“Oh, Christ, not again!”
Four times.
In a row.
And Trez had been the one insisting.
As their little cart of horrors came back to the platform once again, he was prepared to keep the torture up.
Selena was ecstatic and that made it all worth it—even the intestinal loops in the middle of the roller-coaster ride.
Which turned his own guts into a fizzy mess.
“Let’s do it one more time,” he said, trying to fly the flag. Even though at this point someone was going to have to surgically remove his hands from the bar.
“No, I think we’ve had enough.”
“Are you kidding? I love this shit—”
“We’re finished,” she called out to the attendant.
“I got your pictures,” the human male said as he pulled a crank down and an engine that was out of sight came to a rambling halt. “They’re just printing.”
Okaaaay, time to get out. Yup.
“Trez?”
Prying his grip off the bar, he watched his metal savior rise up and clink into place overhead. “Yup. I’m coming.” Right now. “Here I go.”
As Selena got to her feet and balanced herself on the roll bar, he was ready to follow her out. Walk her over to the attendant. Get those pictures he’d been unaware that someone had been taking of them.
Instead, he just sat there breathing in a shallow pump. Come on, though, he wasn’t a pussy. Forcing himself to try to stand up, he found that his legs were numb from mid-thigh down—but on a messy stumble, he somehow managed to get out of the cart and onto the platform without completely embarrassing himself.
Although the fact that Selena had to steady him was not exactly a vote of confidence in his verticality.
“Oh, thank you,” he heard her say to the attendant. Then she glanced at him. “Here, let’s walk over to that bench and look at the pictures.”
Before he knew it, he was sitting on a stretch of wrought-iron hard-and-cold, and staring at photographs of Selena having a party and him looking like someone had his nuts in a vise. Meanwhile, her hand was stroking his back, riding over the leather of his jacket in a slow circle.
“Here you go, ma’am.”
“Thank you so much.” She held something out to him. “Why don’t you take a quick drink?”
He was too wrung-out to throw out a “S’all good.” He just took whatever it was, put it to his mouth, and did what he was told.
“Oh, that’s good,” he breathed when he finally lowered the soda bottle.
“Ginger ale. I learned about it from Doc Jane.”
About ten minutes later, he was able to properly focus on what he was supposedly looking at. “You are so beautiful,” he said as he stared at the image of the two of them together.
“I’m not sure about that, but I’ll tell you one thing—that is the time of my life right there. How you feeling?”
He rubbed his thumb over the picture of her face. “You are so alive. Look at you, your eyes are amazing.”
One by one, he studied each of the photographs. They’d been taken during the big drop after the second ascent, where you went all but weightless and the wind roared and you were not entirely convinced shit was going to end well when you got to the bottom.
He could practically feel the thrill coursing through Selena’s body, the excitement, the pleasure, the vibrating force of life transforming her into a contained lightning bolt of joy.
On his side? He’d never seen himself looking pale before, his dark skin pasty as shit—which was evidently possible.
Who knew.
“We should make a calendar of these,” he announced. “One half of them, at any rate.”
“You look so much better now. Less green. You were kind of green.”
“I would go on that motherfucker a million times more if that’s what you wanted.”
She leaned in, turned his face toward her, and kissed him. “You know what you just proved?”
“What? That even real males need airsick bags sometimes?”
“No.” She kissed him again. “That somebody can say ‘I love you’ without speaking.”
His chest puffed up. He couldn’t help it. “Check me out. A Casanova—who’da thought.”
Finishing the ginger ale, he tossed the empty into the trash bin five feet away, and put the pictures in the inside pocket of his jacket.
Getting to his feet, he offered her his arm. “How would you like a nutritionally deficient, but totally satisfying meal? We’re talking real chemicals and complete over-processing. The kind of stuff humans traditionally enjoy in this setting and later get home and have to take TUMS for?”
“Sounds delightful.” She took hold of what he offered. “I look forward to whatever is served.”
Trez gave the attendant a wave—and then considered maybe throwing in a couple of bodybuilding poses just to get his guy card restamped.
The concession stands were behind and to the right, and as they walked around the foot of that roller-coaster, he glanced up, way up, at the metal scaffolding that held the track in the air. Man, he was glad he hadn’t seen this view from the base before heading up there.
The more he thought about it, the more his case of the vapors threatened a return, sweat breaking out on his palms and across his upper lip, but good news came in the form of the distraction of the hot-dog stand that had been opened just for them.
Stepping up to the counter, he held Selena tight to his side, catching her scent as well as that of the shampoo and the soap she’d used before they’d left the house.
A human female with a round body and a nice smile came over, putting aside her copy of People magazine. “What can I get you guys?”
“Good heavens, so many choices,” Selena said.
The menu was all lit-up red panels with yellow lettering, offering the kinds of things that were guaranteed to taste great going down and cause trouble once they were in you. But like he’d told her, that was what antacids were for.
“What are you having?” she asked him.
“I’m going with the Coney Island special,” he announced. “With a high-test Coke, extra ice.”
“You got it,” the server said. “Ma’am, you know what you want?”
Selena frowned. “I really want a hamburger. But am I missing out if I don’t do the hot dog?”
“You can have some of mine.”
“Great, I’d like a hamburger with cheese and some French fries.”
“No problem.” The woman pointed at another section of the menu. “You want something on them?”
“I’m sorry?”
“On your fries. Like chili, cheese, jalapeños—the list is over here.”
As Selena considered round two of her options, Trez took the opportunity to study his queen’s stunning profile. Those lips of hers were nearly irresistible, and the more he stared at them, the more the residual burn of all that adrenaline overload shifted from fight or flight to pure, undiluted lust.
With a discreet move, he had to rearrange himself.
He couldn’t wait to get her home. Get her naked.
His eyes drifted down to her breasts. The Pata-Gucci jacket she had on had obligingly customized itself to those curves he loved so much—
“Trez?”
“Huh?”
“Do you have any money? I didn’t think to bring human—”
He cut her off. “You’re not paying for nothing.” Taking his wallet out, he said to the lady, “How much do I owe you?”
“It’s on the house.”
“Let me give you something, then.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I know why you’re—”
Trez jumped in, putting a hundred down on the Formica and sliding it forward. “Take it. For being so kind to us.”
The woman’s eyes popped. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
For one, he didn’t want her to keep going and make Selena feel like some kind of charity case. For another, the human had come out on a cold night for only a couple of hours of work. Holidays were coming for her kind. No doubt she could use the extra cash.
“Wow. Thanks.”
As the woman got to work on the food, he could feel Selena looking at him with respect, and didn’t that make him go all puffed up again in the chestral region.
Talk about getting his guy card stamped—fuck posing like Ahnold. The way she stared up at him? He felt big as a mountain.
A couple of minutes later, they were heading over to a picnic table painted a screaming blue color and sitting down side by side.
The air was cold, the food was steaming hot, the sodas were frothy and sweet. Handling the overstuffed buns was tricky stuff, with both of them going tilted heads and mop-up napkins, but that was even its own sort of fun. And the conversation, when they could manage it, was about the taste and the spice and the tongue burning … the roller-coaster ride … what they were going to do next … whether they were going to have cotton candy or hot-fudge sundaes for dessert.
It was magnificently, beautifully, resonantly normal.
And as he sat with his female, and maybe wiped off the corner of her mouth with his napkin, or shared his soda with her, or laughed when she said they’d better do the carousel next because it was only two feet off the ground, he soaked in the memories until they permeated his mind, body, and soul with a glow he had never felt before.