“You’ve taken years off my life the past few weeks, Evie. I’m not letting you out of my sight.” He wraps an arm around my waist and we start toward the lockers.
“You just want to watch me shower,” I tease.
“Guilty.”
The sun is just dipping below the horizon when we enter the carnival, hand in hand. “Where to first?” Mason asks.
“Food. I’m starving.”
Mason chuckles. “Lead the way, baby.”
After pigging out on corndogs and funnel cake, which Mason insists on paying for, we stroll down the midway. “Race you,” I dare, gesturing to the Fire Fight game. I loved this game when I was a kid. The object is to aim a stream of water through a target, which moves your wooden fire truck to the finish line.
Mason grins and grabs the water hose. “If I win, you have to go through the haunted house with me.”
“Damn, I really wanted to see the haunted house, but there’s no way I can lose.”
The bell rings and everyone focuses on their targets. Leave it to me to choose the hose with a wussy little stream. Mason pulls ahead of me instantly, but we both laugh when the two little girls beside us leave our fire trucks in the dust.
The younger girl cheers when she wins, and the young man tending the game hands her a stuffed animal. He smiles and gives the other girl a large lollipop, and they both run away laughing and happy.
“Looks like you get to see the haunted house after all.”
“You didn’t win!” I smack his arm, and he grabs me by the waist.
“I beat you. You chickening out?”
“Never. I can’t wait to get you alone in the dark.”
Mason grins, his face lit by the colored lights. Grabbing my hand, he leads me to the haunted house ride. A young man checks our wristbands and ushers us into a car, pulling the safety bar across our laps. After warning us to keep our arms inside the car, he sends us down the track.
We make a sharp right turn through a wall of rubber stripsinto pitch darkness. The car makes a few abrupt turns until I’m a little disoriented, unable to tell what direction we’re going. I jump when a loud siren blares and a strobe light flashes on a man hanging from a noose, his feet kicking the side of the car. Mason laughs and slides his arm around my shoulders.
We laugh and tease each other as we travel through a room of zombies, and another set up to look like a butcher shop, littered with dismembered limbs. The car makes another turn and we’re face to face with an evil looking clown. Mason stiffens up and curses under his breath as the bloody clown with a too wide grin reaches toward us.
It’s my turn to laugh at his reaction. “You’re scared of clowns. Don’t worry,” I tease, cuddling into him. “I won’t let big bad Bozo get you.”
Mason pinches my nipple, making me squeal, and says, “Look up, love.”
A giant spider creeps across the ceiling to a web full of tiny spiders. I know they’re fake, but every inch of my skin crawls at the sight of them. Suddenly, a few of the spiders rain down on us just as we travel through an archway laced with spiderwebs. The spiders falling on me and the feel of the silky strings clinging to my face and hair have me beating at myself like a mad woman.
Mason’s laughter echoes through the ride, and I smack him on the chest as the car bursts into the night air. “Souvenir?” he asks, still chuckling while he holds up one of the plastic spiders.
It’s a damn ring, and in the light, it couldn’t look more fake. “Asshole,” I grumble as he slides the ring on my finger and we exit the ride.
“Where to next?” he asks, sliding his hand in the back pocket of my jeans.
I give him a wide smile when I spot the fun photo exhibit. Multiple wooden characters are scattered about, the faces cut out so we can poke ours through and become a cowboy, or a princess, or a zombie. “Let’s pick one!” I drag him through the display until I see one that was seemingly made for us. Two giant panda bears hug, a trail of hearts bubbling up between them. “What are you doing?” I ask when I notice Mason glancing around.
“Making sure my brothers aren’t around. I’d never hear the end of this.” He pulls me behind the wooden cutout. “Come on, Panda.” We poke our faces through the holes and a man takes our picture.
“You can pick it up at the counter,” he advises us, pointing us in the right direction. While we wait for our picture, Mason spots a photo booth.
“You got your picture. Now I want mine,” he says, leading me into the booth and pulling the curtain. “Ready?” he asks, feeding a few dollars into the machine. It takes four photos, ten seconds apart.
I press my cheek to Mason’s for the first one, and he wraps me in a hug for the second. His lips land on mine a second before the third flash. Before I realize what he’s doing, he pulls up my sweatshirt, showing my bare tits to the camera just as the last click sounds. “Mason!”
“That one’s for my wallet,” he says with a roguish grin. We step out of the booth and almost collide with Alex. A cute athletic man stands beside him, holding his hand.
