Chapter Five
Elly
I woke up with the same knot in my stomach that I’d gone to bed with the night before. Something was telling me that hanging out with Cole was not going to be my best idea ever. The whole time I was in a shower I told thought about cancelling on him. What I really wanted to do was explore on my own, or hang out with some of the girls. They were going to the fair that was being held in the town we were in. I hadn’t been to a fair in a really long time. By the time I was dressed, I’d decided to at least see if Cole wanted to hang out at the fair. I got his text around ten.
Hey! Are we still hanging out today?
Sure, as long as you want to go to the fair.
That’s cool. Want me to pick you up?
Sure.
I told him where to go and then I grabbed my bag and walked out to the front of the lot. He said he was staying at a hotel nearby and would be there in less than ten minutes. After about fifteen minutes, I saw a red Camaro drive up. I thought surely that couldn’t be him; who rents a Camaro anyways? It was Cole, and it was also obvious that he thought he was as cool as ever. That was one reason we’d become such good friends back in high school: I’d seen right through his cool guy façade and told him he was full of shit. For some reason, he’d appreciated that.
He stopped the car alongside me and the passenger side window slid down. He grinned at me. I’d almost forgotten how good looking he was. He was the polar opposite of Tristan. He had blonde hair and he always kept it cut short and perfectly styled. His parents were well off, so he always dressed in designer clothes. He was buff, too; even when he was drinking heavily, he never missed a day at the gym. He had been the football star at our high school. Back then, he didn’t put anything in his body that wasn’t healthy. He had green eyes and these really deep dimples on either side of his mouth that he knew how to use when the moment called for it.
“Hey good-looking; need a lift?” he said.
“Hey, Cole,” I said, opening the door. “As smooth as ever with the ladies, I see.”
I slid in and he said, “It’s true; I’m a lady killer,” he said, with another grin. He was really a dork, but a dork with good self-esteem. “Wow, Elly. You’re looking even finer than I remember you, and that’s no line.”
I smiled to be polite and said, “Thanks.” I’m sure he was waiting for a return compliment; he was a little vain like that. I let the moment pass and then I said, “What are you doing in Colorado?”
“I have a friend whose family owns a cabin up at Vail. He turned twenty five and had a big party. I was on vacation from work this week so I came up. I went to the party and then I came down here to stay in town. I saw your post on Facebook and decided the concert might be fun. My boys and I went and then they headed back to L. A. this morning. I stuck around…to see you.”
“Wow, um, thanks. Since I hadn’t heard from you in a year, I didn’t even know we were that close any more.”
He laughed and said, “I guess we grew apart during all the shit that happened. I could tell that you needed your space. Those were bad times, for all of us. I took your lead a few months later and went to rehab myself. I’ve been clean and sober for nine months now.”
“Good for you,” I told him, sincerely. Maybe there was hope for us to re-kindle our friendship after all.
“You still on the wagon?”
“Yep, almost a year for me now.”
He nodded, “Good, it’s a better life.”
“Yes it is,” I agreed.
“So where’s this fair at?”
I had it programmed into my GPS so I gave him directions. It was a small town and that meant a small town fair, which sounded like a lot of fun to me. I’d read an article about it in one of the local papers that said they had, “Blended just the right touches of Elvis and mini-mod tractors along with a fair princess and a queen.” It sounded like just the place for me to finally have a day without Tristan on my mind.
We found the fairgrounds easily and after finding a parking spot we made our way inside. As soon as we were through the gates, I could smell the popcorn and peanuts and deep fried foods from all along the midway. As much as my stomach would complain later, it was growling right then.
“So, what first?” Cole asked.
I looked up and saw the Ferris wheel; I pointed at it and said, “That.”
He laughed and then suddenly turned serious and said, “Aw come on, you’re kidding, right?”
“Nope, I’m totally serious.”
“I can’t….I mean, I haven’t since….”
I laughed and he realized that I was just kidding. The first time Cole and I had hung out right after my boyfriend died; we’d gone to Santa Monica. We went bar-hopping and we were both really drunk. We made the very stupid decision to get on the Ferris wheel on the pier. Cole puked before the ride finally stopped and then I had to have the cab pull over three times so that I could puke on the way home. That night we had collapsed on my bed, drunk off our asses, and fell into a semi-comatose state. The first time we had sex was the next night; we were drunk then, too, but that’s a story for another time.
“Let’s go play some games on the midway,” I told him.
We walked along the midway, going from game to game. The first one we played was the one where you shoot water into a clown’s mouth and blow up a balloon. Whoever breaks their balloon first wins. I won the first two games and ended up with a two dollar toy for five dollars’ worth of game. Cole won the next three, and by that time I was down ten bucks.
We played the duck hunt shooting game next. Cole blew me away on that one, and ended up with a pretty good sized stuffed animal. It was fun, kind of like old times. He wasn’t hitting on me and my mind wasn’t constantly on Tristan, although it liked to flicker over there every so often. We played a few more games and won a few more stupid prizes; then, to my surprise, Cole suggested we go watch the tractor pulls.
“Tractor pulls, really?”
“You forget that I’m a country boy at heart. L.A. wasn’t my home until I was into my late teens, remember? I grew up out in the central valley. I love me some tractor pulls.”
“I don’t even know what a tractor pull is,” I told him.
He laughed and said, “It’s exciting stuff. These tractors are modified for power. They have to pull a big heavy sledge…”
“What’s a sledge?”
“It’s a sled,” he said.
“Then why call it a sledge?”
“Do you want to know about the tractor pulls, or do you want to argue over grammar?”
I laughed and said, “I’m sorry, please, go on.”
“Okay, so they pull this sled across a thirty foot wide track. It’s around three hundred feet long and the object is to be the tractor that pulls it the farthest.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“Just hmm?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. That sounds absolutely fascinating,” I lied. I was sarcastic about it so he knew I was lying. It only served to amuse him further.
We sat through the tractor pulls and, to my amazement, it was fun. We took bets just between us on who would win. The winner would keep doubling it; at one point I owed him thirty bucks. I proudly came back and he ended up owing me twenty before it was over.
We caught an Elvis impersonator show and by that time we were both starving. “Why don’t we go out and have a real dinner. I’ll buy,” he said.
“Not a fan of midway food?” I asked him, teasing.
“If you thought I was up-chucking after the Ferris wheel….”
I laughed, “Okay, enough of the night of many pukings. I got it. I feel like my hair smells like the midway though. If we’re going to have a nice sit down dinner, do you mind if I go take a quick shower first?”
He shrugged and said, “I got nothing else going on tonight. I don’t mind.”
He drove me back to the back lot and we found our way to my bus. I wasn’t really supposed to bring people in with me but security barely looked at my badge and didn’t say anything to him at all. When we got to the bus, none of the girls were there. I was a little nervous being alone with him so close to a bed. When we first became friends in high school, sex never even came up between us. He would sometimes brag about his conquests but he never treated me like I was someone he’d sleep with. That was okay with me, because I didn’t see him that way, either. Every girl in our senior class was jealous of me because I spent so much time with him. I always thought he was good-looking, but he was just never really my type. After my boyfriend died and we crossed that line, getting high and fucking was the bulk of what we did. We’d stopped talking about anything or even thinking about doing anything fun. It kind of sucked, and when I was sober, it made me sad. We should have been able to comfort each other like adults, but we let the drugs and alcohol get in the way. We had fallen into the old rhythm on that day, though, and it seemed like he at least realized as I did that wasn’t a place we needed to re-visit.