"I need this plushie. What do you want for it?" he asks.
Digger hands it over, without a second thought. "She's all yours. I didn't even want it to begin with."
"Thank you. Lawsyn is obsessed with dinosaur plushies," Junk says, tucking the stuffed animal beneath his arm.
We walk around slowly, stopping for Junk and Aaron to play a few of the random games. They're all rigged, and I get too irritated when I lose, so I opt not to participate. I don't feel like beating the shit out of the con artist working the games today.
I stop at one of the beer booths and buy a beer, sipping it slowly as we walk through the fair. Rides creak and screech. People scream as the rides catapult them in various directions. The sweet smell of funnel cakes hangs in the air. As we get closer to the arena, the smells begin to change from sweet to putrid. Funnel cake has been replaced with horse shit and the screams from the rides have been replaced with cheering from the crowd.
My eyes scan the bleachers, searching for one familiar face amongst the rest. Today must be my lucky day. Lilly is sitting in between Nova and Lawsyn with her hair in braided pigtails. It's one of my favorite looks, and she knows it. Her eyes lock on mine and her mouth tilts up into a wicked grin.
She didn't even know we were coming and yet her eyes find me among a crowd the same way mine found her. An invisible string tethering us to one another. She rises from her place between Lawsyn and Nova and weaves through the row of people sitting in the same bleacher she was. She makes it to the stairs and bounces down them. When her body comes into view, my heart hammers in my chest.
The way her blue jeans hug her hips just right as she saunters toward me has me thinking about what I'm going to do to her when we get home. I've been slowly walking toward her this whole time, leaving the guys behind where they stopped to watch the barrel race in the arena.
"Hi," Lilly says with a smile, wrapping her arms around the back of my neck.
"Hi, yourself," I whisper, wrapping my arms around her waist and lifting her off the ground, kissing her lips as I do so.
Her fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of my neck, and I ease her down to the ground. "I missed you," she says with a smile.
"Ditto," I say softly.
Lilly slips her hand in mine. "Do you want to stay and watch more of the rodeo or walk around the fair?" I ask.
"Hmm. What if we walked around the animal section behind the rodeo and I got to pet some of the show animals?" she says sweetly, putting both of her hands beneath her chin.
I chuckle and shake my head. "Yes, my love. We can."
I lead her through the rest of the crowd, walking around the arena to where they're holding the show animals. There are somany. We walk down four aisles and I'm pretty sure I've seen a wider range of animals in the last forty-five minutes than I have in the last forty-five years. Lilly has held every animal that she was allowed to hold and petted the ones that she couldn't hold.
She tried to con me into a tiny cow, but when I told her about how it would ruin her pool, she thought better of it. We've stopped at the most unique animal I've seen here. Who would've thought that at a rodeo there would be a camel? Not me, that's who.
"Look howcute he is!" she cheers in such an aggressive way.
"I see," I tell her as she grabs a handful of food from the brown sack of feed in front of his pin. She offers it to him slowly to which he very quickly eats it from her palm. The laughter that erupts from her makes my heart swell. The camel startles when I laugh loudly as Lilly makes a face.
"He's slobbery!" she says, cringing and trying to pull her hand away. The camel protests, following her. She finally gets free of him and takes a few steps back, giving him a scolding look.
"He doesn't understand why you're being mean," I tell her.
She huffs and diverts her attention to me, narrowing her eyes. "He does too. He knows what he did."
"Look at him. He's confused. look at his poor sad little face," I say, pointing to the camel who is still trying to stretch his neck as far as he can past his pin to get to Lilly.
"He'sfine," she says, rolling her eyes.
Lilly takes off toward the next animal and I shrug at the camel who is now looking at me. "Don't look at me, she's always like this."
The camel huffs and walks off when I turn to follow Lilly. She's in the stall with baby piglets that are inside of a smaller pen in the stall. She's knelt down beside their pen and trying desperately to coax one of them to her. One of the smallest piglets inches closer, curiosity getting the best of him. He's onlyan inch away from her hand when another animal in the next stall makes a noise, startling the poor fellow and breaking Lilly's heart when the piglet squeals and runs back to the corner with the rest of his siblings.
"It's okay, love. You're not scary, I promise," I tell her reassuringly.
She sighs and stands up, walking over to me. "Okay. Let's go grab a drink."
I smile at her as she slips her hand back inside of mine. "I like the way you think."
We walk to one of the booths and she gets a spiked lemonade while I grab another beer. She sips her lemonade and her eyes widen. "Oh myGod."
