It happened again, that rubber band stretching of time, a flashbulb moment to burn a negative behind my eyelids. Slowly, we smiled in unison, interrupted by Ash smacking Levi’s chest and rolling his eyes.
When I turned back to Betty and Z, they were laughing at me. I scowled back.
“Somebody’s getting laid tonight,” Betty sang, and Z chimed in, the two of them skipping in place and doing their best to humiliate me.
“Oh my God, shut up!”
They burst into laughter again, mercifully cutting their shit out before Levi was on the platform with us and standing dangerously close to me.
I cocked my head, schooling my grin into a coy smile. “Look at that. You got in.”
His hand slid into my waist. “I’m surprised you doubted me. I don’t often give up. Especially not when lips like yours are involved.”
I laughed, the sound breezy despite the buzzing excitement in my chest.
Before I could answer, a pair of girls somehow fell up the steps and into Z, spilling her drink.
She gave them a look.
“Oh my God, Courtney—I told you!” She turned to Z. “You’re Zelda Fitzperil, right?”
Z somehow managed to both smile and look unamused. “And you’re drunk, right?”
They tittered.
Not-Courtney listed a little and said, “Only a little.”
“God, you’re so pretty,” Courtney cooed. “I paid two hundred bucks for a makeup artist tonight, and look!” She swiped under her eye and shoved the inky remains of her mascara in Z’s face.
Not-Courtney pushed Courtney’s arm down. “We just wanted to say you got robbed on Drag Race. You shoulda won. Everybody knows it.”
At that, Z’s smile was genuine, if not a little salty. “Don’t worry, baby. Second place is just the bottom of the pair, and I can get off on either.”
We chuckled, but Courtney and Not-Courtney doubled over. Not-Courtney snorted.
“He’s so funny!” she said to Courtney, who elbowed her.
“She, you asshole.” Courtney’s face swiveled to Z, visibly confused. “Right?”
“You can call me whatever you want—I’ll answer to just about anything. Especially the sound of a cash register.”
Always on, always performing, always looking for a laugh. And Z got them.
Not-Courtney fumbled with her clutch. “I’ve gotta get a pic.”
Courtney slapped the sparkly purse from her hands. “God, you are so tacky. I’m sorry,” she said, holding Not-Courtney steady as she patted the ground for her lost accessory. “We’ll leave you alone. We love you!”
“You and everybody,” Z said, twiddling her fingers as they swayed away. Immediately, she turned, pinning Levi with the wickedest of smiles. “You just juggle bowling pins, or do you do balls too?”
“I can juggle just about anything the situation calls for,” he answered with a sideways smile.
“How versatile.” Z looked him up and down. “A ball juggler and a snake charmer. What a team we’d make.”
Levi laughed, but if he had a comeback, he kept it to himself.
“Some party,” Ash said as he looked around the tent. He was dressed as a strongman, his hair parted down the middle and a fake mustache under his nose. His outfit was a too-tight Lycra getup that looked like an old-timey wrestling uniform in red and white stripes. His junk bulged shamelessly, and he didn’t seem to notice or care, even though I knew he did, the peacock. “Cecelia did good,” he noted.
“There’s cotton candy,” Betty said excitedly, as if it wasn’t her idea. “Boozy cotton candy.”
He blinked. “How the fuck?”
She waved a hand. “Something about soaking the sugar in liquor before spinning it. Let’s go get some.”
Betty hooked her arm in Ash’s and discreetly winked at me, but because she was drunk, it wasn’t discreet at all. Levi stifled a smile, looking down at his shoes.
“Come on. You too.” Betty grabbed Z, and she frowned.
“But I wanna watch Levi juggle the balls.”
“Let him have a few drinks before the ball-juggling, would you?” she insisted, dragging everyone down the stairs. “We’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder.
“Subtle,” Levi said.
“As a grenade,” I added on a laugh. And for a moment, we were quiet. “I didn’t know if you’d come,” I finally said.
“I’d have snuck in if Ash hadn’t agreed.”
“And faced the wrath of Cecelia Beaton?” I teased. Because we’d made it a habit of publicly ridiculing anyone who broke the rules, which proved an effective method of stopping infiltrators.
He rolled one shoulder. “If it meant seeing you again? Absolutely.”
My smile was too honest, and I turned to the crowd, watching the trapeze artists fly. “So a juggler, huh? Can you really do it?”
“You think I’d bring these if I couldn’t use them?”
With a laugh, I stepped back, folding my arms and popping my hip. “All right. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
My God, he was handsome. Ten-day beard and shaggy, dark hair. Looming height and broad chest. There was something about his eyes, an unknowable depth with an echo of mischief. Something about his lips, lush and wide and always poised to lift on that one side. Stepping back, he flipped the cuff of his sleeves one more time and grabbed two of the pins by the neck. He looked up, his tongue darting out of his mouth to wet his lips before they pursed in concentration. And then he threw one, two, three in the air just as he caught the first.
I bounced like a little girl, giggling my delight as he tossed one after the other, end over end into the air. And then he switched it up—rather than throwing them in a big circle, they wove in and out of each other. Higher he threw them, and when they reached their peak, he spun around, somehow managing to maintain his catch and pitch. His smile was full teeth at my cheering, though he didn’t dare shift his eyes until he caught them and tucked them under his arm, one, two, three.
I clapped—along with those in our vicinity—as he rolled off his hat in a bow.
“You look surprised,” he said when he set the pins on the ground and made it back to my side.
“Not every day I meet a juggler.”
He laughed. “I’m not any good, just a thing I learned when I was a kid.”
“I beg to differ, sir.”
But he was too busy taking in the circus to argue. “This really is something,” he said half to himself. “I can’t even imagine what a production like this costs. These parties don’t make any money, do they?”
I shrugged as if I didn’t know. “No one pays to be here, so I can’t imagine how.”
“Incredible,” he said to the trapeze artist as she spun twice and opened up like a flower just in time to catch her partner’s hands. “What’s over there?” He pointed at the purple tent.
“A fortune teller. I hear she has a crystal ball.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Serious as a blood moon.”
I earned a chuckle.
“What do you say we go grab a drink and see what it’s about?” he asked.