15. NOT Bartholomew
15
NOT Bartholomew
Diana
If you told me two months ago that I would enjoy being around Carson Ryder, I would have laughed in your face.
Because, as some may have it, he’s easy to talk to. Even outside our tutoring sessions, in the middle of the upper lot of Universal Studios, I’m having a fucking blast with just the two of us.
Since it’s Saturday, and the park is very crowded, we’ve resorted to resting by one of the auditoriums where they used to hold the special effects show, just asking each other random questions.
Through it, I did get to learn his middle name and he learned mine—it’s Jameson—our conversation has shifted mainly towards me because he wants to know what the park in Orlando is like.
“So she went up to hug the guy? Was your sister not aware of the fake blood?” Carson is still shocked at my little sister’s lack of spatial awareness.
I shrug. “If you were my sister, you wouldn’t notice.” Even now, I think Crystal’s spatial awareness has gotten worse than it was when she was eight.
“Shouldn’t we be waiting for the others to get off the ride?” I suggest at the exact moment my phone buzzes in my bag. I pull it out to find a text from Ronnie waiting.
Ronnie
We’re going on the ride next door so you and Carson should eat without us.
I chuckle softly. Leave it to the adrenaline junkie to wait another hour in line for his thrill. “Let’s go,” I tell Carson, shoving my phone back into my bag.
“Was that Adrian texting you?” He furrows his brows.
“Ronnie,” I reply.
He scoffs as we make our way over to the carnival games. “Leave it to the two adrenaline junkies. You’d think Adrian would have enjoyed this show over the rides but if he’s not falling to his death, then it’s not worth it.”
“Are you just being dramatic?”
“Those were words out of Adrian’s mouth.”
“He might have a point,” I say. “The one in Orlando looked boring.”
He places a hand over his chest. “Wow, Diana. You wound me.”
“What? Was the show actually interesting?”
“Like no other,” he clarifies, a little glint in his eyes. Probably from thinking back to a good memory. “They filmed multiple shows and movies in this park. My family and I got to volunteer for a demonstration when I was nine. We all got to wear those suits with the green balls on them.”
That does sound a little cool. I, however, would have been frightened by the prospect of standing up in front of people. Kudos to little Carson for having that confidence. Because at that age? I would have cowered. Even now, I would have cowered if I had been thrust into the spotlight like that.
“What do you say?” We stop at a ring toss game, where the prizes are all related to one of the animated movies displayed in the section of the park we’re in. The yellow and purple minions and those huge unicorns are all they have.
But I know better. “Those games are a sham.”
Carson makes a face. “The claw machines are scams. These aren’t.” He motions to the ring toss.
“Have you ever won a prize from them?”
“I haven’t. But they look so easy.”
“Oh, you sweet summer child,” I sigh. “That’s what they want you to think.” I have yet to see one of the game attendants pull a stuffed minion from the shelves and a kid walking away happy with it.
“Then I’m going to prove you wrong,” he declares, chin up high.
Both of my brows fly up my face. “You are going to attempt this game?”
He slams a five-dollar bill on the table. “Correction, I am going to win it.” The attendant rests a set of five rings on the table in front of us. Carson grabs the bright orange ring on top and focuses on the bottles inside the booth. “No doubt about it.”
I attempt to cross my arms over my waist, but the splint makes the motion uncomfortable so I keep my arms to my sides. “Well, may Fortuna be upon you.”
He raises a brow. “You mean fortune .”
“I know what I said,” I mumble.
I’m a little glad he didn’t ask me to help because my aim is complete garbage. Maybe that’s why I think these games are a hoax—because I can’t win a single one of them.
He tosses the first two rings and both of them bounce off the rims of the bottles and onto the floor.
I wince. “Bummer.”
“I’ve got three left, D,” he reminds me, eyes still on the game. Without looking down, he grabs a ring and tosses it without a second thought. We watch it fall around the neck of the bottle and onto the table, surrounding the base of the metal bottle.
Ay, mierda . My jaw drops and stays that way when he does it again with his remaining rings.
“Pick your prize from the middle two rows,” the game attendant tells Carson in the most monotone voice I’ve ever heard—and I thought the priest at my mom’s funeral was duller than a sack of unwashed potatoes.
Carson places one finger on his chin, concentrating deeply. “What do you think I should pick, Diana?”
“How?” I’m still shocked that he won and yet he’s all nonchalant about it.
He shrugs, smirking. “I just have good aim.”
Not even Apollo has that great of aim, and he’s the god of archery.
I stare amongst the vast three choices presented. “I don’t know. They all look the same.”
“Really?”
“Not literally,” I say. “But it’s not like you need to feel connected to a certain one.”
“True,” he agrees. “But what about the one you feel connected to?”
I laugh softly. “It’s not like you’re gonna give it to me.”
He doesn’t say another word. I turn to face his side profile (of course, his side profile is handsome) and my heart starts beating faster than normal. Was he going to?
I switch my focus to the prizes, my eyes stopping at a particular, tall yellow minion. “Maybe that one.” I point to it.
He points to the yellow one-eyed guy and the attendant removes him from the shelves and hands it to Carson. “Congratulations,” says the robot attendant.
“I got to say,” Carson begins as we walk away from the booth. “This guy is a lot bigger than he looked on the shelves.”
The stuffed minion in question is so big that it reaches just below Carson’s chin. He’s holding the stuffed minion by the waist and for some reason, I find myself wishing I was in that minion’s place.
I am not someone who gets jealous so easily, especially where a stuffed minion that speaks incoherently and eats nothing but bananas is concerned.
“What’s this minion’s name again? I can never remember.”
He shrugs. “He looks like a Steve.”
“Steve?” I shake my head. “No, that’s too basic.”
“What were you going to suggest? Carl?”
We continue to go back and forth with names. Once I suggested Donald, another time, he picks Bartholomew and it’s then we realize that not only naming the minion is a lost cause, but that Carson sucks at picking names.
I decided right there that if I ever have children, I’m not going to Carson for help naming them.
All the walking around gets the both of us hungry so we stop at a restaurant for dinner. It’s been too long and I’m willing to bet that the rest of our friends are still waiting in line for a water ride, or whatever ride it was they chose to wait in line for.
“Can we just alternate this time?” Carson suggests when we reach the front of the line. “You paid for butterbeer, so I should pay for lunch.”
I shake my head. “You paid for Trent!”
“We’re not naming the minion Trent!” He laughs. “Besides, he doesn’t count.”
Since I'm the one holding onto the minion, I squeeze it tightly in my arms. “You just hurt his feelings.”
“I’m only counting anything we can eat.” He points to the minion. “We’re not eating William.”
“We’re not naming the minion William, either,” I say before sighing. “I guess if you’re only counting food, then fine. You can pay.”
“Thank you.” He pays and we take our trays over to a table that just cleared up. I place my tray down and sit the stuffed minion on the chair next to me before I perch myself on the cold, metal chair. We start eating and not much is said between us. I normally don’t mind it because I’m rather used to it but with my average-tasting tacos from the Mexican restaurant, I’d rather have something or someone to distract me.
It’s not much longer before I find myself unable to finish my food. Maybe I’m just used to the taco trucks near my house or amusement park food is so not worth the price (I’m going with the latter here). There’s also the possibility that my mind is still on the boy in front of me, eating his loaded nachos without care.
For once.
“Hey, you okay?” Carson’s muffled voice asks as he wipes his mouth with a napkin.
I blink and nod. “Yeah,” I lie. “Just a little worried about Friday’s test.” Due to the multiple people who did horribly on the mid-term, our professor is issuing a re-do midterm. Something he should have done because, since the original test, there hadn’t gone a day that a student wasn’t begging for one. We got to a point where Lucia started a petition just for it.
Carson softly smiles at me and reaches over to touch my hand. Well, he touches the splint but I can still feel him regardless. “You’ll do fine.”
“But what if I fail?” I whine.
“Please,” he says. “You’ve been doing great in our sessions so far. Understood the material quickly. It’s never been a you problem. You’ll pass.”
I shake my head. “Do you really believe in me?”
“Well, yeah.” He shrugs. “I’ll always believe in you, D.”
Oh great, my face is burning up and it has nothing to do with the tacos I ate. Why do so few words have to affect me so greatly?
“Well, you were easy to understand,” I admit, attempting another bite at my tacos before pushing the plate away. “Ugh, I can’t do this anymore.”
He pulls the plate closer to him and takes a bite of an untouched taco. After a few chews, his face scrunches up. “Yeah, that sucks,” he agrees after swallowing the bite. “Maybe it’s the cilantro.”
“It’s never the cilantro.” I wrap an arm around the stuffed minion. “At least Anthony didn’t get to eat it. The lucky guy.”
“We’re not naming him Anthony!”
“Well, it’s better than Bartholomew,” I laugh, remembering his first suggestion.
He exhales, allowing his bangs to fly away from his face. “Then you can call him Barty if that’s better.”
“You are going to die on this Bartholomew hill, aren’t you?”
Carson laughs and it doesn’t sound fake or diluted. It’s a wholehearted, genuine laugh that I don’t remember ever hearing before this moment.
He has me laughing alongside him and as we’re enjoying this moment between us, I realize how much I want this to keep going.
How I don’t want any of this to end.
“So, if you weren’t having the time of your life with the coolest guy on the planet”—he winks—“what would you spend your birthday doing?”
I playfully roll my eyes. “Honestly?”
He shrugs. “What other way would you answer?”
“I could lie to your face and you wouldn’t know,” I hum. “But I won’t. Honestly, I would be eating a lot of cherries.”
Carson arches a brow. “Cherries?”
I smile nervously. “My mom and I were obsessed with cherry-flavored anything and since our birthdays were close to each other, we would buy up half the cherry supply at Publix and watch our favorite movies.” She would joke that we kept all the cherry harvesters in business.
“She sounds fun,” he muses.
I nod, trying to keep my composure because talking about my mom makes me a little too emotional for public display. “She was,” I mumble, mostly to myself.
Carson takes the hint and drops the brief subject of my mother. “Cherry-everything, though? Isn’t that a lot?”
“Hey,” I chastise. “Don’t knock it until you try it.” To get a rise out of Carson, I take a piece of loose cilantro from the taco—the only good thing about it if you ask me—and pop it into my mouth like I would with popcorn.
“Never mind.”
I lift my chin in victory.