The Fair

or the story of how you shouldn't afraid to say YES.

It was smack dab in the middle of a Tennessee August.  The air felt like lukewarm water running down my throat.  About thirty minutes earlier, I had tired of brushing my hair from my damp face and had thrown it sloppily into a ponytail.  But not too sloppily.

 

Not too sloppily because the chances of running into Jake.  Not too sloppily because he had finally broken up with his girlfriend.  I tried not to appear too eager to find him as I stood in the middle of the fairgrounds with some friends, but my eyes couldn’t stay still.  He had the tendency to appear out of thin air when I wasn’t prepared.  This time I was determined to be.

 

I didn’t even buy tickets for rides because for some reason that year the whole concept of the fair seemed stupid.  It was just a big crowded place full of dirty people making out and throwing up.  My sister had done some pretty good begging to drag me along with her to the fair, but I was dead set on walking around the ground with some friends.

 

That is, I was until I saw Jake standing near the Ferris wheel.  I could see his smile glowing in the lights that spun all around him.  I passed him several times, turned away by the fact that he was with his other friends, but I kept seeing him.  About half an hour passed and I finally found him alone.

 

He caught my eye and grinned widely (as if there was another way he could grin), “Hey, Tessa.”

 

“Hey, Jake!” I smiled.  Was I smiling too big?  Did my makeup look bad?  Could he even see my face in the darkness? “Where’d all your buddies go?”

 

He shrugged and looked off into the distance, as if he was going to suddenly find them on the horizon.  “Don’t know.  Doing their own thing I guess.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Then the unexpected happened.  Completely out of the blue.

 

Jake looked at me for a minute and then he looked over at the Gravitron that was spinning at an ungodly speed from its place across the fairgrounds.  Then he looked back at me.  It took me a second to realize what was going through his head.  It took me a long second to compute the question that next came out of his mouth. 

 

“You wanna ride the Gravitron with me?” he asked, shuffling his feet in the ground.

 

My heart was choking me.  And my legs had this odd desire to run in another direction, but it turns out that my legs didn’t need any help running away.  My mouth did all of the running.

 

I hesitated.  That must have made him so nervous.  “I don’t know.  I don’t have any tickets.”

 

“Why are you at the fair without tickets?” he tilted his head and squinted his hazel eyes.  I only laughed and shrugged.  “Well, I’ll have to go with you and buy you some.”

 

“You don’t have to buy me tickets, Jake,” I told him.  “I have money.”

 

He smiled.  “Well, even better.  C’mon.”

 

Then he took my hand and literally was pulling me towards the ticket booth.  And at this point, you’d think I would notice that he really wanted to spend time with me, but no.  Of course I didn’t.  I’m Tessa, and I can’t trust people that take a genuine interest in me.

 

So there this really attractive guy was, holding my hand and pulling me across the fairgrounds just to buy a ticket to ride one tiny ride with him.  And what did I do?  I pulled away.  I PULLED AWAY.

 

I’m laughing, but on the inside I’m shaking.  “Jake!”

 

“What?” he turns to me.  He must have not realized we were holding hands until that point.  I don’t even think that I noticed until then.  He let his hand fall to his side.

 

“I don’t wanna buy tickets.”

 

There was an inner voice at this point that tried to speak up, but my big mouth was on a roll.  There was no stopping it.

 

“Are you sure?” he asked.

 

“Yeah, it’s really fine.” I could feel myself being dumb but couldn’t stop it. “I mean, I’m only going to use one ticket and you can’t just buy one ticket and…”

 

He looked at me for a second.  “Oh, okay.  Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

 

We stood there for a second.  I may have even apologized once or twice.  I can’t remember. 

 

All I remember for sure is that we said goodbye, and I had this overwhelming urge to chase after him and tell him that I would love to buy tickets.  I would buy twenty thousand tickets and only use one if that’s what it came down to.  Except I didn’t do that.  I just let him walk away.  He caught up with some of his friends and after an opportunity for greatness, I had let the world fall back to normal.

 

We never talked about that night ever again.  We are still friends, and sometimes I would like to ask him about it.  About what was going through his head.