After a few turns, the terror died away and a strange calm came over me. Charging forward, flung up and down and side to side, confined to one looping path, unable to control anything, felt like freedom.
When the car jerked to a halt Felix and I turned to each other at the same time, blinking dry eyes, and grinned. His hair was a complete mess and his smile so bright it took my breath away. He surged forward and kissed the smile right off my face, laughing when some kids behind us whistled.
We exited on shaky legs, clutching each other like dizzy children. Felix was giggling and staring up at the track we’d just come from like he couldn’t believe he had survived it.
“How was your first roller coaster?” I asked him.
He pulled my arm around his shoulder and winked. “Wicked. What’s next?”
Warmth glowed behind my ribs. I led him back to the boardwalk.
“This is my tradition,” I told him. “Hot dog–off. Nathan’s versus Paul’s Daughter. You in?”
“Um, no,” he said, looking mildly green. At first I thought he was sick from the coaster, but then I remembered what he’d said about cooking hot dogs in spaghetti. I ordered my food and we walked down to sit on the beach.
“Nathan’s is historically considered the best in Coney Island, but I like Paul’s Daughter better,” I said.
“Then why do you get both? Why not just get two at Paul’s Daughter?”
“Tradition,” I tried. It sounded hollow even to me.
Felix looked at me, expression serious, and slid a hand to my thigh.
“Tell me,” he said. “Please. You’re always so…I can never tell if you don’t want to tell me stuff because you’re private, or because you don’t trust me, or…”
I could hear the unspoken end to his sentence. Because this isn’t real.
I looked out over the sand and the sea. How many times had I sat here, watching the families and friends and couples, alone?
“I came here on the first anniversary of getting sober. I went to a meeting, got my one-year chip, and didn’t want to go home. Stayed on the subway and ended up here. I got a dog at Nathan’s and came down here to eat it. The beach, the ocean…It was July. Hot as hell. Kids running around. It all seemed so…” Hopeful.
I shrugged.
“It was…good here. In the sun. So I decided to get another hot dog and saw Paul’s Daughter over there. Got one, ate it, liked it. Then I just…kept doing it every year.”
“It’s a ritual,” Felix said slowly. “You did it then and you’ve stayed sober, so you keep doing it.”
I nodded. My routines, my habits—they were a system that had concretized into something that felt like the armature of my life.
“I know it’s not really magic or anything,” I clarified. “It’s not what keeps me sober. I know that.”
“Rituals are kinda their own magic, aren’t they?” Felix said. “Maybe they don’t do anything, but they remind you of what you want. Every time you get these hot dogs, you remember that first time and you decide all over again that you want to stay sober. Right?”
I nodded and felt my muscles loosen.
“Well, go on, then.” He pointed to the hot dogs I hadn’t touched yet. “One at a time, or alternating bites, or what?”
“One at a time.”
“Want me to hold one?”
I handed him the Paul’s Daughter. I always saved it for last.
The snap of the hot dog, the brininess of the sauerkraut, the burn of the mustard. I closed my eyes to taste it better. It was so good and so familiar that for a moment it could have been any day I was here. Any year. Except that if I let myself lean just slightly to my right, I could feel Felix’s shoulder press against my upper arm. For the first time, I wasn’t alone.
“Oh, shit,” Felix said. I looked over to find a large bite of my hot dog gone and a guilty look on Felix’s face. “Okay, so hot dogs maybe taste a lot better when they’re not microwaved and in spaghetti…”
He gave me a flirty look and a sly smile that clearly asked permission to eat my hot dog. I waved him on but stopped him when he’d eaten half and traded half of the Nathan’s dog I’d been eating.
“Here, you can decide for yourself.”
He took a bite of the Nathan’s and closed his eyes in pleasure.
“Mmmm, damn.”
“Verdict?”
“Verdict is you have the right idea getting both. Why choose?”
I leaned in and kissed him, then, because he was beautiful and alive and today I was a person.
After we ate, we wandered around some more, and ended up in front of B&B Carousell.
“Okay,” Felix said when he saw it. “We have to go on that. It’s like the most…what’s the word? Iconic fair thing ever.”