Megan Hart - Tempted

We flew.

I screamed, but with laughter and without breath. It was like being shot into space, twisting, turning and dropping. Soaring. And in two minutes it was all over, and the train pulled into the station with its passengers shaking and windblown. My teeth felt dry. Alex let go of my hand.

On vaguely trembling legs I got out of the car and followed him down the steps to the exit. He held open the small gate for me at the end and turned to walk backward, facing me, his face alight.

“The Magnum is the perfect fucking coaster,” he said. “They can make ‘em taller, but they don’t make ‘em sweeter.”

“James doesn’t like roller coasters.” It was true, but it suddenly sounded disloyal, and I wasn’t quite sure why. “He says he overdosed on them as a kid.”

“Nah. He never liked them.” Alex shook his head and made a circle in the air with a finger. “He’ll ride the Puke-a-Tron or the Barf-o-Rama twenty times in a row, but he won’t ride a coaster.”

“He’s got equilibrium.” James could go on those spinning rides without getting sick. “He’s good at turning in place.”

“But not so good at going up and down.” Alex’s hands swooped, following the curve of a coaster. “How about you, Anne?”

“I like both, I guess.” We were following another winding path, past food stands and games whose vendors implored us to take a chance on winning a stuffed toy. The scents of popcorn and fries tickled my nose, and my stomach rumbled.

He slanted me a look. “But you like coasters better.”

I gave him an equally sideways glance. “Sometimes.”

He laughed. “Me, too.”

Ahead of us was the sign for Paddlewheel Excursions, a ride the park designated Tranquil and which was in essence a staged boat ride through quirky, animated scenes and narrated by the boat’s “captains.” The last time I’d ridden it, the operators wore uniforms designed to look like old riverboat captains, complete with maroon vests and ruffled armbands. Now they wore regular park uniforms. I was disappointed.

“Wow. Paddlewheel Excursions. I haven’t been on this ride in forever.” I paused at the entrance.

“So, c’mon. Let’s go.”

“We don’t have to. There are plenty of other rides to go on.”

“So?” Alex held out a hand. “We have time.”

The ride was as hokey and charming as I remembered. The jokes were silly but made us laugh, anyway, and the ride itself was serene. We sat in the back, thigh to thigh on the narrow bench. The water in the canal was a murky green.

“I always thought they ran on a track,” I murmured as the captain of our boat revved the engine to avoid a sandbar.

“When I worked here, one of the guys almost sank one.”

“Did he?” I turned to look at Alex. “How could you do that?”

“Hit the dock hard enough, I guess you can put a hole in anything.” Alex nodded toward the dock where two other captains awaited to tie the boat in place so we could disembark.

I looked at Alex closely. “Was it you?”

For a moment he looked stunned, then started to laugh. “No. I cleaned toilets.”

My surprise must have shown on my face. “I always thought—”

America’s not a place comfortable with a class system. We’re all equal, even when we aren’t. Nobody would ever have admitted aloud that the restroom attendants tended to be not as … socially presentable … as the people they hired to operate the rides and serve the food.

“See what a bad attitude will get you?” He shrugged.

We got off the boat. I thanked the young captain, who still looked embarrassed about his close call with the sandbar. I heard his friends ribbing him as we left.

“So. You cleaned toilets. For how long?”

“Two seasons. Then I moved into full-time maintenance.”

“You worked here a long time,” I said.

“Until I was twenty-one. I met a guy at a club who was hiring people in his factory overseas. He put me into transportation and distribution. Two years later I had my own business.”

“And now,” I teased, “you’re a bazillionaire.”

“From cleaning crappers to self-made man,” Alex said, not boasting but not downplaying his success, either. “From shit to shine.”

I needed a drink and stopped to buy two large fresh-squeezed lemonades. The drink was tart and cold and puckered my mouth. It was delicious. It was liquid summer.

James had told me the big fight with Alex was during his senior year of college, when they were both twenty-one. I’d always assumed alcohol was somehow involved. Booze has made and broken many relationships.

“And you’ve never been back until now?” I asked.

Alex shook the ice in his cup before sipping. “No.”

He’d left the country when he was twenty-one upon the invitation of a guy he met at a club and after a fight with his best friend so catastrophic neither of them would discuss the cause. Or maybe I was extrapolating and the fight had been of such minor consequence, the rest of it coincidence, that neither felt the need to comment.

I poised on the edge of asking for details but then backed off. Asking him to elaborate would mean I’d have to admit I didn’t know, and what sort of wife wouldn’t know something like that about her husband? I didn’t know Alex Kennedy well enough not to care what he thought about my marriage.

“Well, we’re glad to have you now.” It was the right sort of thing to say, I thought, but he only gave me another of his slow glances and a smirk.

“I said I’d treat you to lunch at a fancy place,” he said. “But I’m starving for a good burger and some nachos.”

That sounded better to me than something hoity-toity, anyway. Even in the casual resort atmosphere, I felt under-dressed for a place nicer than a burger stand. We grabbed food and found a table, where we ate and talked.

He was better at listening than he was at sharing, with a knack for drawing answers out of me I’d have withheld from someone else. He was both subtle and forthright, asking questions that might have sounded rude from someone who wasn’t at the same time so disarming. It’s easy to be interesting for someone who’s interested, and I found myself waxing poetic on subjects I hadn’t touched in a long time.

“I just wanted to help people,” I said, when he asked me why I hadn’t gone back to work after the funding for the shelter failed. “I don’t want to work at Kroger, bagging groceries. Or in a factory, putting lids on jars. And besides, if we have kids …”

He was leaning back in his chair, but his body weight shifted when I said that. “Do you want kids?”

“James and I have been talking about it.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

The breeze had picked up and gotten colder. I looked at the sky. It had grown darker while we talked. The rumble of the roller coasters masked faraway thunder.

“It’s going to storm.”

“Yeah. It might.” He looked back at me. I must’ve looked disturbed. “You want to go.”

He didn’t ask. He just knew. I thought about shrugging it off, protesting I was fine, but I didn’t.

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t like being on the water in a storm.”

We made our way back to the marina. The water had turned choppy and gray. The sky wasn’t black, not yet, but the clouds were no longer fluffy white sheep.

Alex moved fast without rushing. Steady. He unrigged, we pushed off and he pointed us toward home. I gripped the Skeeter’s sides. I didn’t have a life vest on. I wouldn’t let go long enough to grab one.

The wind fought us, and though we made progress toward home, it was slow and rough. Spray whipped our faces every so often. I tipped my face to the sky, no longer needing my sunglasses to protect my eyes from the glare. Was the rain coming? The lightning and thunder?