“No, you just suck at throwing things,” Alex said, holding the cotton candy in one hand and pulling pieces off it with the other.
I must have been hanging out with him too much because I grunted. “Some people didn’t get to play softball,” I muttered.
“I can tell.”
I shot him a dirty look, but part of his mouth was flat in that amused expression of his.
“Money was tight?” he actually asked though.
Oh, he was curious about me. “Yes, but that wasn’t why. It took me six months to petition my grandparents into letting me wear pants. I can only imagine how me asking to play a sport would have gone,” I told him. “If I could’ve played something, it would’ve been volleyball.” I snuck my hand over to pluck some more cotton candy before I asked, “Did you play sports ever?”
“Soccer in high school,” he answered. “It helped me learn more control.”
“Were you any good?”
Oh, those eyes were crinkling. “I couldn’t be too good, that was the whole point.”
I groaned even as I smiled at the employee that I’d given a handful of tickets to—for the balls I’d gotten—and turned to the shit talker who’d sat on the Ferris wheel with me a few minutes ago, looking super interested in his surroundings, like he had never been so high in the sky before. He was a good actor. But more than anything, I appreciated how much of a good sport he was being letting me do this. I’d half expected him to wait around while I got on.
He’d bought so many tickets, I’d almost asked if he wanted to get a refund on some of them.
He had no idea that it meant the world to me actually, and when I’d tried to tell him that, he’d shoved the cotton candy in my face and told me to help him eat it.
So I’d dropped it.
“Let’s see you do better then, hotshot,” I said.
He held the spun sugar out, and I took it. I couldn’t see his eyeballs, but I knew we didn’t have too much time left even though it was quickly getting dark. I figured we could get away with no one seeing the real color once it happened, at least as long as they didn’t do their glow thing. Alex handed the guy a few more tickets and took the balls from him.
“I have to knock them all down to win the big one?” Alex asked him.
The young man scratched at his neck, clearly bored. That’s when I noticed there was a tattoo on the back of his hand: three black triangles. The “sign” of the Trinity.
I didn’t miss the way Alex’s cheek kind of twitched, and I definitely didn’t miss the determined glint in his eyes as he casually lifted his arm and threw the first ball, apparently not caring he had a fan right here.
He knocked down a clown.
He threw the next and the one after that and knocked them all down too.
And when he did the other two too, I whistled, pinching off another piece of cotton candy and ate it.
The employee gave an even more bored face. “Which one do you want?” he asked with zero enthusiasm.
Alex pointed at a big Hello Kitty mounted in the corner. The guy pulled it down and handed it over, and Alex tucked it under his arm.
“Why did you pick that one?” I asked him, my mouth trembling at the memory of him in my T-shirt.
He smirked. “Why do you think?”
“It was the biggest shirt I had,” I explained, trying not to smile.
“Sure it was.” He lifted his chin toward the booth next to the one we were at. It had cups filled with water on a table. “Maybe you won’t suck at that one.”
Maybe I wasn’t the only one in a good mood, and that was fine by me. “I miss the days you didn’t talk to me,” I joked.
Alex huffed, and we walked over to it. Apparently, you were supposed to toss little balls into multicolored cups. If you got enough balls in, you won a prize. If you landed a ball in one of the red cups, you won something better. I took the ping-pong-like balls, and Alex took another bucket with them too, balancing it on the edge of the panel separating the players from the cups.
He still had his huge cat under one arm and had put the handle of the cotton candy in his free hand.
I pressed my lips together before whispering, “Where’s that big, bad telekinesis at now, huh?”
His eyebrows slowly rose. “You really think you’ve got a chance at beating me?”
No. “Absolutely.”
He scoffed and tossed his first ball, not even looking in the direction. The cup clinked. Really?
I lightly threw one and made it in. “You can let me win if you want, but if you don’t, I’ll beat you fair and square.”
Another ball went flying and plopped perfectly in a cup right in the middle of the group. “I’ll close my eyes, will that make you happy?”
“Don’t you have a photographic memory?” I laughed. Who the hell was this person playing around with me? Joking? He’d been in such a mood earlier while we’d been at that building, that I hadn’t been sure how fast he was going to shake it off.
“Don’t worry about it. Toss the balls,” he said in a tone that made me smile wide.
We tossed our balls, and he won. He tucked the small stuffed animal into his front pocket, looking way too proud of himself.
But it was pretty cute.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked.
“Nothing that takes any skill.” I gestured at the booth next to us, a game where you took a seat and had a water gun that you pointed at a target. “That one.”
The expression on his face said really?
“Well, we aren’t playing that strength game with the hammer, Hercules.”
His snicker made me smile again, but he handed over tickets, and we took a seat beside each other. His legs were so long, his knee and most of his thigh brushed mine.
“Whenever you’re ready,” the worker said, looking slightly less bored than the last one had.
I turned to Alex. “On the count of three, okay?”
He nodded. “1—”
I started shooting.
“You fucking cheater,” he hissed under his breath. But was that a laugh I heard?
“You snooze you lose, motherfucker.” I laughed, keeping my attention on the measuring stick above the targets.
“I can’t believe you.”
“See it and believe it.” I kept on cracking up, so close to winning, so close… “Yes!”
I turned my chair at the same time he turned his. “Again,” Alex demanded.
I leaned toward him, grinning so wide my fucking cheeks hurt. Why did this feel like I’d won a gold medal? “Are you being a sore loser right now? Because it’s okay if you are.”
His mouth was slightly open, and he was shaking his head, those bluish-purple eyes glittering as the bright, colored lights hit his irises.
I leaned just a little closer. “Do you want me to let you win the next one?”
His snort was soft, his gaze following my face. For one millisecond, his eyes glowed before the color snuffed out. “You better not.”
I held up the plate of fried dough and powdered sugar and tried not to smile.
Then I failed three seconds later when an annoyed set of eyes landed on me, the eyebrows above them flat in jealous sauce.
“Oh, don’t be a sore loser,” I said. My cheeks were still tingling from smiling so much. “You’re good at everything. Just not at being a better cheater than me.” Sucker.