Shock Waves. Colleen Collins

against the side of his drink. “I offended you.”

      “Yes.” She shrugged. “You sounded critical.”

      He stuffed the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth. After finishing, he said, “You’re honest. I like that. I’m honest, too, sometimes to a fault, but I like to be a man of my word, you know?”

      Great. He revered honesty, and before him sat a woman whose very appearance was a lie. She took a sip of her drink, avoiding his eyes.

      “I’m also a music dunce,” he continued. “I’ll listen to tunes when I want to quiet my mind or relax, but—” he shook his head “—it irritates me otherwise. Probably because I heard rap day and night back in the hood. It was like crackling static that never went away. Songs about violence and sex and killing cops. I hated it. Ruined my appreciation for other kinds of music, I guess.”

      She remembered hearing rap when she was outside, but her world inside her bedroom was a sanctuary of what she liked—be it books or listening to Lou Reed or painting lyrics on her ceiling to her mother’s annoyance. “Shame that happened. Music has often been my greatest solace.”

      “Lucky you.”

      For a moment they stared at each other, the sounds of the festival receding into the background, leaving the two of them suspended in a time capsule that encompassed the past and the present. She still saw the boy she’d been so crazy about, dark and handsome with a head full of dreams. But she also saw the man he’d become. Tougher, more cynical. A man who’d lost an appreciation of something as sweet and healing as music because he couldn’t get past the grating static of his past.

      She’d never imagined being with him again wouldn’t be perfect. Of course, she was pitting her girlhood fantasies—which were always perfect—against the woman’s newfound reality. And what she was learning was that for all the glowing feelings she experienced around Bill, there were also the darker ones.

      Were they so dark she didn’t want to stay? Because it’d be easy to make a lame excuse, walk away, dust her hands of the childhood fantasy.

      She watched as he picked up their trash and tossed it in a receptacle, called out a thanks to Sam, patted the back of the guy who was still watching the monitors. Funny. For all his toughness, he was a caretaker. Just like her.

      “Ready?” he said.

      “For what?”

      “For whatever’s out there, of course.” He gestured toward the tent opening that led to the festival.

      Whoever said life had no guarantees should have added it would always have its fair share of confusion, too. Sometimes all that mattered was making a choice and hoping you made the right one. Okay, so he wasn’t the boy of her childhood dreams; she wasn’t the girl who’d dreamed them, either.

      She took his hand, ready for whatever happened next.

      A FEW MOMENTS LATER, they were walking down the midway. It was midafternoon, but the sun was still broiling as though it were high noon. Girls in bikinis and guys in shorts roamed the midway. Coconut-scented suntan lotion competed with the tangy salt air. Barkers and carnies pitched rides and games against a background of calliopes.

      Bill interlaced his fingers with hers as he steered her through the crowd. Maybe because she typically dated more artistic types, or because she was accustomed to running her own business, she wasn’t used to a guy taking the lead. She had to admit, though, that she liked his take-control attitude as he wove through the crowd, sometimes sheltering her past groups of partiers, other times hugging her close for no apparent reason.

      Like she needed one.

      “Hey you! Ms. Smoke and Fire! Black fishnet over the red bikini!”

      “Is somebody talking to me?” asked Ellie, slowing down.

      “That’s right, I’m talking to you and that guy with the gravy stain on his shirt.”

      Bill laughed. “Talking to both of us, it appears.”

      They looked over at a small stage, on which stood the fellow in lime-green turban and loud Hawaiian shirt she’d seen earlier backstage at the audition.

      “Yes, I’m talking to you.” He eagerly waved them over. “Step this way.”

      Bill looked at Ellie. “You game?”

      She looked at the sign over the stage. Magellan the All-Knowing. Although she’d always wanted to have a real supernatural experience, she’d never envisioned that might happen with a loudmouthed carnie at a beach festival.

      “I don’t know,” she murmured.

      “Maybe we’ll win something.”

      “Don’t be afraid,” the man, who had to be Magellan, called out. “All that stands between fear and outcome is courage, my friends, courage!” He looked at the audience. “Right?”