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“I was going to see if some of the vendors needed to take a break to grab something to eat.”
“When do you get a break?”
She just grinned at me from one side of her mouth before looking down at her shoes.
“When’s the last time you sat down?”
“Um…” We both knew it had probably been hours.
I reached for her arm, gently tugging her in the direction of the Ferris wheel. “Come on. Why don’t we go ride the Ferris wheel while the line is short?”
She scoffed in protest as I pulled her along. “Mason, I have a dozen things I need to do right now.”
“Can’t they wait?” I maneuvered through the crowd of people waiting to get their kids’ faces painted and past the petting zoo area to the line for the Ferris wheel, which was the shortest I’d seen it all evening. I dropped her arm once we reached the back of the line. “I mean, if you’d rather ride the merry-go-round, just tell me.”
Kendall put her hands in the pockets of her cardigan and gave me a playful eyeroll. “No, this is fine.” I knew I’d get her to give in. She looked over her shoulder in the direction of Noah Sherman and his family, who were in line at the cotton candy cart, and I worried she might be feeling nervous about what people would think about seeing us together.
“I promise to keep my hands to myself,” I said, immediately wanting to kick myself for making yet another promise I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to keep.
Kendall looked up with a grin that told me she didn’t quite believe me. Fuck, she looked so pretty under the glow of the Ferris wheel lights. I put my hands in my back pockets as we stepped forward in line and looked up at the gondolas above—just how much did they conceal, anyway? What might I be able to get away with up there?
I was imagining how this ride might go when I felt something—or someone—tugging on the back of my shirt. I whipped around to see Finley standing there chewing on the end of one of her jellyfish’s tentacles. After a quick glance around, I realized my dad was nowhere in sight. “Fin, where’s Grandpa?”
“The merry-go-round made him dizzy, so he had to sit down. He told me to stick with you for a little while.” It took everything I had to hide the disappointment in my face. I slowly inhaled as Finley slipped her hand in mine and waved her jellyfish in the air in front of Kendall. “Look what my daddy won for me!”
“Your favorite animal!” Kendall replied. If she was disappointed, she was doing a better job than me of not letting it show. “Are you going to ride the Ferris wheel with us?”
“Yup.”
I turned to Kendall and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears with a smile. “The more the merrier, right?”
Right. Kendall seemed so happy that Finley had joined us that I began to feel a little guilty—what was I hoping would happen, anyway? I gave Finley’s hand a squeeze, accepting that I might as well embrace it. As far as I knew, Finley had never been on a Ferris wheel before. And her presence there could serve as a buffer of sorts between me and Kendall. We needed that.
When it was our turn to get on, Kendall slid into our seat first. Finley and her jellyfish sat between us. As we started to rise into the air, Kendall inhaled and her body went stiff.
“Are you okay?”
“I actually might be a little scared of heights.”
“And why didn’t you tell me that before I practically forced you to get on this thing?”
“I don’t know?” She laughed at herself, but her eyes darted around as she gripped the metal door in front of us. The ride jerked and rocked more than any Ferris wheel I’d ever been on, which wasn’t helping the situation. Finley was giggling with excitement as we rose higher and higher, but Kendall’s body was still tense as she peered over the side of the gondola.
“Hey, look at me,” I said, resting my arm on the back of the seat behind her and Finley. She turned to face me. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“What song is the DJ playing?” I asked, pausing so she could listen more closely. I tried not to smile as the realization hit her face—because the song that was playing was “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley.
Kendall’s mouth dropped open. “Did you just—did you just Rick Roll me?”
“What’s that mean?” Finley asked.
“Too hard to explain,” I answered, giving her knee a squeeze before looking back up at Kendall, who was shaking her head in amusement. I was pleased my method of distraction worked. We were at the top of the Ferris wheel now, which gave us a perfect view of the festival. I could see the lights from the lanterns we’d assembled the night before down on the tables below, and the aroma from the cotton candy cart was wafting all the way to us. I could hear the kids shrieking and laughing in the bouncy castle below—it hadn’t spontaneously deflated in the past hour. It seemed we were in the clear.
I hoped Kendall realized none of this would have been possible if it weren’t for her. “You know, aside from the world’s worst DJ, this festival is really somethin’ else,” I said. “You did an amazing job planning it.”
