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A/N: Birthday should be chapter 29, up tonight or tomorrow... tomorrow night at the absolute latest. :)
Thanks for the wonderful reviews! :) You guys make my day!
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
I was on my third week of classes—one a version of the previous class I'd done with Sara the semester before—the other an advanced forensic entomology course for majors. I wasn't excited about them, because Sara wasn't in any of them, and no one really compared to her brilliance.
That weekend, I took Sara to a carnival. She was frightened of the roller coasters, so we left those 'til last. I bought her a foot-long corn dog and teased her when she got ketchup all over her face eating it, and then we moved from booth to booth, attempting to beat the rigged carnival games. More often than not, I lost—but I knocked over the bottles with a baseball and shot targets with a water pistol and won her two big toys. A boxer and a ladybug.
Next we went on the rides she would be comfortable with—the tilt-o-whirl and all the other rides that make your stomach feel like its dropping out of your body. She screamed and laughed and grabbed my arms and made me feel like I could save her from anything. We stopped to get cotton candy and sodas and sat on a sticky picnic table to eat and drink, surrounded by bees. She was afraid of them, jumping up and wanting to run away, but I pulled her back to the table and sat her down with one leg on each side of the seat. I slid in behind her, wrapping my arms over her arms.
"Don't worry—I'll protect you." I said against her shoulder, and she beamed, leaning heavily back against me. I reached around her and dripped some of my soda onto the table before us and a large, fuzzy bumblebee buzzed up to the spill immediately. I smiled. "The fuzzy ones are my favorite… they're kind of cute, don't you think?"
She laughed softly, still seeming afraid, but she didn't flinch when it flew away, passing directly in front of her face as it went. I made her feel safe.
Next we went to the batting cages, where Sara gave me a dubious look. I grinned. "I'll help you. C'mon." I inserted bills into a quarter machine and pulled out the quarters. I slid a bright red batting helmet over her frizzy curls and took a black one myself and guided her into the cage with me.
"Is it… just gonna come flying at me?"
I chuckle. "We'll have it come slow, I promise." I inserted quarters and set it on slow, and then guided her over to the base on the ground, wrapping my arms around her from behind and helping her hold the bat. She seemed nervous, again, and then the ball flew out at her and she shrieked and backed against my chest, letting the ball fly past her.
I nearly fell over laughing.
"Sara…" Another ball flew out and she pressed herself to me again. "Sara, honey… they're slow. Turn around…" She did. I gripped her hands over the bat firmly. "We'll do it together. Do you think I'll let it hit you?"
"…No, but—" A ball flew out and I swung our hands together, smacking it and watching as it bounced off the back wall. She giggled.
"Oh… that wasn't so bad."
I rolled my eyes, and swung with her when another ball came out. We did two or three together, and then I backed up, letting her try herself. She backed away from the first one, missed the second one entirely, and hit the third one and then dropped so dramatically that she missed the fourth one entirely.
By the time we left, I was practically hysterical and she was bright red.
"It's not funny! …Balls were flying at my head, Grissom!"
"…That's kind of the point."
She groaned and I wrapped an arm around her playfully. "Alright—let's do some roller coasters now!"
She whimpered softly, but I dragged her over to a little one and spent the entire wait in line explaining what roller coasters did for me and reassuring her that she would be fine. She got in with me, because I wanted her to, and held my hand until the cars started moving, at which point she gripped the shoulder harnesses and squeezed her eyes closed tightly.
Half-way through the roller coaster, she opened them… and though she screamed at every up and down, she kept them open. She laughed, at the end, and we topped off the rest of the afternoon by running around the park trying out the different roller coasters. Nearing six o'clock we stopped to buy burgers and fries and milkshakes and sat on another picnic table to eat, but the bees weren't out anymore—the mosquitoes were.
She was in a tank top, shivering and smacking her arms. I gave her my sweatshirt, and she beamed at me, dragging me off to a concert at the carnival—a local band whose music was extremely eclectic, a mixture of bongo drums and piano and saxophone and xylophone, with a bouncy tempo and energetic singer. We paid five dollars each to sit on the grass back from the group of people surrounding the crowd, and watch the concert.
She sat in front of me, between my legs, her back tucked up under my chest, my chin to her shoulder. And with each new song, hardly thirty seconds into it, she would be moving to the new beat and humming. I spent the time trailing my hands from her shoulders down to her elbows, trailing my fingertips down her spine or over the nape of her neck. And when the band finished, it was nearing ten o'clock, and I knew we had to hurry.
I dragged her across the park at a run and at exactly 9:59 we were boarding the Ferris Wheel.
"Why was it so important that we run… there's hardly any line."
I glanced at my watch, it moved to the ten when we were halfway up. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and smiled. "Just watch."
She narrowed her eyes, looking out over the park—and then jumping out of her seat when a loud whistle split the air, closely followed by a boom and a starburst of light in the sky. Her eyes got wide and a small, subtle smile crossed her beautiful lips. Her next words came on the end of a gasp. "…Fireworks. Ohhh!"
She tucked her body back against mine, and we watched the fireworks show as it played out before us against the dark sky. There wasn't a line, so the ride technician let us stay on through the fireworks, and by the time we got off, headed towards my car, Sara looked like a child who had had the best day of her life.
She was slightly dirty, hair out of place, eyes drooping with fatigue and still bright with excitement, and she couldn't stop talking about all we'd done that day, even when the yawns interrupted her in the middle of words. For the first time since she'd gotten her apartment, I let her stay the night.
We both showered before bed, dusty and sticky and sweaty from our day at the carnival, and changed into our usual pajamas. When I came out of the master bathroom, it was to find the hall bathroom empty, and clinking noises coming from the kitchen.
She had made us each a banana split, and placed a small scoop of vanilla on the floor in a bowl for Hank. We took our ice cream to my bedroom, and fell asleep to late night television again, more full—and in more ways that I could possibly explain—that we had been in so very long.
