My cheeks tingle. “I don’t know. Places, mostly.”
“Which places?”
I look down to the festival stretched out beneath us, watching a little boy and girl zigzag through the crowd with cotton candy bouquets twice as big as their heads. “Anywhere I’ve been happy,” I say.
There’s a long pause. “Montana?”
My throat twists. I nod.
“That bowl that looked like a butt—I was thinking about the water here in Knott’s Harbor,” I say. “About the waves, and how weird it is that they don’t really exist. Like the water is just the water, but the tide moves through them and the wind moves over them and they change shape, but they’re always just water.”
“So I guess,” he says, “some things change and stay the same.”
I know we’re high. I know he hasn’t actually said anything profound, but when his pale coyote eyes lift to mine, my heart seems to flip over, everything inside me turning a full one hundred and eighty degrees. It’s like I’ve been upside down all this time, and the motion has finally righted me.
“Is there one that looks like us?” he asks.
They all do, I think. You are in all of my happiest places.
You are where my mind goes when it needs to be soothed.
I shift on the bench. His fingertips graze my thigh. His focus homes in on the contact.
His lips knit together as he traces the fold of fabric, and while he’s not exactly touching me, the nerves along my hip still whir to life, heat, fizz.
“You have to feel this, Harriet,” he says dreamily.
I break into giggles. “That gummy was not tiny.”
“On the plus side,” he says, “it’s making this fabric feel amazing.”
“You mean taste amazing,” I say.
“Like red gummy,” he agrees, dropping his mouth toward my shoulder, running his parted lips over the strap. My breath catches. I set my hands against the lap bar, where I can be reasonably sure they won’t spontaneously climb up the inside of Wyn’s shirt.
“Is this what silk is?” he asks, lifting his face, eyes sparkling earnestly beneath the flashing purple lights.
“Satin,” I tell him. “A poor man’s silk.”
“A poor but lucky man’s silk,” Wyn says. “It feels like . . . damp skin. Here.” He takes my hand from the lap bar and brings it to my own thigh, watching for my reaction as he lets our hands drift over the hem until the very ends of our fingers are on skin. “See?”
I nod, breathless.
His eyes darken, pure black now except the outermost edge of silvery green.
“Do you remember what you told me,” I say, “about your brain?”
His hand pauses.
“You said it felt like a Ferris wheel,” I say. “Like all your thoughts were constantly circling, and you’d reach out for one, but it was hard to stay on it for too long because they kept spinning.”
The lines of his face soften. His fingers curl, the backs of his nails pressing into my skin. “Except with you. You’re like gravity.”
I couldn’t have pulled myself away from him then if he’d burst into flames.
“Everything keeps spinning,” he says in a low, hoarse voice. “But my mind’s always got one hand on you.”
The night air warms between us until it crackles. We’re about to break the rule. We’re about to kiss with no one looking, and I don’t care. Or I do care, in that I need it. I need his gravity. I need his mouth and hips to pin me in place, to anchor me in this moment, to slow time even further, like he always has, until this becomes my real life, and everything else—the shoebox apartment, the aching back and knees, the sweat pooling under my gown and mask, the nights staring up at a ceiling that has nothing to say to me—is the memory.
“HAR!” someone shouts above us. The moment snaps.
We both look up.
“CATCH!”
I don’t see which of them shouts it. All I see is Kimmy and Cleo—now above us as we’re descending the back of the Ferris wheel—leaned out over their lap bar, laughing hysterically, and then something flamingo pink fluttering, flapping, twirling down toward us.
It lands squarely in my lap.
“Hold on to that, would you?” Kimmy shouts. Cleo doubles over, her shoulders twitching with laughter.
Wyn takes hold of the pink thing and lifts it, spreading it out so the hot-pink bra cups jut from his chest.
Above us, Cleo and Kimmy are shrieking now.
“This,” Wyn says, “is exactly why I hate getting clothes as presents. Nothing ever fits.”
“At least it’s your color,” I say.
He tuts, laughing, and shakes his head. “Thanks, Kim.”
Kimmy hurls herself forward, squawking something through her guffaws, but Cleo yanks her back against the bench.
“Excuse me, Wyn.” I pull the tiny bra out of his hands, holding it in front of me. “In which universe does this fit on Kimmy’s boobs?”
He gapes, looks up at Cleo and Kimmy, who are still falling all over each other in fits of laughter, then back at me. “Damn,” he says. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
“Me neither,” I say. “I always assumed Cleo was die-hard Free the Nipple.”
“What’s going on up there?” Parth calls from below us.
They’re starting to level out on the loading platform. “We have to act fast,” Wyn says, expecting me to read his mind.
I do. “You’ve got better aim than me.”
“I’m not even going to politely argue,” he says, and takes the bra.
We lean forward, and as Sabrina and Parth are about to dock, Wyn tosses the bra straight onto Sabrina’s head.
“WHAT THE—” she screams, her words cut short when Parth pulls the bra off her head and holds it aloft for examination in the neon light, right as they’re drawing to a stop beside the long-suffering Ferris wheel attendant.
Even from here, his grumble sounds like “millennials,” which makes Wyn and me burst into laughter so forceful that tears are literally sliding off my chin.
“It happened!” I squeal. “We’ve replaced our parents as the drunk-mom-on-vacation generation.”
“Excuse you,” he says, “I think you mean the high-dad-on-vacation generation.”
Below us, Sabrina climbs out of her seat, head held high and dignified. She hands the bra over to the attendant and, loudly and clearly enough for all of us and everyone in line to hear, says, “Do you have a lost and found? Someone seems to have dropped this on the ride.”
“Are we about to get kicked out of Lobster Fest?” I ask Wyn.
His head falls back with another wave of laughter. “It was bound to happen eventually.”
“End of an era,” I say.
“Nah.” His eyes slice sideways. “Another beginning.”
* * *
? ? ?
WE’RE STILL GIGGLY when we spill out of the Rover in front of the cottage, Sabrina leaning heavily on me, Kimmy leaning even more heavily on Wyn behind us. We’re almost to the front steps when our fearless （braless） designated driver takes off toward the side of the house.
“Where are you going?” Parth throws his arms out. “You have the keys!”