Like Gravity (27 page)

“I…hate….you,” I
gasped for breath between each word, rolling as far away from him on the bed as I could get.

“Liar,” he laughed, rolling on top of me so I was pinned beneath him.

I glared at him, my chest still heaving as I pulled in gulps of air.

He looked down at me and kiss
ed the tip of my nose.

“Happy Birthday, Bee,” he murmured, before his lips descended on mine and I forgot all about being mad at him.

***

“Come on,” I begged.

“No.”

“Finn!” I
huffed.

“Absolutely not.”

“Pleaseeee.” I tried out my best pleading puppy-dog eyes.

“Nope.”

“But it’s my birthday.”

“You hate your birthday.”

Clearly, my attempts to appeal to his soft side weren’t working.

“I didn’t realize I was dating such a sissy,” I scoffed, changing tactics. When in doubt, threaten the manhood; they crumble every time.

“
Did you just call me a
sissy
?” He asked, incredulous. “I thought we were celebrating your twenty-first birthday, not your fifth.”

“
HA! If anyone’s a baby, it’s you. You’re the one who won’t even go on the Ferris wheel!”

“I don’t do heights.” The finality in his tone was unmistakable.

“Wow, I’m seeing a whole new side to badass Finn Chambers,” I laughed.

He glared at me, then turned to stare at the massive Ferris wheel with apprehension clear on his face.
It probably wasn’t helping my case that the ride looked like it had been built about a century ago, with rust staining the metal beams, and bolts that squealed with each rotation of the wheel.

“Okay, fine,” I sighed
, resigned. “I’ll go by myself. You can watch me.”

Popping up onto my tiptoes, I pressed a quick kiss to Finn’s cheek, before turning and dashing for the entry line. Handing over three tickets to the man at the entrance, I stood on the platform at the base of the wheel, waiting for my turn to be loaded into one of the
passenger cars. I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed that Finn had refused to ride with me, but I wasn’t going to miss out on my favorite ride just because I had to fly solo.

I’
d always loved the Ferris wheel.

Since we were about sixteen, each fall Lexi and I
had made it our mission to find a local fairground where we could pet goats and llamas in the petting zoo, overload on sugary cotton candy and funnel cakes, and ride the rickety, structurally-questionable carnival rides until we were ready to throw up. I’d always loved the rush of adrenaline an amusement park ride or roller coaster brings; they were almost as thrilling as my late-night motorcycle rides.

I couldn’t remember the first time I’d ridden a Ferris wheel. I knew my love of the contraptions dated back further than
my trips with Lexi to the fair, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall the exact details of that maiden voyage up into the air. I’d been young, I knew that much.

I
’d always just assumed I had been with my mother.

Regardless,
the prospect of getting back on one was too tempting to pass up, with or without my –
sissy
– boyfriend with me. And, despite my disappointment, I couldn’t possibly be upset with him after everything he’d done for me today.

I’d woken later than usual; the sun streaming
through my windows was bright, indicating that it was well into midmorning. The first thing my half-asleep mind had registered were the rose petals scattered across the pillow next to my head, their drugging floral scent seeping into my consciousness and pulling me fully awake.

Pink, red, white –
there’d been petals everywhere, strewn in a pathway that led across my bedspread, down onto the floor, and out through my doorway. Stumbling from my bed and rubbing the sleep from my bleary eyes, I’d followed the trail of petals out into the hallway and finally to the kitchen beyond.

The room had been utterly transformed.

Hundreds of multicolored balloons had been strung up from the ceiling and blanketed the hardwood floors. Red and white streamers had hung from one corner of the room to the other, so thick I couldn’t quite make out the skylights above my head. A huge sign was taped across the wall opposite the stove, reading ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROOKLYN’ in a familiar, sloping masculine hand. The kitchen island had been piled high with boxes, sloppily wrapped in striped blue paper with clumps of translucent tape sticking out in every direction – a clear sign that they’d been wrapped by a man’s unpracticed fingers.

An unstoppable, incandescent grin
had spread across my face at the sight, even as tears began to prick at my eyes; it was more than anyone had ever done for my birthday.

“Happy birthday, princess.”

He’d been standing by the stove, leaning casually against the kitchen island. His smile had nearly matched my own – as if the excitement and near-childlike sense of glee emanating off me was infectious.

“You did all this?” I’d asked, walking toward him. 

I knew it must have taken him several hours to put up all the decorations, plus there was the fact that he’d obviously spent time picking out presents and – attempting, at least – to wrap them.

“It’s your birthd
ay,” he’d shrugged, as if it were no big deal; like it was some kind of given that he’d do all this, simply because one more year of my life had passed. He didn’t understand that this was in no way similar to what I’d become accustomed to in the past fourteen years. He was breaking my annual tradition of solitary, semi-drunken celebration – deviating from the norm and turning a day I normally dreaded into something magical and romantic.

He didn’t know that my father’s idea of a birthday gift was a
painfully generic card, stuffed full of empty, meaningless words written by a Hallmark employee, and a hefty check. The years he’d remembered to even scribe his signature on the bottom of the card were the most memorable; usually, he had his secretaries take care of such trivial business, as he couldn’t be bothered to deal with unimportant matters like his only child’s day of birth.

When I’d moved out of the house last year to come t0 Charlottesville, I hadn’t ev
en gotten a phone call from him – not that I’d really been expecting one. Lexi had bought me a cupcake and a bottle of tequila, then taken me out and gotten me wasted enough to forget why I hated the day so much.

So I
’d guess it would be repetitive to say that my expectations, when it came to this year?

Zero, zilch, nada.

I’d figured that twenty-one wouldn’t be much different from twenty; judging by the state of my kitchen this morning, though, I’d be pretty comfortable admitting that I was wrong.

“I love you,” I
’d whispered, glancing around at the room in wonderment, before arching my head back to brush a kiss across Finn’s smiling lips.

I was broken from my reverie w
hen a passenger car finally descended and it was my turn to climb onboard the Ferris wheel. A hand appeared from my peripheral and one of the carnival workers helped up into the compartment.

“Thank you,” I said,
releasing his hand and turning to face him after I’d settled onto the bench.

“I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, you know.” At the sound of his voice, my eyes flew away from the safety bar I was prepari
ng to secure my lap to examine his face. To my surprise, Finn was standing there, looking a little green as he stared up at the ride over our heads. It had been his hand I’d grabbed for support.

“You changed your mind?” I asked, trying to subdue my sudden excitement.

“It was the puppy dog eyes,” he shrugged, climbing into the cab and settling close next to me. “They get me every time.”

I laughed as he pulled the bar tight across our laps, shaking it several times to check that it was securely latched.

“…probably spent about ten minutes total putting this deathtrap together…completely unsafe…” Finn was muttering under his breath about the ride, looking in every direction as we lifted off the ground several feet so the couple in line behind us could board their own car.

“Hmmm? Did you say something, caveman?” I asked sweetly, cupping a hand around my ear.

“Just how much I love you for convincing me to ride this thing,” he replied sarcastically.

I smacked him o
n the arm. 

He laughed, but it was strained with tension. His white-knuckled grip on the security bar betrayed his anxiety, only tightening the further we rose into the air.

“You really didn’t have to come,” I told him, feeling rather ashamed of myself. “I’m sorry for bugging you about it.”

“Don’t be,” he said, staring out over the fairground lights below.

The park really came alive at night. It was sunset now, and most of the little kids had gone home hours ago, replaced by too many couples to count. Country music blared from the speakers of almost every game stand, screams rang out as adventure-seeking fair-goers were spun upside down by the scarier rides on the far side of the park, and food vendors called out their wares to passerby. The myriad of voices blended together into one distinct medley: the nighttime soundtrack of every autumn carnival across the country.

Noisy, bustling, bright;
just breathing the air made you feel more alive.

“The view is so beautiful from up here,” I
sighed.

“It really is,”
he agreed. When I glanced over at him, though, it was me he was staring at, rather than the carnival spread out below us.

“Corny,” I accused, elbowing him
lightly in the stomach. Secretly, I was enjoying the rush of warmth his words sent spiraling through my chest. Finn wrapped one arm around my shoulders and tugged me closer, so I was snuggled up against his side.

“You love
me anyway, though,” he whispered into my ear, his mouth moving lower to press a kiss to the sensitive spot behind my lobe. I shivered at the sensation, tilting my head to give him better access. With his face buried in my neck, he didn’t notice the kids in the passenger car above us, but I did.

There were two small children around eight or nine years old – siblings most likely
– in the compartment. The boy was bigger, and he was finding great delight in his sister’s fear; he heaved his body backward and forward, until the car gained momentum of its own and was rocking wildly. His sister was clearly terrified, hanging on to the security bar and pleading with him to stop. He was laughing at her.

It happened so fast.

Sometimes you see change coming. You might not want it, might not be ready to embrace the new course your life is about to set out on, but at the very least you can prepare for it. Adjust your expectations. Formulate a new plan.

Other times, change is so sudden, so unexpected, that it knocks you right on your ass and
leaves you wondering how you got to this place – blindsided, with your expectations and hopes and dreams as unsalvageable as an ice cream cone dropped to the ground at the carnival, melting slowly into the dirt road.

Had I known, in that moment, that getting on that goddamn amusement ride would irrevocably change things between Finn and me, I never would’ve
climbed aboard. We were young and in love; we were invincible – or so I’d thought. If I’d known it was all about to be ripped from me, maybe I’d have held him tighter, told him I loved him one last time.

I didn’t get that chance.

One minute, I was looking up at the siblings in the car above us, and the next, I was somewhere deep inside my own head. It was disorienting, how quickly the memory took hold of my senses, dragging me back exactly fourteen years in a single instant.

Our foster mother
, Eva, had agreed to take us to the Fall Festival, and the eight of us kids divided into two minivans, with the oldest fighting for the front seats. There were two chaperones with our group – women I’d never met before – but they kept mostly to themselves, talking to each other rather than the kids. I think they were Eva’s friends – sometimes they hung around with her at our group home – but I wasn’t really sure.

As usual, my scrawny frame was shoved into the back row, between two of the bigger kids. I
kept my eyes closed for the majority of the ride, retelling myself the legend of Andromeda over and over in my head to shut out the noise in the van and the uncomfortable, cramped backseat.

The boy sat in the row ahead of me and
didn’t look back. A part of me wished he would, but I knew it was for the best – we never talked to each other in front of the other kids. As far as they knew, I was still the little mute girl who kept to herself.

The back porch at night – that was
 
our 
place, the one space in the house I ever felt safe enough to be myself. Safe enough to speak. Every day I feared one of the other kids would discover us out there, and learn my secret.
But for now, on my way to a carnival with the promise of sugar and fun hanging in the air all around me, I pushed my fears away and determined to have a good time. It was my birthday, after all.