Page 90 of Even After Sunset

“Good,” he smirks. “Caus, I wasn’t really gonna pay you.”

The fireworks are totally worth playing hookie for.

I sit between Silas’s bent knees, and he folds his arms around me from behind. I pass candy back to him over my shoulder and I can feel the vibration of him chewing close to my neck. It tickles, but I like having him close to me like this. After a while, he rests his chin on my shoulder and we makeoohhhandaahhhsounds in unison as the fireworks flare and blossom in the night sky.

Fifteen minutes go by way too fast and soon the largest, most impressive fireworks paint the sky in cascades of blinding color.

“By the way,” Silas whispers, after the grand finale and cheers and applause from the crowd. “Marshmallow bananas are still my favorite.”

I feel his lips brush against my cheek when I smile, and I don’t have to look back to know he’s smiling, too.

The next band starts up then, and we sit for another couple of dreamy minutes, tangled in our own personal bliss, before climbing back down to man our stations. And soon, Silas is heading off to help with tear-down while I deal with the last few sales of the night and do the cleanup.

Once I’m done, I get ready for bed and lie on my side reading, waiting for Silas to get back. But I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, his thumb is sweeping a strand of hair off my face, and my eyes flutter open to find him in the doorway leaning over me.

“Hey… it’s just me,” he says, picking up the e-Reader lying on my pillow and tucking it into the wall pocket. “Go back to sleep.”

“Kay…” I smile up at him. “Good night.”

I let my eyes fall closed again, and the last thing I feel are his lips brushing against my forehead.

“Good night,” he whispers.

And I fall asleep.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Silas

The next couple of weeks pass in a blur of sunrises and festivals and marathon baking afternoons. Also: tacky roadside attractions, grocery runs, and playlists (all of the kill-me-now cheery variety). There are quiet sunset conversations and rowdy nights around bonfires with some of the other vendors. And wedged in between are the phonecalls to Richard. Sometimes short and dismissive. Sometimes drawn out and liberating. But generally intense and draining.

The road days are the best. We use Jackie’s meticulously outlined itinerary as our blueprint, but I throw a few things in, too. It goes against her nature—mixing plans around and changing stuff last minute, but she lets me do it. And she only threw a small fit when I switched around a bunch of her colored sticky-notes just for shits and giggles.

So far, we’ve visited a crate museum, a three-storey outhouse, a dog chapel and a spiderweb farm. We’ve had lunch in the town that was the birthplace of earmuffs and filled up on penny candy at the world’s longest candy bar. We mourned the loss of Wavy Gravy, Schweddy Balls, and Vermonty Python at Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Flavor Graveyard, and we got spooked at the site of a grave that has an actual window in it, somewhere in nowhere-town Vermont. And then there are the selfies. Too many to remember, but I’m gonna try anyway…

We’ve posed with a giant teddy bear, a giant lobster, and a giant coke can. With the world’s largest telephone, the world’s tallest file cabinet, the world’s largest zipper, and the world’s largest non-stick frying pan.

We’ve visited at least half a dozen waterfalls—all of them so stunning I could never pick a favorite. But, okay, if I had to, it would still be the very first one: Cascade Falls, just outside Old Orchard Beach—where Jax flashed those undies that deserve another mention in their own right.

And through it all, Jackie’s book cover side-hustle is kicking serious butt. I’ve lost count of the number of pre-made covers she’s sold, but even cooler than that are the custom orders that keep coming in. I don’t understand any of whatever the hell it is she’s saying when she gets started on cover design and creating and Photoshop, but I don’t tell her that because I love seeing how her face lights up when she talks about it.

Jackie’s face is animated no matter what she’s talking about, but when it’s anything to do with cover design, it’s magnified by a hundred. Honest to God, Pixar could hire her to use as a case study on facial expressions.

She fascinates me. Or more like, I’m in awe of her; the way she bounced back from everything she’s been through—especially knowing the way she used to be: weary and shy and cautious as hell. And just beat down. She was scared of taking up any room in the world and existed in whatever scraps of space other people discarded. Now, she’s totally claimed her space and man, does she ever own it. And then on top of that, she’s constantly working to expand it, too. Not necessarily for the right reasons, if you ask me, but still—it’s impressive as hell.

I have no idea how to get her to dump the guilt she’s so hung up on when it comes to Meryl and Richard and all the stuff that comes with her new fancy life. But then, she keeps trying to tell me that guilt ismyissue. So yeah, could be a case of the pot calling the kettle black on this one. And who the hell knows? Maybe we’re both just destined to carry around the aftermath of that hellish afternoon for the rest of our lives and that’s all there is to it.

And while Jax may be rocking her book cover side-business, she hasn’t gotten any better at the baking aspect of her main summer gig. I’m the one who bakes the cookies most days, now. And not just to help her out. I do it as a service to the world at large. I sure as hell don’t have much to contribute in other areas, so if I can at least save a few dozen people from having to experience Jax’s horriblebaking, then I’ll have done my part. Even if it’s in a small way, I’ll have improved people’s lives for the better.

Also on that front: we’re finding more and more ways to get away from cookie sales, and expanding to other stuff instead (okay, so I’mactively seeking out alternatives, while Jax randomly stumbles upon them, but still: the end result is the same - and either way, at the end of the day, the East Coast population reaps the benefits).

In addition to cotton candy, we’ve now added six different sugar cereal varieties to the menu. And candy necklaces, rock candy suckers, saltwater taffy, and marshmallow bananas. The marshmallows bananas don’t usually last until opening, though.

I’ve managed to keep my job loading and tearing down for shows, and Steve and I actually strike up a sort-of-but-not-really friendship. More like he looks out for me half the time and rails on me the other half. He’s worried about my drinking; he used to be an alcoholic, so I guess it’s some sort of natural inclination to keep other people going down that same path or something. Which is fine. And probably a good thing. But also, a huge pain in the ass. He’s a good guy though, so I humor him. Also, he has the power to fire me on a dime, so yeah, I do everything I can to stay on his good side.

Everything right now is a hundred times better than back home: the road-tripping and the festivals. Having a job. But mostly, getting closer to Jax. I tried to resist her. Like, I wanted to not be affected by every beautiful, perfect thing about her. But I caved. After that night when I told her the truth about how her mother died, and we fell asleep by the fire, I couldn’t pretend anymore that I didn’t respect the hell out of her. Even the way she stands by her toe-curling playlists, defending them like there’s legitimate merit behind the way she strings them randomly together in hour-long playlists/torture sessions.

They kill me. Seriously. I have forced myself to think of her playlists as daily tests I’m put through to prove myself worthy of being in her presence. Which is my justification for why they seem to get progressively worse every day. Because, swear to God, I’ll still be trying to wipe Taylor fucking Swift songs and 1980spop ballads from my head well into my seventies.And it’ll still have been worth it.

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