Page 144 of Mexico Can Choke On It
We swing again, and, for a split second, I’m weightless. The restraints bite into my shoulders—my ass lifts clean off the chair.
Beside me, Petra laughs with untamed joy, her hair dancing in the wind, while the young girl to my left puts both hands in the air as if gravity’s just a suggestion.
Vertigo sets in. The music feels faster. The lights strobe in broken rhythm—yellow, red, purple, white, nothing. My vision blurs, and I can’t tell if the pounding in my ears is from the machine, the song, or my heart fighting to exit through my eardrums.
The hot dog—Christ!—is waging an all-out revolt against my digestive system.
And then, the contraption swings upside down.
And freezes there.
Sweet mother of God.
I’m dangling like a chandelier, white-knuckling my harness—the only thing keeping me from becoming street art on the pavement. I stare at the tiny people below, moving like ants. My stomach is in my throat. My balls? Anyone’s guess.
Don’t pass out. I’ll have to be rescued upside down with wet pants.
“Bryce!” Petra’s voice cuts through my panic. “Look at me!”
I turn my head, fighting the disorientation, and find her hanging beside me with that wild grin plastered across her face, arms dangling free.
“Let go!” she shouts over the screams.
“Absolutely not!”
“Trust me! Let go of the harness!”
“Have you lost your goddamn mind?” I grip the bar harder, my knuckles pure marble.
“¡Sí, let go!” the tiny terrorist beside me chimes in.“¡Es más divertido!More fun when you no hold!”
I’m suspended forty feet in the air. Taking life advice from a seven-year-old and a bartender.
“Bryce! Stop being a pussy. Let! Go!”
“Yeah,señor, no be pussy!”
God help me, I let go. My fingers fall away. And then—
I scream. Something insideme releases.
The spinning beast bucks beneath us. This time, a full, violent 360-degree spin. It whips around then loops again. I roar. But it’s not panic. It’s the sound of freedom.
I’ve never felt so fucking free in my entire life.
I’m soaring. Untethered from it all—the board meetings, the impossible expectations, the suffocating legacy of being Bryce Sterling. I scream like a maniac.
The second we touch the ground, I grab Petra’s hand. “Again. We’re doing that again.”
She raises an eyebrow, cheeks flushed, wind-tossed hair sticking to her red lips. “Hold on, daredevil. Pace yourself. We’ll come back. Each ride here gets two rounds. That’s the rule.”
I’m already tugging her toward the exit. “Then we better get started.”
Next up? The Scrambler. We cram into the too-small seat, thighs pressed tight. The ride jerks to life, and suddenly we’re a streak of spinning color. Each wild spin hurls her into me, full-body,no apology—her breath hot against my neck. She laughs like it’s breathing, and I’m laughing too—loud, unfiltered, completely gone. If this is what losing control feels like… maybe I’ve been doing life all wrong.
I’m obsessed.
Petra is reshaping me, pulling me into her beautiful world of chaos where anything feelspossible.
