“You ever think about that?” I ask, trotting along the games alley in an attempt to keep us moving, keep us light. “That escorting maybe affected you more than you want to admit?”
“I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, it meant nothing to me, I felt nothing –”
“You felt used,” I interrupt. “You were reluctant, no matter how much you insist it was a mutual business arrangement. And reluctance is not consent. It’s reluctance.”
He’s quiet. I point at the ferris wheel and smile back at him.
“C’mon. It’s slow, and if you don’t look down it’s almost like you aren’t suspended a million miles in the air.”
The ferris compartment sways and Jack looks a little queasy, but the lights of the carnival below are too beautiful for even him to ignore. We watch the arcs of pink and green and spots of blue and white flicker on and off as we ascend, the music getting fainter. Our knees are almost touching.
“How is your arm?” Jack asks. I look down at the bandaid and shrug.
“I won’t turn into a zombie, so. That’s one good thing.”
“I was worried,” He says tentatively. “Not that I have the right to be worried about you any longer. But I was very concerned and I couldn’t help it. I’m glad to see it’s doing well – that you’re doing well.”
“Am I doing well?” I laugh. “I can’t tell anymore.”
“You look better,” He says. “Something in your face isn’t so dark, anymore.”
I look out the window. I burn to tell him, too, but it’s not the right time. Telling him what happened would bring Nameless into the ferris wheel with us, and right now I just want it to be me and him, and no one else.
“If you squint, the carnival kind of looks like a galaxy from up here,” I say. “Minus the cryogeysers.”
Jack smirks. “Oh, I don’t know, the ice cream carts get pretty cold.”
If this were a movie, the ferris wheel would get stuck or something, or fireworks would go off, but it just pauses at the apex, a short pause, and Jack’s looking at my face again and my stomach feels like it’s shriveling and growing all at once and I should say something, this is the moment I should say something, every movie ever has told me so, but the moment passes, and the ferris wheel starts going down but I can’t let anything get in my way anymore, especially not a giant LED hamster wheel –
“Isis, you’re talking out –”
“I love you,” I blurt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for saying it, but I love you. And you don’t have to…you don’t have to do anything, or say anything, I mean, I could just drive you home right after this if you never want to talk to me again, I’d understand, because girls saying I love you is something you get a lot and you hate it, I bet, but I realized a lot of things lately and the biggest thing is that I probably love you, I’m not sure, but I think so, and it’s not very romantic or confident to not be sure, but I barely even know what love is, I just sort of learned a bit of the definition, but I know that what I feel for you fits that tiny bit, and I want to learn more, and I think you would help me learn, but also I just love you, no weird creepy learning involved, I just love you, you stupid idiot, so if you could just – if you could just love me back, that would be really great, but if you can’t, I mean, I understand, it’s hard, and also I’m hard and not your type and it would be too much work for a broken person, so maybe instead you could just pretend to love me, and not work so hard, and I could be a nice distraction for you, or you could use me for…I don’t know, sex, or keeping your mind off things or getting less broken maybe, and I wouldn’t mind, as long as you pretended –”
Jack leans in and this time, it’s a kiss, and it doesn’t sear my soul or make me woozy like the books say but I can taste him and smell him and he’s kissing me, me of all girls, and when he pulls away he’s smiling the sort of kind smile I only ever saw him give Sophia, except now it’s on me, all golden and sweet and genuine as he rests his forehead on mine, and that smile is better than fireworks.
“Moron. There would be no pretending,” He says. “Because I love you, too.”
I freeze, trembling, not daring to believe it.
“D-Do…do you mean that?” I whisper. “Do you really really mean that? Because…because I don’t want to get my hopes up again – I just – I couldn’t take it if they were smashed again, you know? It hurt.”
I laugh, on the verge of tears, and Jack cups my face in his hands, ice eyes locked on mine, clear and bright.
“I love you,” he says. “Ever since that night in the sea room, I’ve wanted to love you. I’ve wanted to take all the hurt away, to hold you and protect you and make you laugh, and smile, and show you what love is. I’ve wanted to show you for so long that you are worthy of being loved, for exactly who you are. And I tried to deny that, I tried to convince myself…that I wasn’t good enough, that I would do nothing but hurt you. And I have. And I’m sorry. I was afraid. I was afraid of loving someone as delicate and beautiful and unique as you. I knew I only had one chance, and I was terrified I would make a mess of it and you’d only become sadder, and more convinced you were unlovable. I was afraid of my own shortcomings, and because of that I hurt you.”
I sniff, and Jack thumbs away an escaping tear.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I love you, and I’m so sorry.”
I grip the flannel of his collar, and kiss him again and again, and he runs his hands up and down my spine and cups my cheek gently and I’ve never wanted anything more than for this moment to never stop, but I do want it to stop, because I want more, more than this, I am hungry and empty and I want to be full and the ferris wheel attendant opens our door when we hit the ground and I pull Jack out and away, laughing, letting the wind dry the happy tears in my eyes as we half-run, half-stumble back to the car, stopping to kiss against a darts booth and a doughnut stand, the smell of sugar and sweat in our hair, and in the darkness of the parking lot I try to unlock the door as he kisses my neck and I elbow him to stop and he laughs and gets in the passenger side, and the entire ride back to the dorms he tickles the inside of my palm with his fingers.
***
“This might ruin everything! We might not be able to be friends after this in the conceivable history of forever. There’s still time,” Isis says as we get out of her car and she locks it. I double around and reach for her hand. She squeezes it, blushing brightly. “We can just be friends, still. Or enemies. We can go back to the way things were.”
My chest swells, and before I can stop myself I tangle my fingers in her hair and pull her towards me, kissing her hard. Her shock melts to eagerness, breath sweet and shallow and distinctly her against my mouth, and I pull back.
“I want you, Isis. Not as a friend. Not as an enemy. But as the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”
There’s a pause, a suspended thread twisting in the wind. And then she smiles.
She half-pulls half-drags me, the both of us laughing when I nearly run into a glass door of her dorm. She fiddles with her keys and the door swings open, her roommate, she says, is sleeping over at someone else’s dorm. The thought of having her all to myself, in a closed room with a soft bed, sends ripples of hot anticipation down my spine. She kisses me again, kicking off her shoes as I kick off mine, pulling me towards the messy, paisley-spread bed. She is inexperienced as ever but her fire and boldness burns brighter, scorching every thought from my brain. Her fingers run over my chest, and I shrug off my jacket to give her better access, to feel her more keenly. I bite at her lip and she bites back, a spark of almost-pain nudging me that much closer to the sweet edge. Her hands are insistent, roaming over my shoulders, my back, sliding lower to my navel -