Twenty-Five - Serena

“You could be twins.”

 

 

 

I am the most alive I have ever been.

Kholton is fresh air in my lungs. He’s an explosion of colors and abstract sun-flares. I don’t want him but I need him. I don’t need him but I want him.

Each time I laugh, I fall. Each time he smiles, I fall. I want to shroud myself in him and never leave. I want to nestle my head under his chin and let him hold me forever.

It is a dangerous thing I’m doing. Falling for him. Watching his hunger for me grow.

I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.

“Feel my heart,” he says to me at the top of the Ferris wheel. Except he doesn’t put my hand over his heart, he puts it over his dick, and it’s indeed pounding. “Feel it? That’s for you.”

 

 

 

“You’re dripping,” he tells me as we’re walking away from the ice-cream bar with oversized cones piled high with varying flavors. “Want me to lick it up for you?”

 

 

On the pier, he hoists me up on the railing and makes me hold my arms out a la Titanic.

“Hail, the Red Witch!” he shouts. And then he tickles me and catches me when I fall back in fits of giggles.

 

 

From a whack-a-mole stand, he wins me one of the biggest, ugliest alien stuffed animals I’ve ever seen.

“Huh,” he says, holding the stuffed animal next to my face. “You could be twins.”

I fight him.

 

 

At the gum-ball machine, he spends over fifty dollars’ worth of coins, determined to get the ring.

When he finally wins it, he drops to his knees in front of me. “I know we’ve just met, but I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. You’re the one, baby. Marry me.”

As I bounce on my toes and squeal, ready to say yes, he shushes me and cocks his ear to the ugly stuffed animal I’m hugging to my chest.

“What’s that?” he says to the object. “Yes?”

Then he springs up and grabs the stuffed animal from me, hugs it to him, and spins around with glee. “She said yes, everybody!” he shouts, kissing the hideous thing all over. “She said yes!”

Onlookers snicker, while I bury my face in my hands, mortified.

 

We scream at the top of our lungs during a scary, twisty roller coaster ride and then we laugh hard afterward.

While laughing, I fart on accident.

He laughs hard at me.

 

 

He feels me up all day long. Gropes me in front of little old ladies, teenagers, toddlers in strollers, and scowling moms.

I brought him here because I thought he needed this. But it turns out I am the one who needed it. I’ve never laughed so hard or wide or deep, never felt so wild, such fearless peace.

It’s not even over yet, but already, today is one of my favorite days.