She looks up at me, wearing not much makeup at all. Just as beautiful. A threat to my peace of mind.
“Weren’t you scared of heights?” Rhyson asks his sister, a reminiscent smile playing around his lips.
Surprise flits across Bristol’s face.
“Uh, yeah. For a little while. Sometimes.” She laughs, covering her mouth with one hand. “Mother sent me to therapy for it. Remember that?”
“God, yes.” Rhyson’s face lights up. “Didn’t she send you to therapy for biting your nails, too?”
“And for wetting the bed. I was three! Since she was never there, therapy was Mother’s parenting alternative,” Bristol says dryly.
Wow. Their mom does sound like a piece of work, but Rhyson and Bristol are laughing about it as if it’s nothing that their mother sent a three-year-old to therapy for bed-wetting. Just two prisoners, reminiscing about doing their time. Only Rhyson escaped, and Bristol stayed behind bars.
The ride is crowded, and there aren’t any available cars near each other, so we’re all spread out, leaving Bristol and me strapped into this small space and relatively alone. At first, the only sound is the whir of the motor and distant squeals from the ground below. After a few moments of quiet between us, Bristol snickers. I glance at her to see what’s so funny, but she isn’t even looking at me. She’s looking down at the ground, which is growing smaller and smaller as we ascend.
“What?” I ask. “You laughed. What’s up?”
She turns her head, and her laughter slowly leaks away until the only thing left of it is a shadow in her eyes.
“I was thinking about my mom sending me to therapy for biting my nails.” She shakes her head. “I spent so much time in therapy, I knew the therapists about as well as I knew my nannies.”
“You had nannies?”
“Sure.” She laughs again, but this time bitterness tinges the sound. “Who else was going to raise me with my parents trailing Rhyson on the road most of the year?”
“That sucks.”
I want to say more, but feel it might the wrong thing. Like how her mom should have stayed her ass at home with Bristol instead of forcing Rhyson to perform most of his childhood or leaving him addicted to prescription drugs. But that might be too much.
We reach the top of the wheel, and both of us look over our respective sides at the ground. When I turn back into the car, Bristol’s face has gone pale, and her breath comes in little anxious puffs.
“Hey, you okay?” I lean into her space, grasping her chin to turn her face to me.
“Yeah. I just—” She closes her eyes and clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip. “I shouldn’t have looked down.”
“Are you still scared of heights?”
“Sometimes.” Her eyes are still closed, and she pulls in deep breaths through her nose and blows them out through her mouth. “This used to help.”
“If you’re still scared of heights, why’d you want to ride this thing?”
When she opens her eyes, I almost wish she hadn’t. There’s a vulnerability at odds with Bristol’s bold persona. There’s a question there that she’s afraid to voice, and I know just as surely as if she’d said it aloud that she got on this ride to spend time with me. She drops her lashes and fidgets, bending her body over the bar holding us in and folding her arms on top of it.
“Just don’t look down.” I clear my throat, looking away from her, too. “We’ll be finished soon.”
Only we don’t move at all for the next few seconds. And then more seconds.
“What’s going on?” Low-level panic infiltrates her voice. “Why aren’t we moving?”
“They just kind of pause sometimes,” I lie. “Probably just so we can get a good look at everything.”
Her laugh catches me off guard.
“They just kind of pause?” She rolls her eyes, looking more like the confident Bristol I’ve gotten to know the last few days. “You’re a better liar than that.”
“I don’t lie.” I shrug. “Ask anybody. I’m honest as Abe. You know how you’re in a group and someone farts? And no one claims it?”
“Don’t tell me.” She giggles, resting her cheek on her folded arms and looking at me. “You claim it.”