Kat
The gate swingsshut and the car bobs gently, rocking side to side like a boat on an ocean as I smooth my skirt over my legs. I sit opposite Silas, who’s got one arm slung over the back of the bench seat. Next to him Jigglypuff stares at me with unnerving good cheer, its eyes wide, its smile faint.
I should’ve gone with the gorilla, because I think Jigglypuff can see into my soul and I don’t like it. I’m half horrified at how I kissed Silas a few minutes ago—in front of people, for no reason, where everyone could look and see and judge—and half so desperate to do it again that I don’t trust myself to sit next to him.
The Ferris wheel swings gently upward, far enough for people to get into the next car. It’s not a big car, our knees maybe a foot apart. I cross my legs just as Silas slides a foot across the floor, our ankles resting together.
His is warm, bone under skin against my own. It feels oddly dangerous, like we could hurt each other if one of us moved wrong, if we somehow rubbed at cross-purposes. I stare at the tilt-a-whirl and pretend that I can think about something besides this single point of contact.
“You never did answer my question,” he says, voice low, barely rising over the hubbub of the fair below. The car swings upward again and now we’re above the tented roofs of the Midway, almost level with the two-story Haunted House.
“What question was that?”
He looks out of the car for a moment, the lights of the Ferris wheel strobing across his face. Jigglypuff stares at me, knowingly.
“What you’re gonna say when Meckler’s on his knees,” Silas finally rasps, but there’s a smile on his lips. Always a smile, like everything is a joke. “I keep asking and you keep dodging the question.”
“Have you ever considered that I don’t want to answer it?” I say primly, tapping my fingers against the car, heartbeat accelerating.
“I did,” he says, that same small smile still there. I wonder if he knows. “And I did consider what answer could possibly be more revealing than I want my ex to crawl to me while he begs.”
He leans forward, elbows on knees, the bulbs from the Ferris wheel an arc in his eyes, obliterating the blue and God, the way he looks. The way he is. He has to know. There must be a waiting list of women, each one jockeying for first position. I’m sure he could call one every night of the week if he wanted.
Why he needed me, why he needed to pretend, I can’t begin to understand.
I should tell him the truth: in the fantasy, I turn Evan down and walk away. That’s it. I want him to beg so I can say no.
Instead I say, “What if it’s a weird sex thing?”
One side of his mouth hitches, but he holds my gaze.
“I’d say I try not to judge what’s weird and what’s not.”
“You’d definitely judge this.”
There is no sex thing. Not in this scenario, not with Evan, but I can’t shut myself up.
“I doubt that. What is it, he licks your shoes and calls you mistress?”
Silas shrugs demonstrably, as if that’s just a Monday night, and while being called mistress isn’t my thing, Silas shrugging it off like it’s no big deal apparently is.
“I wouldn’t do that to my shoes,” I say. I push up my glasses, glance away. Silas is still there, the lights still in his eyes as we jolt higher: above tree level now, above nearly everything.
“Human furniture,” Silas offers. “You use him as a footrest while you and Anna Grace watch Game of Thrones.”
“That’s been off the air for years.”
“Lord of the Rings.”
“I don’t want to use him as furniture,” I say. “Worse.”
“Again, with the judgement.”
“I want,” I say, slowly, watching Silas’s face, “to turn him down and walk away.”
Silas looks at me. For a long moment he looks at me, like he’s seeing me for the first time, like I’m some new and exotic species that he’s not sure he can communicate with.
“I’m not sure that’s worse than being a human footrest,” he finally says.