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“Wow, those tickets are expensive, aren’t they?” Blair asked as we entered the park.

“Yeah, I don’t know how regular people can afford to come to places like this,” I said. “Especially someone with a bunch of kids.”

Between parking and tickets we’d dropped nearly two hundred fifty dollars before we even walked in the gate. Apparently the tickets were less expensive if you pre-purchased them online, but we hadn’t known that before we got here. Not that Blair needed to save money, but it was annoying to think we were paying a higher price simply because we hadn’t known the rules.

It had been a long time since I’d been in an amusement park, and I’d forgotten how loud and crowded they were. Every child in the place seemed overly excited and hopped up on sugar.

“Ooh cotton candy! I need some of that then I want to ride the log ride!”

Well, it wasn’t only the kids who were overly excited. But given the circumstances, I couldn’t blame Blair for embracing her inner child and having fun. I let her lead the way, choosing where to go and what rides to try out.

At lunch, I got the most adorable picture of her eating one of those giant turkey legs. She asked me to text it to her friend Katy, who texted back a row of heart emojis.

“I want to try a roller coaster next,” Blair said after we’d ridden several different rides. “How about this one, the Demon?”

I heard people screaming as the ride corkscrewed, sending them upside down at high speeds, and I felt a little queasy.

“Uh…”

“What?” Blair stopped to look at me. “What does this look on your face mean?”

I winced. “I don’t really like roller coasters,” I admitted quietly.

“What? Why not?”

“I don’t like going upside down. It freaks me out.”

Blair rolled in her lips like she was trying not to laugh. Studying the park map, she said, “How about the Little Dipper?”

I looked over her shoulder at the map. “That’s a kiddie roller coaster.”

“Yeah.”

“The Whizzer is family friendly,” she said, pointing to the map. “It’s rated a three out of five on the thrill scale.”

After a short debate I said, “Let’s ride the American Eagle. I rode on something similar when I was a kid and it wasn’t too awful.”

“Awesome, it’s rated a four on the thrill scale. This should be good.”

The ride turned out to be more fun than I expected. Blair was so excited that it was hard not to share her enthusiasm. She even lifted her arms up on one of the drops, emulating the people ahead of us, and I instinctively clamped one of my hands down on her thigh just in case she went flying.

After the roller coaster we took a break to play some carnival games, losing spectacularly and then comforting ourselves with funnel cake. Then we checked out some of the less death-defying rides. To Blair’s disappointment, the park didn’t have a Ferris wheel.

“I’m pretty sure there’s one in downtown Chicago,” I said.

She made me stop to look it up on my phone, cheering up when I confirmed that when we were in Chicago we could go to Navy Pier to ride the Ferris wheel.

We spent the rest of the day at the park, riding rides and doing quite a bit of people watching before we finally decided to leave.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really need to have a vegetable tonight with dinner,” Blair said as we walked back to the car. “Maybe a big salad or something.”

Given the prodigious amount of food she’d consumed in the park I was surprised she could even think of eating again. Then again, we’d been walking around for hours when we weren’t on the rides, and I was feeling hungry myself.

A little Googling turned up a decent looking steakhouse a short distance away from the tourist areas near the park. It wasn’t very busy and soon we were settled into a booth with two steak salads and a bottle of moderately priced red wine. With the candles and the dimly lit interior, it felt more like a date than anything else we’d done.

I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t a date. No matter how much I liked Blair, and no matter what my heart was telling me, I was technically on a job. Even though I’d started my day with my head between my employer’s legs, I would do well to remember that we each had our places in Seattle society, and those places were nowhere near each other.

That didn’t keep us from talking and flirting all the way through dinner. Despite our differences, we’d discovered a lot of common ground and similar interests on this trip. As we traveled we’d talk for hours, and then sometimes we’d choose to crank up the tunes and sing along to the music.