Page 29 of Eleanor & Grey

He missed by a few inches.

“Dammit,” he muttered.

“Five more bucks for five more balls,” the booth guy mentioned.

“It’s not worth it,” I said, lightly touching Greyson’s arm. “These things are made to lose.”

Greyson narrowed his eyes and reached into his wallet, pulling out five more dollars. With the way things were going, the poor guy was going to have to tap into his college fund in order to win me that stuffed panda bear.

He started tossing the balls once more, and, of course, he kept missing. At one point the booth guy even frowned at Greyson’s attempts.

“This is the one,” Greyson said as he held the twentieth ball in his grip. “This is the one that’s going to be different than all the ones before,” he promised.

In a way, he was right.

He pulled his arm back and swung it forward, and in a freak accident, the baseball hit the corner of the bullseye and bounced off of it, flinging the ball directly back at him, hitting him square in the face.

“Oh my gosh!” I screeched as Greying went flying backward and crashing to the ground. I hurried to his side and bent down. “Grey, are you okay?”

“Did I win?” he asked with his left eye closed tight. The redness from the impact of the ball was already in place as I helped him to his feet.

“No, not at all.”

“Damn, I thought I had it that time.”

“Here, man. Just take the panda,” the carnie said as he held the stuffed animal toward us. “Anyone who tries that hard to impress a girl deserves to give her a stuffed animal.”

Greyson smirked with his quickly bruising eye. He took the panda bear and handed it to me. “See? I knew that time was lucky!” he exclaimed.

I laughed. “Yeah, well, let’s just go find a place to sit so I can find ice for your eye.”

He held the stuffed animal to me, and I took it and hugged it tight.

Thanks, Grey.

I led him to a bench and forced him to sit down while I wandered off to find ice for his eye. When I came back, the guy was sitting there with a black and blue eye and a stick of cotton candy, smiling like a fool.

I liked him so much in that moment—so, so much.

He kept funneling cotton candy into his mouth as I sat down beside him.

“Hold still,” I ordered as I placed the cloth filled with ice against his eye. He cringed a bit as it touched his skin. “Sorry,” I said, pulling the cloth away from him. My fingers gently touched the swollen area of his eye. “I just want to get some ice on it before it gets worse.” I put the ice back against the skin, and he smiled.

“I like that,” he told me.

“The ice on your face?”

“No. I like it whenever you touch me.”

My heart stopped beating, I stopped breathing, and Greyson kept smiling.

I didn’t respond, because I had completely forgotten how to form words, but I was certain my reddened face told him exactly how his words had made me feel.

“So, I know today has been eventful, but if you’re up for it, I got one of my grandpa’s favorite kung fu movies on DVD. I figured maybe we could watch it at my place,” Greyson offered.

“Sure, that sounds fun.”

We headed back to his house, and even though I kept looking toward Greyson’s bruising eye, he seemed unfazed by it all. He simply began humming a tune, so I began humming along with him.

---