54. Sage #2
“Knox. No. Absolutely not.” I’m sitting up straight now, both hands on the dashboard like I’m bracing for impact. “You remember how weird it was last time?”
“I do. But she asked for you specifically.”
“Knox. The dads were wearing shock collars and there were six plots in the garden that were definitely not tomatoes.”
“The food was great.”
“That’s not the point! The point is that woman is a federal crime in a housecoat and I am not going back there without a will and a dental records update.”
Knox’s mouth does something I rarely see. It twitches. The corner lifts, just barely, fighting against the granite of his face. And then—a sound. Low. Rumbling. Building in his chest like an engine turning over.
Knox is laughing.
I’ve heard him laugh with the others, when my fart took out an entire room full of men. But this is the first time I’ve heard just him. The sound is so unexpected and so warm that my panic dissolves into bewildered delight.
“You’re messing with me,” I say.
“Little bit.”
“You—Knox Mehlar, you absolute—” I punch his arm, which is like punching brick. “Where are we actually going?”
He glances at me. The laugh has settled into his eyes now.
“You’ll see, Fury.”
We drive for another five minutes before I see it. The lights first—a smear of color against the darkening sky, reds and blues and yellows spinning and blinking in patterns that can only mean one thing.
“Is that—”
“Boardwalk carnival,” Knox says. “Milo’s idea. Eli tried to veto it.”
“An amusement park?”
“Don’t get excited. The rides are held together with rust and optimism.”
But I am excited. I’m pressing my face against the window like a kid, watching the Ferris wheel turn against the purple sky, the swing ride spinning, the flash of a roller coaster cresting a hill.
I can hear the music from here, tinny and bright, the universal soundtrack of not taking anything seriously.
Knox pulls into the lot and parks, and I see them before he’s cut the engine.
Milo is leaning against the entrance gate holding a stick of cotton candy bigger than his head. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says I’M WITH STUPID with an arrow pointing in every direction. When he sees the truck, he holds the cotton candy aloft like a torch of liberty.
Micah is beside him, hands in his pockets, smiling that easy, warm smile that makes strangers trust him and makes me want to crawl into his arms. He looks like he belongs here, relaxed, open, the only one of them who can pass for a normal person at a carnival without effort.
Eli is standing slightly apart, arms crossed, surveying the entrance with the expression of a man who’s been dragged to his own execution and is trying to find the dignity in it.
His jaw is tight. While I watch, he moves two steps to his left—putting the ticket booth at his back instead of the open midway—and checks the gate again as a family pushes through it.
He’s the only person in a hundred yards facing away from the rides.
Holden is reading the safety inspection certificate posted beside the gate. Line by line. He’s got his phone out and I think he might be photographing it for future reference.
“Oh my God,” I say.
“Milo wanted us wearing matching shirts,” Knox says, as though this explains something. “We refused.”
I’m out of the truck before he’s finished the sentence. Milo sees me coming and opens his arms wide, cotton candy held high so it doesn’t get crushed.
“Kitten! Welcome to the greatest night of your life. I’ve pre-scouted the grounds. The Ferris wheel is romantic, the haunted house is dog shit, and the corn dog stand has a secret menu if you ask for the Milo Special.”
“The special is—there is no Milo Special,” Micah says.
“There will be by the end of tonight. I’m manifesting it.”
Eli unfolds his arms when I reach him. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at me, and whatever he sees makes the tension in his shoulders drop half a notch.
“You could have said no,” I say, running my hand down the front of our shared jacket.
“I did say no. Multiple times. They ignored me.”
“And yet here you are.”
His mouth twitches. “Here I am.”
I take his hand. He lets me. And the six of us walk through the entrance of a boardwalk carnival like the world’s most unlikely family outing.
The next two hours are the most normal thing that’s happened to me since I moved to this town.
Milo drags me onto the Tilt-A-Whirl and screams louder than I do, which I didn’t think was physically possible.
Knox refuses every ride until I find the strongman game—the one where you hit a platform with a mallet and try to ring the bell—and he rings it so hard the bell flies off the top and hits a popcorn cart.
The carnival worker stares. Knox stares back.
They give him the biggest stuffed bear on the rack and ask him to please never do that again.
Holden eats a corn dog by holding it at arm’s length between bites, examining it, taking another bite, examining it again.
“The breading is inconsistent,” he tells me. “And I don’t want to know what’s in the meat.”
“Then stop eating it.”
“I paid six dollars. I’m finishing it.”
Micah wins me a goldfish by throwing ping-pong balls into tiny bowls with a precision that suggests either incredible hand-eye coordination or misspent youth. He presents it to me in its little plastic bag with a bow that’s actually just a napkin he folded.
“You have to name it,” he says.
“Frank,” I say, without hesitation. “After the guy at the diner.”
“Frank the fish. I love it.”
Milo appears from nowhere. “You named the fish Frank? I had a whole list prepared. I was going to pitch ‘Sir Swims-a-Lot’ and ‘Gill Murray’ and—”
“His name is Frank.”
“Frank is a terrible name for a fish.”
“Frank is a perfect name for a fish.”
“What about Gill Murray though? Just consider it.”
“Frank.”
Milo turns to Knox. “Back me up. Gill Murray.”
Knox looks at the fish. Looks at Milo. “Frank,” he says.
The Ferris wheel is last. Milo insists we all go—three gondolas, two people each.
Holden and Micah. Milo and Knox, which is a pairing I’d pay money to watch because Milo will want to discuss the engineering and Knox will want to sit in silence.
And me and Eli, which is either romantic or a hostage situation depending on how you look at it.
We rise above the carnival in a slow, creaking arc. The boardwalk spreads below us, lights and music and the dark line of the ocean beyond. Eli’s grip on the safety bar is white-knuckled.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I don’t like heights.”
“You climb onto rooftops for surveillance.”
“That’s different. That’s work. This is voluntary stupidity.”
I take his hand off the safety bar and thread my fingers through his. He resists for half a second, then gives in, his grip transferring from the bar to me with the kind of pressure that says if we die, we die holding hands.
“Look,” I say, pointing toward the water.
The sun has fully set and the ocean is a black mirror under the stars, the carnival lights reflecting off the surface in smears of color.
It’s beautiful in the cheap, temporary way that fairgrounds always are, nothing built to last, everything designed to make you forget that it won’t.
“It’s nice,” Eli admits. Like the word costs him.
“It’s more than nice.”
“Fine. It’s very nice.”
“Say it’s beautiful, Eli.”
“It’s adequate.”
I laugh and lean my head on his shoulder and his arm comes around me, and the gondola rocks gently at the top of the arc, and for a few seconds, the whole world is just the lights below, the stars above, and a man who’s learning to hold things without crushing them.
When we come down, Milo is waiting with two corn dogs and a theory about how the ring-toss game is rigged using weighted bottles.
“The center of gravity is off by three degrees. I’m going to beat the system.”
“You’re going to get us kicked out,” Holden says.
“I’m going to beat the system AND get us kicked out.”
He does, in fact, beat the system. He also gets us kicked out. But not before winning a stuffed penguin the size of a toddler, which he presents to me with the solemnity of a man proposing.
“His name is Gerald,” Milo says. “He’s our son now.”
“We have a fish named Frank, Knox won a bear—what’s the bear called?” I ask him.
“Bear,” Knox grunts.
“Bear, then. And a penguin named Gerald.”
“We’re building a family, kitten. One carnival prize at a time.”
The drive home is warm and quiet. Knox and me in the truck, Gerald and Bear buckled into the back seat because Knox insisted, Frank the fish in a cupholder. The others are in Milo’s truck behind us. The group chat pops off.
Milo:
Best. Night. Ever.
Eli:
Can you focus on driving, please?
Milo:
Why did you text me that when you could have just said it? You’re in the back seat.
Eli:
Focus, Milo!
I put the phone down and lean my head against Knox’s shoulder. He shifts to accommodate me without taking his eyes off the road, his hand finding my knee in the dark.
“Thank you,” I murmur. “For tonight.”
His thumb presses into my knee once. His version of you’re welcome and I love you and I’d do it every day if you’d let me, all compressed into one silent gesture.
I close my eyes. Gerald the penguin and Bear watch over us from the back seat. Frank the fish circles his bag. The carnival lights fade in the mirror, replaced by the steady glow of street lamps and the dark line of the coast.
Saturday is four days away. Pajama night.
Amy and Jamie and face masks and bad movies and the kind of ordinary, stupid fun that I used to think was all there was.
Now I know better. Now I know there’s this too—murder and love and stuffed penguins and five men who will do anything, and I mean anything, to make me happy.
I wouldn’t trade any of it. Not for anything. Beside me, Knox checks the rearview again. Third time since we left the lot.