our corn dogs, Stephen looking like I was making him chow down on uncooked roadkill, and we’d played a round at the coconut shy, which he’d beaten me at, then hook-a-duck which we’d equally sucked at, well over thirty minutes had passed.
When we went to the little maintenance hut, we found a large man in overalls with curly dark hair and an attitude that made me think the rides gave him a permanent migraine.
The conversation was brusque but efficient.
Trevor had been good at fixing the dodgems but left to become a taxi driver.
That was all he knew, although he did have the address of where Trevor had lived with a woman called Lorna for a while.
As we left the hut and made our way back towards the games and rides, Stephen slipped his phone into his pocket, the new information tapped into it, and slowed down.
‘That address is back in Brooklyn. And now we’ve got another new profession. If he did ever become a taxi driver. This is starting to feel like a wild goose chase.’
Any mood lift he’d experienced while we drunk margaritas and played carnival games had slipped away. ‘You can’t want to stop looking now. We’re getting closer.’
‘Are we?’ He furrowed his brow, dark eyebrows slanting down as he squinted at the flashing bulbs running all the way up the high-striker game.
‘I feel like there should be a quicker, smarter way than traipsing all over the city, hoping people remember him and don’t mind breaking data protection laws to give us his address. ’
I chewed my lip. There was another option open to us.
Now we knew he’d become a taxi driver, I could probably go to my dad and beg a favour.
He’d be able to access the records of all the licensed taxi drivers and get a current address.
But that was only if Trevor did become a taxi driver, like Stephen said, and was still doing it.
‘What if we give up tonight and he’s sitting in that house or apartment right now?’
‘It was decades ago. You’re the one who swears by character profiling. So far, his pattern has been to move on every couple of years. To find his current residency we’re going to have to follow a trail of breadcrumbs across ten more addresses.’
‘Possibly,’ I agreed. ‘But at most that’s ten days of looking. You’ve got two months left in New York. It doesn’t sound insurmountable.’
‘Only if those moves are around New York. For all we know, this rolling stone ended up in Australia,’ he said dryly.
‘OK, granted, that’s a possibility, but at the moment we have an address in Brooklyn, so no point worrying about it…unless you want to ask the lawyers to take over?’
He sighed and looked back at me. His dark eyes were fathomless, filled with fifty per cent steely determination and fifty per cent enigma. ‘No. I’m not giving up.’
‘Good. In the meantime I know exactly what you need.’ I hooked my arm through his and began leading him through the attractions, around the crowds of kids and adults, queuing for cotton candy and turns on the carousel.
‘What do I need?’ he asked, suspicion colouring his voice as we approached the Wonder Wheel.
‘Some light relief.’ I dragged him through the gap in the barriers.
‘Look, I don’t think—’ he started.
‘You need to think less and do more,’ I interrupted, poking him in the lower back to herd him forward. He was stiff as a board; I could feel his muscles all tense and…hot.
‘I’m not in the mood for funfair rides,’ he said through gritted teeth and tried to turn but I gave the attendant our tokens and clamped my hands on his shoulders, propelling him into the next free cage as it began to glide along at ground level.
It was one of the blue ones, which meant it would swing. Excellent.
‘Which is precisely why you need to go on one. Just one. C’mon. Sit, sit. We’ll have an amazing view.’
He folded himself down onto the seat. It could have been the neon lighting, but his face was looking pale; maybe I’d made a mistake forcing him to eat the corn dog?
I sat down, too. It was cosy and I could smell the gentle spice of his aftershave.
The cage swung as the attendant closed and checked the door.
A second later we started the slow rotation and the balmy air moved just enough that I sighed.
It was going to be so fantastically cool up at the top. I couldn’t wait.
‘So, tell me about you and Nick. Did you ever dangle your little brother out of a window by the ankles?’
‘Christ no.’ Stephen shook his head sharply and looked down at his feet. The column of his throat rippled with a hard swallow.
It was such a vehement response that I was taken aback.
I studied him for a moment – the sudden changes in his body language.
He didn’t look great if truth be told. I mean, he looked as delectable as always, but he also looked a bit sweaty and drawn.
And all his usual poise and control was strangely absent.
His shoulders were practically up by his ears.
‘Are you OK? Is the corn-dog-margarita-mix not agreeing with you?’
He lifted his head and his brown eyes were even darker than normal, his pupils blown up wide. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, tightly.
No. He really wasn’t. I thought back to how tense he’d been when I bumped into him at the rooftop bar. He’d not gone near the edge once. Not even looked behind him at the view.
‘Stephen…are you scared of heights?’
Finally, he nodded.
‘Like a proper phobia?’
He paused for a moment and then gave another little nod.
‘Then why the hell’d you let me get you in here? That was pretty dumb.’
‘You are very bossy and surprisingly strong,’ he said, weakly.
‘Hmm…guilty, I suppose.’ I glanced out the side; we were only a quarter of the way around. We still had the highest bit of the rise to do. ‘Right, so what am I going to have to deal with here? Are you gonna pass out or start screaming and trying to climb out the cage?’
He shut his eyes. ‘Of course I’m not going to try and climb out – d’you think I’m insane?’
‘Well, phobias make people react in irrational ways.’
‘I’m not going to move. I’ll probably—’ He took a shaky breath. ‘I’ll probably hyperventilate. I might…I might…’
He still hadn’t opened his eyes, so I grabbed his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
He tightened his grip around my fingers in a way that was reminiscent of women giving birth.
Which gave me an idea. Focus on the end point.
That was what I used to do when I was a midwife with the women who were terrified once labour got underway.
‘It’s not going to take long – the ride’s only about ten minutes tops and then we’ll be on our way down—’ It was really unfortunate that as I said the word ‘down’ the wheel stopped and the gentle swing became more pronounced.
Stephen’s eyes flew open and his other hand grabbed at the side of the cabin, his knuckles going white.
‘It’s OK,’ I tried to soothe him. I was really starting to feel rotten that I had forced him into this.
It wasn’t a joke. He was getting more terrified by the second. ‘We’ll start moving again in a minute.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ he muttered and his focus darted out and back again as he saw how high up we were already. If it was possible, he turned even more white. Maybe he was going to pass out.
‘I reckon you should put your head between your legs.’
‘I can’t move.’ And it was true: he seemed barely able to open his jaw to speak.
‘You’ve been so much higher than this so many times in your life and it’s always been fine, hasn’t it? Don’t you work in a huge skyscraper?’
‘It has walls.’ His eyes widened at me, as though he couldn’t understand why I’d say something so ridiculous. And it was ridiculous. What did I think? I was going to talk him out of his irrational fear? No. Another tactic was necessary.
The cage started moving again and he gave a startled groan low in his throat. I slapped my other hand on top of his.
‘Y’know, this is super inconsiderate of you. I’m not getting to appreciate this ride at all because I’m so worried about you. This and the dodgems are my favourite things to do here. You fancy doing that next?’
He didn’t say anything.
‘I could try and win you an enormous cuddly toy? What’s your preference? Giant panda or fluffy unicorn? I got you down as a unicorn lover, am I right?’
‘Oh my God, do you never shut up?’ he panted at me.
Wow, frightened Stephen was definitely letting his silver-tongue slip. I would let him off because he was genuinely suffering.
‘Very rarely. I’m trying to distract you, doofus. Is it working?’
‘Obviously not.’ He shut his eyes again.
‘You want me to be quiet, then?’
‘Could you?’
‘I can but try.’
‘Great. Thank you.’
I pressed my lips together and looked out.
We were nearing the top now: 150 feet up in the air.
The lights down below twinkled and flashed while up here it was blissfully cool and quiet.
Even the music of the arcades was faint.
I didn’t mind appreciating the peace…but it was spoiled slightly by Stephen’s harsh breathing.
If he hadn’t been such a wreck, it might’ve turned me on.
The problem also was, I knew we were going to stop at the top.
It was going to be a bad moment, if he reacted like last time and looked out.
The breeze moved my hair across my face, and I lifted my hand away from his, to tuck it behind my ear, trying not to recall the way it had felt when he’d smoothed those loose strands back earlier – the graze of his fingertips on the shell of my ear.
His eyes snapped open again at my movement, as though he thought I was going somewhere. They landed on mine, but I didn’t say anything, and he blinked a few times. ‘OK, quiet isn’t working. I’m sorry. Distract me again.’
Talking wasn’t helping. It was time to do something extreme. I put my hand to his cheek, the short hairs of his beard cool against my palm, probably because he was clammy with fear. I leaned in towards him.
‘What are you—?’
‘Shh, distracting you,’ I murmured as my nose aligned with his. ‘Just close your eyes and think of England.’
He didn’t close his eyes, though. Not right away.
My lips found his and they were surprisingly soft for all their firm appearance.
I pressed against them gently. I didn’t want to move too much and unbalance the cage.
Which left the kiss chaste and sweet; the kind I probably would’ve had with a teenage boy on this wheel, if any teen boy had ever actually asked me.
The kind of kiss unlikely to interest an experienced man like Stephen, now I thought about it.
But then he did close his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose, his mouth relaxing under mine. Just that little yield made my tummy flutter and a touch of guilt assailed me. Was I taking advantage of him here under the guise of helping him? Probably a bit. Maybe a lot.
His lips parted and he tilted his head ever so slightly. I figured if I could get him to take his death grip away from the side of the car and transfer it to me, that would prove he was getting something from this. That it was working to distract him.
I brushed my mouth over his again, and he caught at my bottom lip gently. My tummy flutter twisted and grew, anticipation and warmth shimmering through me. I slid my hand down his neck and inside his collar, fingers shaping to his firm muscles. I completely forgot I wasn’t meant to be moving much.
He stilled. I sneaked my eyes open a fraction and saw that we’d moved past the top. We were almost a quarter of the way down.
‘Stay with me. We’re nearly there,’ I whispered and something wild inside, a temptation I couldn’t deny, made me stroke my tongue slowly across his top lip.
He shuddered and I really hoped it was a good shudder.
I planted one more, full-on kiss firmly against his wonderful mouth and forced myself to move away.
We were nearly at the bottom. ‘You can open your eyes now. We have to get off in a minute.’
He opened his eyes and the look he speared me with was so full of raw emotion it made me breathless.
I lifted his hand in mine and peeled his fingers free. He glanced away and when he saw we were nearly at the bottom, dared to straighten up in his seat.
We exited the ride in silence. I’m not normally at a loss for words – as he so graciously pointed out before – but I was stumped if I knew where to go from here.
‘Sooo…I’m going to visit the little girls’ room.
’ I took a few steps backwards. His face gave nothing away as he looked at me.
He was still so pasty, but I could see a hard edge creeping into his expression that had me worried.
Was he mad? Had I taken advantage and he was going to call sexual assault on me?
‘Meet you by the margarita hut again before we leave? I bet you could use a drink.’
And then I fled, like a coward.