Page 21 of Temporarily in Love

Lila shrugged it off and turned to me, giving me that puppy dog look she always used to when we had been dating. “Can you please take me on the Ferris wheel now? You can kiss me at the top again, like when we first fell in love.”

Her words hit me in the chest, and I wondered if she was still play-acting or if her words rang true. When we were sixteen, I took her on the Ferris wheel and kissed her for the first time. After years of being in the friend zone, I finally had the courage to make a move on her.

“Please?” Lila begged.

My dick kicked at my zipper at the sound of her begging for something. I wanted her to beg for something else, but while she was on her knees with her hands tied behind her back.

Damn, I really need to get laid.

“Okay, fine,” I relented. “See you around, Annie.”

We walked off together for a few moments, neither of us saying a word. Lila ate her cotton candy and walked beside me like nothing had ever happened between us. Like I hadn’t seen her in sixteen years and was still pining over her.

“Thanks for the save,” I finally said after we reached the zipper ride.

Man, we used to ride that all the time.

The sun had dipped beneath the horizon, and all the rides had turned their lights on. I had been wandering around the fields longer than I had realized.

Lila had tossed her trash away a couple of minutes ago, but she stood staring up at the ride. “You looked like you needed saving.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“She’s pretty. Why aren’t you interested?”

“I’m her boss.”

Lila nodded. “That’s a deal breaker for you?”

“It’s backfired for me before.”

“Me too.”

I wanted to ask what that meant, but she got that wild look in her eyes, and I knew exactly what she was going to ask next before the words were out of her mouth.

Chapter Seven

LILA

“Come on the zipper with me!” I urged.

He squinted at me, then looked up at the carnival ride with suspicion. The Declan in high school would have grabbed my hand and told me, ‘you only live once.’ This adult-Declan was cautious. Or maybe we were just dumb in high school and didn’t think about how dangerous rickety carnival rides were.

I always loved the Harvest Fest. It brought back a lot of memories. Like the one of my first kiss with Declan at the top of the Ferris wheel. Or my first sip of beer. Even that first puff of stinky weed. I got up to a lot of shenanigans here when I was a teenager. All with the clean-cut uptight man standing in front of me.

I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. Sure, it was fall, but the air was getting chilly now that the sun had gone down. In hindsight, the sweater and plaid skirt weren’t a good idea. I had been living in California for so long that I should have known better and wore a pair of leggings at least.

Declan’s dark eyes seared across the length of my body like he remembered all the times he had stripped me out of my clothes. He always did like the knee-high boots I wore during the fall.

“You cold?” he asked.

I nodded. “Been in California too long.”

He shed his zip-up hoodie and put it over my shoulders. “Here.”

A memory of this exact scene played through my mind’s eye. Of me not wearing proper attire because I wanted to dress cute for him and him giving me his jacket. But that was sixteen-year-old Declan and Lila; we weren’t those people anymore.

“Dec…”