For the first time since all of this started—and since everything awful that has happened in the past few days—I feel lucky in this moment. Lucky to know Logan. Lucky to be here with him tonight. Lucky to remember happy moments from my childhood. The ones that got pushed down under the crushing weight of all my responsibilities.
I want Logan to feel what I do.
Past Logan’s shoulder, I spot a pack of long, glittery candles. Nothing about me screams glitter. Yet I love them. And somehow, he knew that.
“Make my wish,” I blurt out.
He balks. “You’re off luck duty tonight. And I’m not stealing your birthday wish.”
We can talk like this, I find. Picking up pieces of conversation that we left off. Communicating without having to say too much.
Look at you two having inside jokes, Gloria had said. I’ve never had inside jokes with anyone.
“It’s not stealing if I give it to you. In fact, I wish you would take it,” I say. “Seriously. Blow out my candle.”
Logan kisses my palm as he wraps his hand tighter around me. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“My birthday candle,” I say, nudging him. “You should blow it out and make a wish.”
“Are you seriously trying to fix my luck right now?” Logan says, arching an eyebrow. “Because I’m feeling pretty damn lucky.” He trails his hands down to the waistband of my jeans, tugging at the loop until I’m pressed up against him.
I bite down a smile. It’s like he’s just read my mind.
Little fireworks explode along my skin. As we kiss, the intensity grows. I want this. I want him. So, so much.
Too much. I’ve overheated, my emotions reaching a dangerously high temperature.
It’s too good. You’re too good. It won’t last.
I try to break the feedback loop. But this night is as close to perfect as it gets, and the only way to go from here is down. Things between Logan and me have spun too far out of control. There’s an overflow of happiness. Instead of rising with the waves, suddenly I’m drowning in them.
But before I do, Logan pulls back.
“I want this. I want you,” he says, our chests rising and falling in perfect sync. “But you matter too much to me to rush this. We met fast, and we won fast, but I want to be with you nice and slow.”
I press my lips together as I nod quickly. I don’t want us to flame out before we’ve had a chance to light up. “Yes. Please.”
Logan touches his forehead against mine. “Great. Also, we’re surrounded by glass. I build the sets. I’m not the one putting on the show.”
He diffuses any lingering tension with this joke. I’m grateful for the warm release of laughter.
He grabs the charm boxes and pats the seat. “Get comfy.”
Logan texts Sam, who comes back in and powers up the ride. For three and a half minutes, we slowly rotate, rising and falling in a waterless current. Balloons bounce off the fish and each other, floating around us, like bubbles in a bath.
It’s the best birthday acknowledgment I’ve ever had.
Chapter 15
HAZEL
My first two days of being thirty are a blur.
Emma, Gloria, and I have been working around the clock preparing for a last-minute pop-up collaboration with New York City’s hottest ice cream shop, Worldly Scoops, and a travel company, The Cheshire, that owns luxury hotels around the world. Fittingly, the theme is Going Places.
When the small business providing chocolate, caramel, and butterscotch sauces dropped out earlier this week, Worldly Scoops immediately reached out to Emma. They wouldn’t have sauces to drizzle over ice cream, but they could have candy.
Worldly Scoops spent months securing the permits for the two-day pop-up at Grand Central Terminal, an iconic train station and landmark on the east side of Manhattan. It’s bustling with people who have come far and wide to shop, eat, and admire its awe-inspiring architecture and jade-hued celestial ceiling with gold-leaf constellations.
