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“Are you about to pass out?” I whisper, resting a gentle hand on his back. “Do you need to put your head between your knees? Or we can go if you want.”
He shakes his head, forcing a tight smile for the hostess approaching from across the room. “No. It’s fine. You’re hungry. I’m hungry. And this is the only restaurant for another hundred miles.”
I’m about to suggest that we could drive back to Sioux Falls or make do with the sandwiches and snacks in the camper, when the breathless hostess arrives in front of us.
Thankfully, the petite brunette isn’t in clown gear and her eyes wrinkle warmly as she says, “You must be McGuire, party of two. You’re so lucky! We had a last-minute cancellation right before you booked.” She collects two menus from the stand near the entrance to the dining area and nods for us to follow her. “We have you at a high-top table in the cell room. Right this way.”
As I move forward, Wes reaches out, claiming my hand and holding on tight as we start after the woman. Instantly, I know this has nothing to do with flirting or romance. His palm is cold and clammy, and as we pass by one of the horror clown tables, where a woman with a blood-soaked ruffle is calculating the tip with the aid of her cell phone, he starts to tremble.
I squeeze his hand, giving him what I hope is a reassuring smile as we step through the narrow threshold into what was obviously once the holding area for prisoners detained here. There aren’t any doors on the cells anymore, but the bars still stand, serving as separators for the three large booths on that side of the room.
Booths that are also filled with clowns…
As our hostess sets the menus on a high-top table in the corner, by an open window overlooking the grassland beyond—thank God, in case Wes needs to make an urgent escape—I ask, “So what’s going on here tonight? With the…” I nod over my shoulder with a smile.
She laughs. “It’s so fun, right?”
Wes murmurs something too wobbly to sound like an agreement and claims the seat closest to the window.
“My uncle runs the clown college in Sioux Falls. Pagliacci in Pink?” She waves a hand when my blank face apparently reveals I have no idea what she’s talking about. “It’s famous in clown circles. We’ve had clowns in our family all the way back to seventeenth century Italy. And we’ve hosted the clown college reunion every year since it opened in 1974.” She glances around with a soft laugh. “Though we might have to look for another venue next year. It’s getting so big! Thank goodness it’s nice out tonight so we could seat some people on the patio.”
As I slide into the seat across from Wes, the hostess reaches for a pitcher of water on the table by the window, filling our glasses as she says, “The specials tonight are a grilled octopus appetizer with toasted bread and an olive tapenade and a gorgeous filet mignon with truffle butter and a small serving of lobster ravioli on the side. That comes with your choice of green beans or grilled Broccolini, and your server will be right with you.”
I thank her, turning back to Wes as soon as she’s hustled into the other room. “Seriously, are you going to be okay to eat here? Is this like…a phobia for you?”
He nods ever so slightly and lifts his menu, brandishing it like a shield in front of his chest. “Yep.”
My forehead wrinkling, I whisper, “Then let’s go. Crawl out the window. I’ll meet you back by the camper.”
He shakes his head again. “No. I need to get the hell over it. It’s ridiculous. These are just normal people, enjoying a celebration and a nice meal, nothing to be afraid of.”
I cock my head. “Well, I don’t know about the normal part but I agree that there’s nothing to be afraid of. But fear isn’t always logical, and that’s okay.”
He claims his cloth napkin, dabbing at his damp face. “Except that it’s not. I’m thirty-three years old. I should be over getting trapped in the haunted funhouse at the county fair when I was six.”
I wince sympathetically. “Who says? You were just a baby. That must have been really scary. Why did your parents let you go into a place like that? Let alone all by yourself?”
“It wasn’t my parents, and I wasn’t alone. At least not at first,” he says, his gaze darting around the room, like he’s on the lookout for snipers. “It was Barrett. Hazard of having older brothers. Barrett was nine and determined to do the haunted funhouse for the first time. Drew was seven and too scared to go with him, so I volunteered, wanting to prove I was a big boy and Drew was a whiny baby.” He exhales a shaky laugh. “But I was not, in fact, a big boy. Neither was Barrett, but he had a better sense of direction. When he ran, he found the way out pretty quickly. I got lost in the mirror room with a morbidly obese clown with food stains all over his costume. He kept laughing and popping out behind different mirrors, while I cried.”
I reach across the table, giving his forearm a squeeze. “You poor thing. That’s horrible, Wes. No wonder you were traumatized. That man deserves to have a hot poker shoved up his backside for torturing a kid like that.”
His lips curve in a wobbly smile. “Thanks.”
“And Barrett wasn’t a very brave big brother.” I shrug. “But he was only nine, so I guess I’ll forgive him.” I pet Wes’s arm, racking my brain for something to say to help get his mind off those ugly memories. I find inspiration in the feel of his crisp arm hair beneath my fingers. “When I was little, I used to pet my grandpa’s arm hair like this and pretend it was a cat named Fluffy. Gramps would play along, making meowing noises and pretending to drink milk out of my glass.”
Wes’s smile widens. “Sounds like a cool guy.”
“He was. And the only one in the family as weird as me. I miss him.”
“You’re not weird,” he says, his gaze locking on mine for the first time since we sat down. “You’re fun. I’ll never forget that time I walked into the catering office and you and Mel were on the prep tables, throwing potatoes at each other and using sheet pans as shields.”
I laugh. “It had been a long week. And we had a lot of baby potatoes about to go bad, so…”
“It was great. I wanted to join in.”
I smile. “You should have. You’re allowed to be silly, too, you know. You don’t always have to be the calm, sweet, levelheaded one who sees all sides of the issue.”
His lips hitch up on one side. “Spoken by a woman who doesn’t come from an enormous family. That’s not how it works when you’re one of eight. There are only so many ways to stand out in a pack of kids that large. Once you find something that gets you positive attention, you stick to it, even when you’re grown.” He stretches his neck to one side. “It’s hard to break out of those patterns, especially when everyone you care about is still counting on you to be the same old Wes.”
