Chapter 23
“You know. I think we should go to the fair.” Lauren perks up from my couch.
It’s just her, Rhett, Tanner, me and Winnie.
Mayben invited us all over earlier to tell us all she’s pregnant and instead of going home, the five of us ended up here.
“It’s been open all week and I heard the food vendors are extra good this year. ”
“Can I ride the Ferris Wheel?” Winnie asks, and with that, the decision is made.
We hardly make it three steps past the entrance gate before Winnie tries running off to the flashiest ride she can find. Tanner jogs up, scoops her up and in a single swooping motion, he has her on his shoulders. She giggles and clasps her hands on his forehead, knocking his hat clean off his head.
I pick it up and I put it on my head, lying to myself that it’s just what friends do. There’s no missing that catch of his eyes and turned corners of his mouth. Is he blushing? Or is it just the summer heat?
The entire rolling grass field back behind Morton it has been transformed with flashing lights and metal rides clanking around with screaming children.
There are fried food vendors at every turn, carnival workers yelling out passive aggressive compliments, and free-range preteens with acne, braces and too much Axe body spray.
The entire town seems to be here, stepping over dying grass with corndogs and lemonade in hand.
“Step right up!” an older man in a yellow striped shirt shouts from a center booth. It’s the bottle ring toss. The prizes hanging overhead range from little stuffed animals, no greater than dollar-store quality, all the way up to a massive stuffed hippo.
“Alright.” Tanner nudges Rhett. “Let’s do this.”
“It’s a scam,” I try to tell them, but neither listen.
Still with Winnie on his shoulders, Tanner tosses a few rings and wins nothing. Rhett makes enough to win a glow bracelet, which he puts on Winnie's kicking foot as she laughs.
“Uncle Rhett!” she squeals.
“That was a lucky shot. I literally have a kid on my shoulders,” Tanner says. “Come on, let’s try that one.”
It’s the spraying water gun one, where you have to shoot your target right in the center and somehow, it’s supposed to make your horse run faster. This time, the man convinces us all to play. Winnie climbs down and into my lap.
“Winner gets this.” The man holds up a pair of fuzzy handcuffs.
“Oh my God.” I groan as Winnie yells that she’s going to win.
And she does. Easily. She grabs the handcuffs and skips off with them, putting me on an FBI watch list in the process, I’m sure.
“This is your fault,” I tell Tanner as he catches up.
“My fault? How on earth is that my fault?”
“You didn’t win,” I say and motion to Winnie. “Now my kid owns fuzzy handcuffs, and I will be lucky to make it out of here without at least three reports to CPS.”
He shrugs. “I’ll trade her for something better later. Then those handcuffs are all mine.”
“You’re the worst.” I bump into him ignoring the flush of heat in my body.
“Oh, sorry. Those handcuffs are all ours.” He gives a dramatic wink and this time I give him a stronger shove. I can’t think of any rules his words directly break, but the way they make my stomach flip, I know they somehow breaks all of them.
We play round after round of different rigged games.
Basketballs into oblong hoops, baseballs at weighted bottles and darts at under-inflated balloons.
By the time we come to the ping pong balls into fishbowls, we are three cotton candies, two lemonades, and five corndogs in, and the idea of having to take home a goldfish might just put me over the edge.
“Tan!” Winnie yanks on his shirt. “I want one.”
“You got it,” he says instantly.
The two walk up while Rhett, Lauren and I stand back. The weathered looking woman explains the rules and Tanner cracks his knuckles and rolls his shoulders. Winnie stands by his side, hands clasped together and popping up and down.
“What are you going to do?” Rhett asks. He’s standing there next to me, arms crossed, watching this all unfold.
“I guess if they win, we are stopping on the way home and getting some fish food.”
“No,” he says. “I mean when it’s time to leave at the end of the summer. What are you going to do?”
I look at him, and he has this almost sad look on his face. It’s a fair question. He doesn’t want to see his friend hurt and so far, Tanner and I have continuously crossed lines we have tried to draw. Lauren was right. Whatever is going on between us isn’t casual.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I thought I would leave and return to my real life.”
“But?” Lauren pushes.
“There’s no clean break here,” I say just loud enough for it be said on record.
The game attendant, Tanner and Winnie all throw their hands up into the air with a cheer and I realize I'm bringing home a half dead goldfish tonight.
Tanner spins to Winnie and lifts her up, making her squeal.
“I cannot believe you did that,” I tell him through a gritted tooth smile as they rejoin us.
“Anything for that girl.” He shrugs.
Winnie holds up the baggy that now homes the ill-looking fish. “Mom! Look! They gave me food for him too!”
“I see!” I fake shock and wonder before squatting down in front of her. “What are you going to name it?”
“Tanner,” she says with a stone straight face before running up between Rhett and Lauren, showing off her new pet.
Tanner’s hand bumps into mine as we walk behind them, my breath hitching at even the slightest of touches. I pretend to not notice until I feel his fingers slipping between mine.
“It’s not this easy,” I tell him, but I don’t let go. And I pray he doesn’t either.
“But it feels this easy.” He kisses the back of my hand. “I mean everything with us feels easy, doesn’t it? Dinner on the balcony, sitting on my porch, talking on the phone, finding you in a room.”
He’s right. Maybe that’s what scares me.
My walls I’ve built seem to crumble the moment he’s around.
The moment I catch a brush of his hand, the smell of his cologne, the hovering stares, the walls around my heart that I have spent a long time fortifying, deteriorate.
Or maybe he’s just been disassembling them with care and kindness and that damn mustached smirk this whole time.
“Mom, can we go on the Ferris wheel now?” Winnie turns and asks, spotting Tanner’s hand in mine.
“Uh—” I look at Tanner, then at our hands, then up to a smiling Rhett and Lauren. “Maybe Aunt Laurey or Uncle Rhett can take you?”
Lauren shakes her head in a quick no, which I should have expected. Our shared fear of heights is minimal, but Ferris wheels will do it.
Rhett shakes his head. “I won’t even go on an elevator if I don’t have to.”
“Come on.” Tanner squeezes my hand again and pulls me forward. “We are going to get over some fears together.”
Winnie skips over, taking Tanner's free hand and he guides us, well guides her and drags me, over to the line. The front of the line.
“Hey Bert.”
“Tanner Auclair,” Bert, a leather-tanned man with gray chest hair backdropping a gaudy gold and diamond link necklace, booms. “Come on through bud.”
“To be an Auclair in this town.” I shake my head and pass by the jealous line.
“The name pays for itself.” He winks. “I actually fixed his trailer last time they were in town.”
“Wait, let’s let Rhett hold the fish while we go on the ride,” I tell Winnie, but she shakes her head and clutches the inflated bag to her chest.
“Tanner wants to see the view too.”
Human Tanner laughs as Winnie sits on the side of the seat.
“Win, babe how about you sit in the middle?”
“No.” She shakes her head and kicks her feet. “I want to look down over the edge.”
“Then in that case you two don’t really need me—” I begin to back up, but Tanner doesn’t let go of my hand.
“It’s not that bad. I promise,” he says, and any hint of a joke is gone from his voice. “Trust me.”
“I trust you,” I tell him. “I just don’t trust a fifteen-year-old metal rolling contraption.”
“Hannah.” The seriousness in his voice pulls me right along to sit between them on this rickety and poorly padded seat.
Winnie is kicking her legs so hard that it rocks the bench, and Tanner has the audacity to smile.
“Oh, don’t even,” I grumble under my breath in his direction, only making him laugh.
“You’re safe. Do you know how many of these things are running at any given moment in this country during the summer? And what, like one out of the thousands got a little stuck one time and it was such a big deal it made the news?”
“Not helping.” I grip the lap bar as it’s lowered, my knuckles white.
“What I am saying, is that it’s so rare to have a problem on these that even when it so much as stops unexpectedly, it makes the news. You’re safe.”
“And you’re a maniac,” I say.
“A mini yak?” Winnie questions.
“Maniac,” Tanner and I say in unison.
“I mean that he’s crazy for liking heights.” I nudge her. “And you are too.”
“Oh, I don’t like them,” Tanner says.
I turn to him and the ride jerks into motion. “What?”
“Oh, I am terrified of heights.”
“Then why on earth are you on here with us?”
“For this view,” he says but he isn’t looking out.
He’s looking at me.
Tanner places his hand over mine that’s grasping the lap bar. I keep my eyes strictly on our hands as the ride jerks up again.
“Look,” he whispers.
“No.”
“I mean at Win.”
I sneak a peek over and the wonder in her eyes sparkles. She is looking around, her feet still shimmying as she gazes out with pure joy and waves down at Rhett and Lauren. I breathe through every rock and wave and relish in the cool breeze up here and the feel of Tanner’s massive hand over mine.
“See.” He nudges me. “Not so bad.”
Glancing over the edge, I think I get why people kiss up here. I would do just about anything to forget how high off the ground I am. And frankly as my eyes flicker to his lips, I would do just about anything to know how his lips would feel.
“Your rules,” he whispers, reminding us. I blink back to Winnie and consider throwing every one of my dumb rules out and over the edge. Rules we aren’t following anyway.
“So?” Lauren asks Winnie as she skips off ahead of Tanner and me.
“I was flying!” she exclaims and a huge yawn follows.
“I think that’s our cue.” I rub her back and we begin to head toward the exit
Tanner finds my hand again when Winnie runs up to hold Lauren’s. I lean into him and forget about the rules. Instead, I commit to memory the lights, the sounds, the smells, the feeling of my hand in Tanner's. We are almost the exit when Winnie stops dead in her tracks.
“Look!” She frees her hand and points up at a Skee-Ball booth. “A sheep!”
Sure enough, hanging near the middle of the prize wall is a plush sheep. Not super big, but it’s fluffy and has a big grin on its face. Tanner pulls out his wallet.
“Oh, you don’t have to—” I begin to say, but he waves Winnie over.
“Come on Fred.”
He exchanges his cash for tickets, and we sit there for almost fifteen minutes as he sinks every last ticket into the game.
The woman must feel bad because just as Tanner is about to use his final ticket, she sighs.
“Since we’re about to close, for the next five minutes if you get at least one ball in, you can get the sheep prize. ”
Tanner shoots me a look over his shoulder as if to say that would have been nice thirty dollars ago, but regardless, the first ball flies up and sinks right in the center. Getting the number of points he originally needed for that damn sheep.
Winnie is jumping up and down as the woman hands her the plushy.
“Do you think I won her over?” he asks me quietly as he rejoins my side.
“I think you won her over with the flowers at her recital.” Honestly, I’m not sure if I mean Winnie or myself.
Back at the car, after saying goodbye to Lauren and Rhett, Winnie places her fish in the cupholder and I pray that it makes it through the night.
“Winnie, what do you say to Tanner for the fish and the sheep?”
“Thank you, Tan,” she yawns.
“You’re welcome, Fred.” He ruffles her hair and then slides the door shut. Then he turns to me with his palm out and an expectant look in his eye
“I can drive,” I tell him.
“But you don’t like driving,” he says and walks around to open the passenger side for me.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I know you. Hop in.”
Winnie is asleep by the first stoplight we come to and is snoring when we pull into the parking lot of the apartment.
“Winnie.” I lean back and gently nudge her leg. “We’re home.”
She only snuggles her sheep.
“I’ll get her.” Tanner slips out of the car. He carefully picks her up and effortlessly carries her up and deposits her under her covers.
“Goodnight Fred,” he says brushing the hair out of her closed eyes. Another little crack in what’s left of my walls.
“Thank you,” I whisper as we close her door.
“No problem. She’s a light thing.”
I smile. “I mean for everything tonight. I don’t think she has ever had someone work so hard for her before.”
Tanner tilts his head to the side. “Hannah, you work hard for her every day. Winning her a stuffed sheep and a goldfish is the least I could do.”
“Her dad missed her fourth birthday because he had a business trip in New York. I found out later that he had his mistress with him. He didn’t even buy Winnie a present. Trust me. Sometimes the little things are the biggest things.”
He smiles and turns to walk away and all I want to do is reach for him and tell him that he would be an amazing father.
That Poppy would have been lucky for him to be her dad, and that Winnie too, would be lucky to have him in her life.
But all of those words are too much. Though true, they’re bigger than I can manage, so I let him wish me a goodnight.
He pauses at the bottom of the stairs and looks back up at me while a curious grin stretches across his face. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pink fuzzy handcuffs from earlier.
“I got them. So, if CPS comes to search your house, you’ll be in the clear. If you want them back, you just need to ask, and I’ll show you how to use them—”
“Goodnight Tan.”
I spy the blush on his cheeks as he smirks. “Goodnight Han.”