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“To figure out I’m an asshole. Now, get on the fucking bike.”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
King got off the bike and stalked toward me. He snatched the helmet out of my hands and roughly shoved it onto my head. My hair was trapped over my eyes and I was momentarily disoriented. King took advantage of that, by picking me up and setting me on the bike.
I shrieked into my helmet, and before I could protest and jump off, we were in motion. My options were then limited to holding onto King or flying off the back of his bike.
Reluctantly, I wrapped my arms around his waist.
What I really wanted was to wrap my hands around his throat.
We drove for what seemed like only a few minutes but in reality it was more like a half of an hour. The normally stagnant and wet Florida night air blew cool all around us as the bike pressed forward into the night.
My jaw dropped, and my heart sped when the neon lights came into view.
A carnival.
King had brought me to a carnival.
The Ferris wheel overhead appeared so close I thought that if I reached my hands up into the air I might be able to touch one of the swaying carts.
When King brought the bike to a stop in the grass parking lot, my body was still humming from the vibrations of the engine. In my excitement at being at a real live carnival, I jumped off the bike quickly, grazing my calf on one of the hot pipes.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I shouted, bouncing around on one leg.
King set his helmet down and came around to where I was hopping around and wincing in pain. “Come here,” he said.
I was still angry, the twenty minute ride doing nothing to take the edge off wanting to do him physical harm. I ignored his request and bent down to inspect the damage on my leg.
King shook his head and walked over to me, picking me up under my shoulders and setting me on top of a nearby picnic table. “You need to learn to do what you’re told,” he said, lifting my leg to inspect the burn.
I huffed. “Picking me up and tossing me around is unnecessary, you know.”
King leaned down and gently blew across the burn, sending hot chills up my spine. I was all too aware that the dress I wore had ridden up my thighs when he’d picked me up. I caught him glancing at the exposed white fabric between my legs.
“Then, do what you’re fucking told the first time.” He then proceeded to inspect me thoroughly. “It’s not a bad burn,” he said, but I could barely hear him over the memory of his breath against my skin.
“I thought you didn’t do gentle,” I teased.
King helped me set my foot back on the ground and reached for my hand.
“I don’t.” He turned to the gate, roughly yanking me behind him as to prove his point.
King paid for our tickets, and we entered through a turnstile. Once inside, my inner child sprang to life, and my anger was temporarily forgotten. Neon lights, carnival music, corn dog and cotton candy stands.
It was everything I ever wanted in a first date. Well, except maybe for a date who actually wanted to be there. I yanked my hand out of King’s grip, but he grabbed me again and held my hand tighter, pulling me closer into his side.
“What do you want to do first, pup?”
“Everything. I want to do absolutely everything!” I craned my neck to get a better look at the giant Ferris wheel.
“The Ferris wheel is last,” King said, pushing me toward the row of games.
As we moved deeper and deeper into the crowd, the noise level around us increased tenfold. A group of kids whizzed by us, leaving bursts of laughter in their wake.
The carnival workers shouted the names of their games and advertised how easy it was to win one of the big stuffed animal prizes they held up.
King stopped at a game where the goal was to shoot water from a gun into a hippo’s mouth in order to move the baby hippo up the ladder. Whoever shot their gun the steadiest and moved their baby hippo to the top the fastest was the winner.
“You in?”
“I’m so in,” I answered, barely able to contain my excitement. I bounced up on the balls of my feet.
“Two,” King said He removed a money clip from his pocket and plucked out a few bills, handing it to the man controlling the game. King took a seat on one of the ripped leather stools, and I took a seat a few stools down.
“Afraid to sit next to me?” King asked.
“No, but you’re huge and these stools are small. I don’t want to bump into your arm and lose just because you haven’t missed a workout in three years.” I closed one eye and readied my water gun.
King shook his head, “That mouth of yours,” he said. There are several ways I could have taken that statement, but I didn’t have time to think about it because I had a game to win.
“I’m warning you. I’m really good at this game,” King said to me.
Was he being playful?
“Competitive, are we?” I asked, keeping my focus straight ahead at the bulls-eye.
“Oh, pup. You have no idea.”
The bell rang, and the carnie shouted, “GO!”
I squeezed the trigger. Water sprayed out of my gun and directly onto the target. My little hippo shot up the ladder, and just as quickly as it had started, the game was over. I looked over to King who was sitting back smiling. What was he smiling over? I was the one who won.
“Winner! Winner!” the Carni shouted He unclipped a huge stuffed deer from the top of the tent and handed it to King, who received the prize and then started to walk away.
He’d won? How was that possible?
“Hey!” I shouted, chasing after him. “Why did you get the prize? I won. My hippo was so far ahead of yours that I didn’t even see yours move.” King stopped.
“Pup, you didn’t see my hippo move because I was done before you even began.” He was smiling. A genuine, real–life, swoon-worthy smile that reached his eyes. It was a good look on him.
No, it was a GREAT look on him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I shouted.
“Competitive, are we?” King asked, mocking me. “I told you I was good at that game.”
King seemed like any other young man who was taking a girl out on a date. Well, any other six-foot-something tattooed wall of muscle who looked like he could be an underwear model.
I liked playful King.
I liked him a lot.
“You must have played that game before,” I pouted. “Unfair advantage.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that. This carnival has come here every year since I was a kid. Preppy and I used to sneak in the back. Over there.” King pointed toward a gate in a chain-link fence with a huge padlock keeping it shut. “We’d steal corn dogs from the food stands, right out of the fryer. Although the padlock happened only after they found out how we were getting in.”
I knew Preppy and King were best friends, but this was the first time I’d ever heard any stories from their childhood together.
“I tell you what,” King started. “Since this is a date and all, and guys usually give their dates their prizes, I will let you have my deer.” He held out the stuffed animal.
I didn’t know if he was toying with me. If I didn’t know how to handle ornery King, I certainly didn’t know how to handle nice and playful King.
I snatched it out of his hands like he was going to reconsider his offer, and I tucked it tightly under my arm. King laughed.
“What’s so funny now?” I asked.
“Doe…holding a doe.” Okay, he’d got me on that one. I held my hand over my mouth to contain my laughter.
For the next few hours, we played every single game the place had to offer.
I won none of them.
King made a point of handing me each of his prizes. Soon, I ran out of arm space to carry them all.
“I don’t think we can play anymore,” I told him, gesturing to the huge stack of cheap toys up to my chin.
The bell sounded for one of the games, and I was just about to walk away when King stopped me. “No, wait a sec.”
We watched as a tiny boy tried three times to win a prize against two much older teenagers. After a minute the boy’s dad pulled him aside. “That’s enough, Sam. We can try again another time.”
“But I wanted the stuffed alligator,” the boy complained.
“You’ll get it. Maybe, next year when you’re a little bit bigger.” The dad smiled.
King plucked a stuffed penguin from my arms and approached the boy and his father who were walking away from the game, the boy’s bottom lip set in a pout. Tears welling up in his eyes.
“Excuse me,” King said, getting their attention. The father looked alarmed and pulled his son into his leg.
King ignored the dad’s reaction and bent down to the boy, holding out the penguin. “I know it’s not an alligator, but penguins are just as cool. As a matter of fact, they’re cooler. They live in the snow, and they’re the only bird that doesn’t fly. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” the boy said, with a thumb in his mouth.
“They also slide around on their bellies on the ice.”
“Cooool,” the boy said, staring at the penguin.
“Now, you take good care of him, okay?” The boy nodded and took the penguin.
“Thank you.” The boy’s dad mouthed to King.
