Page 91 of Denial
My brother turns around, stopping Nellie with a hand on her shoulder. “Yeah?”
I wait while she pulls the straps to her purse and cooler off her shoulder and extends them his way. “Can you watch my things? They won’t let me bring them on.”
He jogs across the grass to meet her. “Sure thing. I’ll put them in my car.”
“Thanks.”
She meets me back at the gate, and we wait for the next rotation for the attendant to unload the bottom car. Alice slides in first. I drop onto the bench beside her. I pull the lap bar over both of us, making sure we’re secured in place.
The car jolts forward and then back, stirring up the lingering nausea left from the Scrambler. It moves slowly, beginning its climb to the top.
“You really like this?” I mutter, my hand pressed against my twisting stomach.
She keeps her gaze fixed on the horizon. “Look at how beautiful it is.”
I let my eyes trace over her hair and face. I note the pink healing line left behind from her stitches and scan the escaped tendrils tickling the slope of her neck before shifting my attention to the purple evening sky as we ascend higher. My lips part, mouth dry. “It’s something.”
Her elbow digs sharply into my ribs. “Come on, Sunny. You don’t have to be a tough guy up here. Tell me what you really think.”
I hesitate, but the softness in her voice makes it impossible to hold back. The stubble on my chin prickles my palm as I rub it thoughtfully. “It gets more beautiful the longer I look,” I admit, eyes lingering on her again as the words slip out.
She catches my gaze and grins. “See? You get it. I could sit up here for hours just watching the sunset.”
We jolt to a full stop a quarter-turn from the top. The entire structure sways beneath us.
“Don’t like that,” I mutter, trying to keep my unease in check.
“I try not to think about the fact that they assemble and disassemble these things every time they move to a new town. Some guys got up the other morning and put in some nuts and bolts and decided it was ready for riders.”
I curse beneath my breath. “What is wrong with you?”
Alice’s brown eyes glitter with a challenge in the waning sunlight. “Scared?” she teases.
“No.” I scoff. “But that’s not something I care to think about when I’m forty-fuckin-feet in the air.”
Alice giggles, her laughter echoing into the evening. “Ope, here we go.”
The wheel completes one full turn, this time stopping nearly at the top. I glance down at the crowd below.
“How many people are they going to let on this fuckin’ thing?” I grumble.
Alice counters, “How do you know they aren’t letting people off?”
My phone chimes loudly, distracting me from the dangling feeling in my feet.
Alice spots someone below and waves heartily. “There’s Nellie and Silas.”
I join her even though they look like specks on the ground.
Dropping my attention to my cell, I snap my brows together as I read the notification. “Your sugar is low.”
“How low?”
I tilt my screen in her direction, showing her the red 69 with double arrows down.
“Holy shit.” She frantically pats her pockets. “I don’t have any glucose.”
“I don’t either.”
