Page 90 of One Adult, Please

"Thank you."

"For what?" she asks.

"For staying in the doorway."

"I didn't stay in the doorway. I got stuck in the doorway."

"Same thing."

My hand finds her jaw. My thumb traces the line of powdered sugar on her chin.

"Beck," she says. Just my name, said the way she says everything, like she's trying it on, testing the fit, deciding whether to keep it.

She's going to keep it. I can see it in her eyes. She's already keeping it.

I kiss her the way I do everything now: full speed, full contact, the whole system online, every circuit firing.

She makes a Grace sound. Half surprise, half something more urgent than surprise, and her hands come up to my chest, to the fish vest. Her fingers curl around the edge of the fiberglass and she pulls me closer.

Her back hits the counter. The funnel cake stack wobbles. A plate falls off and shatters on the ground.

I lift her onto the counter.

She wraps her legs around me. "The fish vest is poking me," she says against my mouth.

"I can take it off."

"Don't you dare. The fish vest stays on, Beck. The dolphin is part of this now. The dolphin has been watching us fall in love with each other for days and the dolphin deserves to be here for this."

Fall in love.

She says it like the train didn’t leave without me after all. She reached through the closing doors and pulled me aboard.

My mouth finds her neck because if I try to answer, I’m going to say something that changes everything.

Her head tips back. Her hands are in my hair and her legs are around my waist and the counter is at exactly the right height, which is a coincidence that I'm choosing to interpret as architectural destiny.

My hands are under her hoodie. I want more of the sound she makes when I touch the soft skin above her hip.

"Beck."

"Yeah."

"I want…"

A sound. From outside. Not Kevin, who's wandered off to eat civic infrastructure elsewhere.

Shuffling. The wet, dragging, wrong-footed shuffle.

We freeze. Her legs still around me, my hands still under her hoodie, our faces inches apart, breathing the same air that now contains the sound of the worst possible interruption at the worst possible moment.

"No," Grace says.

The shuffling gets closer.

"No."

A shadow passes the entrance of the funnel cake stand. The silhouette of a figure with bad posture and worse intentions.