2019-03-26 - Fall into a trap.

Life hasn't been perfect. But it's been better. Emily has been 'here' more. In small ways, she even tries to be helpful, puts away dishes, sorts laundry, tells him what things are broken (like she doesn't know he's the one breaking them), and doesn't say anything hateful at all. She curls up with him at night and doesn't even bitch about the waterbed he said he'd get rid of.

After work a few days after the hotel, on a day when it's not even drizzling - the sky is fair, the sun has decided to show its face - Emily passes Logan in the front yard, where he's doing Logan-things. She's got a grocery bag tied closed around two styrofoam to-go containers from the diner, and she stops for a second to say, "I'm going to change and go eat lunch at the park." Implied: he should also change and come with her. If he doesn't, then the whole rest of this pose is useless, so let's assume he does that.

After the changing, with no funny business, Emily adds a couple of bottles of water to the bag, and she takes her book - Vonnegut is done for a bit, she's reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy now; shrug, it's funny. She could use a little funny in her life. And then she's waiting on the porch for Logan to fall into step. The park is just up the street, and the walk is quiet in a companionable way.

It's still early, so most kids are in school and most people are at work, but there are a few toddlers-and-moms on the playground and at the carousel, and some old people taking advantage of the fresh air to stroll. Emily bypasses all this, headed to a particular old picnic bench, tucked out of the way. It's a familiar haunt. So many kids have carved their names into this bench over the years, it's a wonder it still stands, hidden by a few low-branched and closely-grown trees. It's where kids smoke or drink, and where the cops let them as long as they don't get too rowdy. Emily, Logan, and Lucy whiled away many an hour there, and old habits die hard.

It hasn't been perfect, but Logan's been making an effort. Granted, it's only been a handful of days, so it remains to see if the slow-down on his bourbon consumption would continue or if it would slowly tick right back up again. There's definitely been lustful looks to the pantry's bottom drawer on many occasion (almost as many times as he's made lustful looks at her bottom, nudge nudge) but well - old habits die hard, right? He was trying. He was trying. And every night she curls up against him in the waterbed he promised he'd get rid of, he resolved himself to try a little harder.

He was outside elbows deep in mulch when she tells him she's going to eat lunch at the park. He knows her well enough to understand what's implied. So he washes off the dirt and comes to meet her on the porch, in a thin black cotton t-shirt and a pair of worn blue jeans, sunglasses on the top of his head instead of hiding the bags under his eyes. He walks with his hands in his pockets because he knows how people talk, but as they get closer to the park and their picnic-table destination, he extracts a hand and hooks his pinky finger to hers. It's a small link. An effort made.

"Fuck, I haven't been here in.." he does the mental math as they come to the table, scattered with memories and ghosts of the past. He doesn't need to tell her it's been a year and some change. The last time they were here was the last time Emily had come to visit, when Lucy was still alive. So instead, he changes gears - "You think someone's crossed out our names?"

In the sunshine, around the carousel, and the music is tinny but pleasant, and there are little kids laughing (and some of them are screaming because for some reason carousels scare the crap out of the occasional three-year-old, it's weird), and Emily acknowledges the effort he makes. First, it's just a little glance, then she shifts her hand to fit to his, palm-to-palm, and some old person taking a lap around the park probably has a heart attack but fuck old people, they suck and should just die already.

See? All the meta. 😃

But they're not to the table yet, not entirely. Against the sun and the spring-green haze of leaves, there's a glimpse of people there ahead of them. Young people. Familiar people. Two redheaded girls and a blonde guy - was his hair fairer back then, was hers, or just a trick of the light? Between one step and the next, the carousel sound fades, and the cast of the sun is just a little different, brighter, the way it always seemed like the afternoons were warmer and cheerier back then. Without the carousel music, the laughter drifts back to slowed steps, and Emily drags on the hand she's holding.

It's not fear that slows her down. It's the watching. Watching the three of them as they were a decade ago, Lucy and Logan off at college, Emily finishing high school, but together most weekends anyway. And they'd been touching up their names in that picnic table, getting stoned, cracking themselves up. And just now, as the real Emily and Logan materialize, the memories of Emily and Logan and Lucy push off the table to do whatever they did after that. Lucy forgot her purse that day. It sits there, on the table, and - "Dibs!"

She drops his hand. She sprints over to the table.

It was the laughter that stills him, nearly causes him to trip over his sneaker when one foot stops in front of the other, her hand dragging on his and his pulse quickening until she could likely feel it fluttering in his palm. He watches until the mist in his eyes makes them sting, until she's calling dibs and sprinting to the table and leaving him there glued in place on the grass. Motion starts again though, the lock of his limbs release and he's chasing after her, not fast enough to catch her but he's right on her heels, until they both skid to a stop.

That laughter, from memories before, he wants to feel it again. How did they ever laugh like that? Like they had no cares in the world? He snags her around the waist from behind and tickles his fingers up along her side, and he laughs but it's not the same. There's weight to the sound now, and his eyes are on the purse that's left forgotten on the table. "What're you calling dibs on, huh?"

Emily seems to have come at this encounter from the exact opposite side of things as Logan. Ten years ago, she was happy and carefree and all was right with the world. And she wants that back, badly enough to step on her own neck if she starts getting all bittersweet. So, "I guess we'll find out," is the answer, and she climbs onto the picnic table, snatching Lucy's purse up off of it. A minute ago and ten years ago it got forgotten here, and, when they retraced their steps to find it (as best as three stoned teenagers could retrace anything), it was gone. Maybe this Emily and this Logan are the reason.

Because this Emily, with her feet on the bench, upends the contents of that purse on the table next to the carved names. Lucy-things spill out, a decade old phone - man, she was pissed - keys, lipstick, receipts, gum, a wallet, and Emily continues to paw through the interior pockets. Like this is perfectly normal.

Because shit like this? Happens to her a lot. Why the fuck else does she always seem to walk around looking like she's seen some things, man.

"Em, I don't think --" Logan hesitates, reaches out with a hand to snag her t-shirt when she climbs up on the table and after the purse. Because it puts a pit in his stomach, the very thought, and it's gnawing at him. But she's too quick - his fingers edge along the shirt but can't find purchase, and he winces as she upends the purse onto the bench and the objects within clatter across the carved names. She's pawing through the interior pockets by the time he eases himself up onto the top of the picnic table, clearly warring with something internal. But, well, old habits die hard.

He hooks the lipstick tube with a finger and rolls it to him, pops open the top and looks at the color that would so often stain his lips whenever Lucy kissed him. His tongue drags over his lips and he reaches for her phone next, would this thing even turn on anymore? It feels like a damn brick in his hand. "What are you even looking for? This isn't.." he can't find the words, they die on his lips, and he stares at the phone screen as he tries to fiddle with the object. "She was so pissed," he breathes out.

This is way before thumbprints locked phones, so maybe Logan knows the password and maybe he doesn't. The phone's as alive as it was a decade ago, the little battery-bar is around the 30% mark - batteries back then sucked. In a couple hours, they'd be calling that phone, hoping someone would pick it up so they could get it back, but it went straight to voicemail. Emily glances at him once or twice while he touches these relics, and her hand stills in an inner pocket for a moment.

"It's not always terrible," she assures him in a low voice. Though why she's talking low is a mystery. The carousel sounds and the park sounds are muffled, and the people are shapeless blurs, indistinct things that exist in the real world. "Is it bothering you?" Her rummaging. She goes back to digging again immediately, regardless of the answer, and there's some change in here, a couple of small bills, a joint, a lighter, some pictures, all added to the collection.

Logan punches a few numbers into the phone, lips twitching into a frown when the passwords that he can guess don't unlock the phone. "What's her password on this stupid thing?" he shakes it, as though that will somehow unlock it, and sighs as he sets it aside. "Used to be her birthday." Whatever, he's grumbling but she's taking more out of the pockets and his eyes fall onto the pictures that get added to the collection.

But it's the joint he picks up first. It's not always terrible, she says, maybe this is proof of that. "No," it was bothering him, but it wasn't, and he weaves the joint between his fingers as he takes up the photographs and starts flipping through them. "Think we can smoke this?" he lifts the joint up under his nose to sniff it.

There's nothing left in the purse, just a few pieces of lint that Emily dusts off and lets the slow wind take away. She tosses the empty purse onto the center of the table, leaning back on her now empty hands to eye the collection of things that were written off as lost ten years ago, wearing a small smile. The pictures are mostly family pictures, or pictures high school friends traded, in one of those little plastic sleeve-thingies, a few from photo-booths - Emily and Lucy, Logan and Lucy, Logan and Emily, Lucy and Emily and Logan.

"This is spring... and it's two-thousand and nine? I bet I know what it is." The password, and she looks at Logan for a moment, a brow lifted all slyly, her weight shifted to just one hand so she can open the other one toward him. There's the universal 'i dunno' sound about the joint, shoulders lifted. "What's the worst that could happen." (She really has to stop saying that.)

Spring 2009? No wonder he didn't know the password. They weren't even married then, they wouldn't be married for another three years. He lays the phone in Emily's outstretched hand but it is the photos that he admires, the one in the plastic sleeve. Logan's making faces; in the square with just him and Emily? He's licking the side of her face while she bursts into laughter. But fuck, there was so much brightness here. Even back then, they just seem brighter when it's the three of them together. "The boardwalk. You remember? Lucy bought all the fried stuff she could find and dared us to eat everything, even those fucking fried pickles," his laugh is melancholy. He wants to keep these pictures, so he does his best to sear them into his memory.

But the joint? "You really need to stop saying that," he remarks. But maybe she was right. What's the worst that could happen? He holds the joint steady between his lips and flicks the lighter, inhaling once the end is lit.

They weren't married, no, but Emily shares while she punches in that password on an early (and therefore super-glitchy) touchscreen, "She was crushing on you baaaaad. 'Would it be weird' and 'what if it ruins everything' and." She sighs on the exhale, "'Are you sure you don't mind, Emmyem?' I told her you were too fucked up for me, that you needed somebody nice, or else you'd probably go off the deep-end someday." She lifts her shoulders in a big shrug, one that's sorta sorry? Like, a little bit? And then there's a not-melancholy-at-all laugh from her about the pickles; "I remember thinking nothing could ever be as disgusting as funnel cake with fried pickles as a chaser."

As for what she needs to stop saying, there's another loose-shouldered shrug. "What do you think would happen if we called my phone? Or your phone? With this phone? Would the whole space-time continuum just, like, break?"

"I was too fucked up for you?" Logan says on the exhale, a plume of smoke exiting as he laughs. A deep chested, honest sort of laugh. He answers the apologetic shrug with a shake of his head and an offering of the joint, once he's taken another hit off of it. There's a moment of quiet after the laughter fades, his brow a thoughtful furrow. "I turned her down, you know. When we got back to campus, she asked me to.. a party, I think, some frat boy thing. I told her I couldn't go. I didn't wanna ruin it either. Our thing," he looks down to the picnic table and scratches his nail across one of the names. "And I still had a thing for you," admitted in a murmur, just kinda glossed over. Just ignore that part, Emmeyem. "But then you started dating.. god, what the fuck was his name? Something stupid," he rolls his eyes. "It was the end of summer. We went out on the lake, remember? The fucking four of us," it was never supposed to be four. "Things just felt like they had changed." And they had, in some ways. Lucy and Logan went off alone that evening, made out under the stars, but to him, it felt like the sun was still shining bright.

He breathes deep, chases away the memories with the heel of his hand to the corner of his eye, and then drops into his pocket to pull out his phone. "Do it. Call my number. It's not gonna ring."

The only answer to that first question is an amused look paired to a stubborn nod, he was too fucked up for her, and it's funny. Now. The whole story that follows... Emily knows. Because of course she knows. Lucy was her sister and her best friend, there's probably a whole lotta things that she got told over the years, and a fair few things she's forgotten. Like whatever that guy's name was. "Cal? Cliff? It was pretty stupid," she agrees, then takes a hit off the ghost-joint. Like you do. "I think he owns a dry-cleaning company in Hoquiam now, though. Just think, I coulda been living the high life off Cliff's martinizing money. But he was a really tonguey kisser." She blows out, she hands back the decade-old-joint, and she adds in another unnecessary whisper, "You're not a tonguey kisser." It's a compliment.

And then she's focusing on this old phone, her finger hovering over the call button on his name in the contacts. "Do you wanna say hi to yourself, Logan?"

"Clay! His name was fucking Clay," Logan remembers with a snap of his fingers, reaching to pluck the offered joint back to take a triumphant hit. He breathes deep, but he exhales in a rush of laughter at her whisper. "That's 'cause you bit me the one time I got tonguey with you," he grins, swiping his free hand through his hair as he soaks in the weed and the memories. Maybe it really wasn't all that bad. "I learn fast. And you saved at least a couple other girls from me slobbering all over them," he takes another hit of the joint, then slumps forward with a smirk as her finger hovers over the call button.

There's a single moment of hesitation, just a heartbeat of trepidation. Then he sets his hand on hers, applying the pressure necessary to hit the call button.

Emily touches the end of her nose with one hand, points at Logan with the other, Clay. As for her having saved those other girls, she bursts out a short, honest laugh at him. "I didn't really need that information, but I guess I'm glad to have made a contribution to the greater good? Emily Harris, who taught Logan Miller not to shove his tongue down people's throats." She waves away the smoke drifting in her face, looks through it at the not-people milling around the carousel - and has her finger pressed to the call.

She taps the speaker button, and holds his hand with cold fingers. Now they can both hear it ringing on the other end. This time, the whisper is tinged with nervousness, with the sudden rapidity of her pulse, the goosebumps, the eyes that hold his, more excited than afraid. "This never happened," she breathes into that second ring, and the call engages, but it never happened because Logan absolutely would've remembered getting a call from themselves on Lucy's phone that day.

"Ah, whatever. I remember that kiss fondly in spite of the teeth," Logan clacks his teeth together for emphasis, chomp chomp. "And I bet I taught you a thing or two. Though clearly you didn't think to bite Clay too until he stopped," he snickers, though he adds in a quiet voice after the laughter's faded, "I'm glad for that though."

And then the tone shifts, because he presses her finger into the phone and he stops breathing while the ring echoes on the speaker. The call engages, and he practically jumps out of his skin when Lucy's ringtone comes through his end, bright and cheerful and swallowing up the other sound around them. He lifts his eyes to Emily's own, wide and gray and terrified... but there's excitement too, as he squeezes his fingers around her own, and accepts the call, putting it on speakerphone.

Silence, as the line connects. Then, hesitantly, he speaks: "Hello?"

The end of that conversation is a low, "Keep it up, and I'll bite you again." Threat? Promise?

Emily all but falls off the table, she's so startled when that ringtone picks up, and she does actually drop the Lucy-phone. It falls off the table the way she didn't, bounces on the seat, teeters there for a moment, and then slides off the edge, into the sunlit grass. So his 'hello?' comes up from the ground at them, and she takes a breath like she's about to say something - or maybe to climb down and get the fallen phone. And it's a good thing she took that breath, because she holds hers tightly now...

"Hello? Who is this?" coming out of Logan's phone, a little muffled and underwatery, the way phones sounded a decade ago, but that's Lucy. Nineteen-year-old Lucy.

The voice that comes through makes his throat cinch shut, his breath choked. All that cute banter, the warm memories, the laughter - it's gone the moment he hears her voice again. If he was high before, he currently plummets now, tears springing into gray depths as he stares down at the phone. The words don't come easy, they have to crawl out of his throat, his lips dry as they tumble out. "Lucy? Oh, god, Lucy," he's still got Emily's hand in his, his grip tight, but he slumps forward towards the phone as though he could somehow get closer to her voice. "It's me, it's Logan. And..and Emily, are you really there? Are you okay?"

There's a lot of laughter on the other end of the phone. It's not just Lucy's, it's all of theirs, like this was some great, hysterical joke ten years ago. But it wasn't, and this Emily's lips are moving soundlessly while she stares at this Logan's phone.

"Okay, Logan and Emily," in a 'sure that's who this is' tone. "Sure, I'm really here. Where are you? Do you have my phone? Tell me where you are, and I'll come get it from you. I'll give you a reward!" And then the Lucy-voice dissolves into giggles, with a chorus of giggles behind her. It's weird to hear your own voice not in your head, but there it is, muffled by the phone: Logan's voice, laughing; Emily's voice, laughing.

Emily takes her hand away. She needs them both to cover her ears now.

No, this wasn't right. This never happened, he was certain of it. He would've remembered this, this would've stuck in his brain. But that was her voice, his laughter, Emily's too, and he winces his eyes shut as the tears tumble out. Emily snatches her hand away and his fingers grope at the air, before they curl around the edge of the table. He was shaking, trembling all over. "You can't," come get it, he means, his voice cracks. And if this wasn't real, he could tell her things now, and nothing would change even though there was some hope that they would.

"Listen to me, Luce. You gotta listen, baby," he cradles the phone up towards him as his hand quakes so violently, he fears he might drop the phone and land it in the grass next to the one they called from. "I love you, I do. And I'm so sorry, for everything. And I can't fix anything and I can't fix you and I can't fucking fix me but I'm gonna take care of Emily, Luce. I will. 'Cause I love her, too, but don't hate me, okay? Please. Please," he was practically sobbing by the end of this, speaking through choked gulps of air. "And if you remember this in nine fucking years be careful on the goddamn stairs, do you understand me? You gotta be careful."

He shakes and Emily shrinks. She pulls her feet up onto the edge of the table, her knees almost to her chin, her hands sealed over her ears, eyes shut tight, hair falling forward. Like if she can just disappear...

"You're a nut, Logan. Listen, listen - " Lucy must be talking to the other thems now, the sound shifts, picking up indistinct background noises. The words are unintelligible for a few seconds, a lot of clicking and muffled words, some more laughter. "You should tell us where you are," seems to be the refrain, a few different ways of saying it, their three voices pitching the suggestion ever-so-casually. Then it's back to Lucy, as clear as an old phone can be. "It's okay, my love. Don't worry, how could I ever hate you? Just tell me where you are, and I'll come get my phone, and then I'll be super careful on the stairs, promise. Maybe, if I get the phone back, everything will change, and I won't fall down the stairs!" More giggles.

Shattered, that's what he was. He's focus is so intent on the phone that he doesn't see Emily folding up into herself there beside him on the table, trying to disappear. He wants to hold onto the laughter, the laughter that he covets, that he wants to feel again and fears he never will. But in some ways, it feels so callous, too. But it was ten years ago and how could they know then what they know now? And she wants to know where they are, maybe things will change, maybe ..

Something catches out of the corner of his eye, and he looks over his shoulder to where Emily is - the real Emily, the one that's here now. And he knows this isn't real, the phone, and as much as he wants to hold onto this, hold onto the voice and the memories.. "Nothing can change," he says dully into the phone. "This isn't real. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But I gotta let you go, she's hurting and I can't.." his thumb trembles as he holds it over the 'end call' button. It was going to take everything he had to cut this connection. "I love you, Luce. I do. But she's hurting and I gotta take care of her now."

He mashes his thumb against the screen and ends the call, then chucks his phone into the high grass as far as he can fling it. It took everything he had but he can't stop now, he turns into her and he finds the strength to pull his arms around her. The real her. The only thing he has left. "I'm sorry," he means it, and if he has to bodily drag her across the table and against him, he will. But he was going to hold her, with everything he had left.

The giggles shift from hilarious to hysterical, from funny to frantic. "Logan, don't. Don't hang up. Logan, please, you're supposed to - " But the call is over, and the phone on the ground beep-beeps twice before the screen goes black.

For a second, Emily pushes back at him, pulls away, because it's always one step forward and two steps back. But it's not really him she's pulling away from, just everything, so she can be non-existent and... her hands peel off of her ears carefully, listening, and she breathes again. She's still trying to be very small, something easily overlooked, but she'll do that in his arms now - at least until she leans back suddenly, looking into his teary gray eyes, her own bright. Panicked. "Did you tell them where we are?"

It suddenly becomes extremely important to shove everything back into that purse. Pictures lipstick money lighter fall off the table and get the phone too what else was there keys a wallet it all has to go.

Oh, those last words were going to haunt him. He was supposed to what? Protect her? Save her? He couldn't do that now, he couldn't do that when she was alive, and he had no idea how to do it now. So he turns into Emily only to have her wrench back, and he didn't know what was more painful. Hearing his dead wife after all this time, or having the real living Emily pull from him now? "Please," he utters, until she comes back again, at least for a moment in time.

"What? No, no," he says that firmly, emphasis on the NO, confusion written all over his face when she starts pushing everything back into the purse. But he helps, because it seems important to do it now, shoving everything except that strip of pictures into the purse. That, he wants. He just needs to look at it one more time.

Well, that's what happens when you hang up on your dead wife ten years ago: she haunts you.

And her crazy sister suddenly and desperately needs to gather up all her shit, shove it into a purse that disappeared one afternoon, and then stand there for a second, looking at Logan looking at the pictures. "We have to get rid of it, before they find us, it was all just..." A trap? And Emily walked them right into it, dibs!, and what's the worst that could happen. "We have to get rid of it and leave before - " Yes, yes. Before they find them. She holds the purse open at him, please put the pictures in, please so she can get rid of the evidence before the real park comes back, the sounds of the carousel start to leak through, and the shadow-shapes over there want to resolve in real people.

"I just want the fucking picture," Logan's got that little strip of film and he wasn't going to let it go. "I didn't say where we were, I just want to keep the picture. I just.." he just wants to remember, to hold onto something, to have one happy memory. But she was shaking the bag at him, and god dammit she could be so demanding. It was hard to look at the black-and-white people through a veil of tears, but he does his best to commit their faces to memory. Commit their laughter, their happiness. He closes his eyes after, and shoves the picture back into the bag, and they've put everything back except..

"The joint. We smoked the fucking joint."And that makes him laugh, the kind of hollow laughter that sounds as though he's finally cracked and might need to join the Whitehouse sister upstate, because of course they smoked the fucking joint.

Oh, god. Don't with the picture. "You can't keep it, you can't, that's not how it works, that's against the rules," but thankfully he puts the picture in the bag before Emily has to snatch it from him and bolt. She casts around for a moment, looking for anything, the joint? "They won't know that, they don't have to know that, just. Just shh, and it'll be fine. It'll be fine." She'll help him settle into that upstate routine nicely, someone's going to be coming for her with a butterfly net any minute now.

The music is a dim twinkle. A few of the people-shapes are beginning to look this way. And she shoves the entire purse into the nearest trash-can, staggering back from it with a tattered exhale. "At least," her laugh borrows the emptiness of Logan's, sends it back to him threadbare and frayed, "now we know what happened to Lucy's purse."

Logan lets her take the purse to the trashcan, doesn't watch her dump the memories in with the other garbage; instead, he puts his face in his hands and does a very bad job of hiding the fact that he was weeping. He couldn't get away from this, he was never going to get away from this - she was going to haunt him forever, and it wasn't even the house. It was the whole goddamn town. Her empty laughter draws his attention though, and he wipes his hands down his face and smears his tears everywhere, before he reaches out for her. She was solid and real and not dead and he pushes his fingers into his skin, crawls his hands up her back and drags her close, as the park comes back to life around them.

Somewhere in the distance, a child's laugh filters this way. It's high and carefree, it has nothing to fear. "Are we ever going to be that happy again?" he asks her in a voice that sounds empty and afraid, looks up at her with eyes that plead for her not to tell him no. Not even if that was the real answer. Just tell him a lie, just this once. He won't even look her in the eye, because as soon as the question is out, he buries his face in her neck, his tears running hot on her skin.

Emily's real. Not so terrifically solid right now, the weight of his arms staggers her for a dizzy step, makes her teeter backward before she gets her footing. She can feel all those eyes turning this way, all those people - and all the ones that aren't people - prying, but she holds on to him fiercely in spite of their terrible eyes, her arms lifted high around his chest first. She leans away only a touch, only enough to cup her hands under his chin and turn his face up toward hers.

"Small doses," is her answer for their happiness. One hand wipes his tears for him, knuckling them off his face, and the other holds his chin still, pressing her lips to his quickly. "A kiss, a nice peanut butter sandwich, the occasional day when it's not fucking raining," and maybe when the monsters bug the fuck off for a while, "a funny book, the way you feel, your skin feels, small doses, okay? Just take it where you can." Is she making any sense? She kisses him again, takes a shaky breath, holds him against her in the park where the whole damn town is judging the fuck out of them.

His head tilts easily from the cup of her hands, but his eyes take some time to turn up to her own. They linger on the pulse of her neck, climb high to follow the shape of her jaw down to her chin, watch her lips form those first few words. But gray will meet blue as she wipes the tears from his cheeks, just before her lips press down upon his and steal his breath away. "Small doses," he repeats, and she tells him to take it where he can, and he responds by sinking his fingers more firmly into her, curving along her spine to bring her against him, close to him.

And it was broad daylight and he could feel all those eyes on him, monster and others. He could hear the laughter and the tinny whistle of the carousel as it makes another round. There was bound to be talk tomorrow, perhaps they'd even overshadow the gossip of Violet and that shrimpy doctor making out in the cafe. But right now, Emily was his small dose and he was going to take it where he could, right here, sinking into her lips and kissing her until his breath runs out.