Page 6 of Make it a Double

There it was. The out I’d been praying for. I could walk away with a guilt-free conscience, get in a quick workout, or indulge in some trash TV.

And yet my feet remained rooted to the spot.

“Are you trying to send me packing for my sake, or yours?” I asked, rocking back on my heels. If she didn’t want to spend her night with me, that was one thing, but if she was just saying that for me… I’d be damned if I walked away.

Just then my phone rang. I winced, uttering a half-assed apology as I pulled it from my pocket and saw my father’s contact flash. If I didn’t answer now, he wouldn’t stop calling. There was no telling what he wanted. He was probably three sheets to the fucking wind, wanting to take out whatever had pissed him off on me.

But that was a problem for later. Because tonight was just for me and Sawyer.

Pocketing my phone, I turned to Sawyer with a smile. “Sorry. Where were we?”

“Oh, I offered my help for your bucket list woes, but I…” Sawyer paused, fiddling with a silver charm bracelet on her wrist and refusing to meet my gaze. “I just wanted to give you an out. There’s no need to be here if you don’t want to be.”

The careful way she worded her response didn’t go unnoticed. I stepped forward and gently took her chin between my fingers. There was nowhere else for her to look but at me. “If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t have stayed, Sawyer.” At the mention of her name, her lips parted. It’d happened at the bar the first time I said it, too. The tiniest movement, but I caught it all the same. I stepped back, giving her an easy smile. “Besides, something tells me I’ll never find a better tour guide.”

“I highly doubt⁠—”

“I want to be here. Do you?”

She narrowed her gaze before slowly nodding.

“I was hoping you’d feel that way,” I said, holding out my elbow for her to take. She stared at me for a moment before looping her arm through mine. It was the first time I caught a hint of her perfume. It was soft. Subtle. Like freshly baked pastries on a warm summer day.

The walk to the entry booth was short. Sawyer shot me a quick glance when I bought a ridiculous number of tickets. She probably thought I’d want to get out of here as quickly as possible, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. If I was going to indulge in small town comforts for one night, I might as well go all in.

When in Rome, and all that.

“Alright. You’re the boss,” I said, turning to her as I tucked the red tickets into my pocket. “Where do we go first?”

Sawyer glanced around, taking her time to weigh all our options. When she settled on the closest food stand, I almost laughed. “Have you ever had a funnel cake?”

SAWYER

“I can’t believe you’ve never had fair food,” I exclaimed, shoving a piece of funnel cake into my mouth.

“Never been to a fair, so I don’t normally seek this stuff out,” Beckett said, smiling as he licked powdered sugar from his fingers. I couldn’t help but watch him eat. It was strangely hot. Everything about him was hot. It was horrible.

Beckett had been adamantly opposed to eating anything after we bought tickets, so I decided to take him on a few of the so-called rides first. There were the spinning teacups, which earned a skeptical nod as I dragged him forward, and the giant boat that turned his face green when it started to swing. My favorite was the haunted house, complete with a hall of mirrors. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard I cried, but taking in our distorted images had us both clutching our sides. The whole thing was cheesy and dumb, but that didn’t stop my heart rate from picking up when he held my hand as a masked killer chased us back into the fresh air.

My plan had worked in the end, and all the spent adrenaline had worked up enough of an appetite that he was willing to try Pinecrest’s finest artery-clogging fair food.

“But it’s good, isn’t it?” I asked.

He glanced down at his food. For a moment, I worried I had misread the situation, but then his lips curved, and he gave a subtle dip of his chin. “I get the hype now. This is delicious.” He reached over, grabbed a corndog, and dipped it into the plop of mustard in the red-and-white checkered basket. “Consider me a changed man.”

“I still can’t believe you’ve never even had a corndog before. That was an entire food group when I was a kid. They were so easy to pop in the microwave during the summer when my grandma was at work,” I said, watching him devour the food.

Seeing him enjoy himself while doing something I suggested was strangely satisfying. When we arrived, I was nervous that this would be a catastrophe. The small talk was awkward at first. Beckett seemed hesitant to do or say anything for fear of making a mistake. Every time I glanced his way, he blushed and ducked his head, keeping conversation as light as possible. But once we ordered our food and sat down at a table, I could barely get him to stop talking.

Apparently, the rumors were true. The way to get a man to open up was through his stomach. Who knew?

The only thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was how his phone had vibrated non-stop since we got here. Every ten to fifteen minutes, Beckett would reach into his pocket, stare at the screen, and push decline. I told him he could answer it. He seemed like a busy man, and I didn’t want to stand in the way of that, but each time he shook his head and told me there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

Beckett shook his head. “This is my parents’ worst nightmare. They’d rather die than be caught in a ten-mile radius of a corndog or a Dairy Queen.”

I reached across the table for a fry. “But what did you have to eat for your birthday parties growing up? It’s not like they have a chain of Michelin-starred Chuck-E-Cheeses.”

His chuckle was dry. “Oh, I’ve never really had one. Birthdays were more of a reason for my parents to gather with their equally rich friends and talk about their investment portfolios or whatever.”