“Dangerously competitive,” Carter confirms. “It’s basically an illness.”
“By the end of the night,” Kai continues, “you’re going to need a truck to haul everything home.”
“That’s not necessary?—”
“It absolutely is.” He grabs my hand, pulling me toward the game booths. “The competition begins now.”
The first game they drag me to is one of those milk bottle pyramids where you throw balls to knock them down. Simple in theory. Impossible in practice. The bottles are weighted, the balls are too light, and the whole thing is designed to take your money and crush your dreams.
Kai goes first, rolling up his sleeves like he’s preparing for battle. His first throw is good, solid contact, but only two bottles fall.
“Rigged,” he announces.
“It’s not rigged,” the booth operator says tiredly. “You just missed.”
“I don’t miss.” But he hands over more tickets for another try.
Carter steps up beside him. “Move over. Let me show you how it’s done.”
What follows is the most intense ten minutes of carnival gaming I’ve ever witnessed.
They take turns throwing, each one trying to outdo the other. Kai adjusts his stance, calculates angles, treats each throw like a precision military operation. Carter goes for pure power, hurling the balls with enough force that I’m surprised they don’t punch through the back of the booth.
Neither of them wins.
“This is definitely rigged,” Carter says.
“Maybe you both just suck,” I offer.
They turn to look at me with identical expressions of offense.
“Excuse me?” Kai presses a hand to his chest. “Did you just question my athletic abilities?”
Carter nudges Kai. “She’s got a point. We’ve thrown, like, thirty balls and won nothing.”
“We haven’t wonyet.” Kai turns back to the booth, a dangerous glint in his eye. “We’re just warming up.”
Twenty more minutes and a frankly embarrassing number of tickets later, they finally win. Kai’s throw catches the bottom corner of the pyramid at exactly the right angle, and the whole thing goes down in a cascade of clattering bottles.
The booth operator hands over a stuffed cow with a dopey expression, and Kai presents it to me like it’s the crown jewels.
“For you, my lady.”
“You spent probably fifty dollars winning a five-dollar cow.”
“The prize is priceless.” He grins. “Because I won it for you.”
We move on. Balloon darts. Ring toss. That basketball game with the hoops that are definitely smaller than regulation. At each booth, they approach with the intensity of Olympic athletes, trash-talking each other constantly while I watch and laugh and accumulate an increasingly ridiculous pile of prizes.
The bumper cars are next.
Carter draws me into his car, a battered blue thing that’s seen better days, and suddenly I’m pressed against his side, his arm around my shoulders, his thigh warm against mine.
“Ready?” His voice is low, close to my ear. “For me to defend your honor against any and all attackers.”
I snort. “My hero.”
Kai is in a car across the rink, grinning like a maniac. When the buzzer sounds, he immediately guns for us, but Carter spins us out of the way at the last second, sending Kai careening into the wall.
