Chapter 6: Rolling Chair

The rolling chair had a wicker seat, a striped canopy and a wool blanket that smelled of cedar.

"Rule two says not alone after dark," Asher said, tucking the blanket over our knees. "I am not alone."

"You're a very good loophole."

"I'm a very good host."

A heavy old man in a cap leaned on the handlebar behind us and pushed, and we rolled out onto the Boardwalk at midnight.

I had not been on it in ten years.

The planks drummed under the wheels.

The air was salt and fryer oil and sugar, and the arcades were all lit up on the left, shouting with bells.

On the right, past the rail, the ocean was dark and enormous.

A boy on a bike swerved around us with a funnel cake.

A bachelorette party in sashes screamed past, singing.

I had tried to remember these sounds every New Year's Eve in the desert, and I had never gotten them right.

Asher's arm lay along the back of the seat behind me.

His fingers were on my shoulder.

I leaned my head against his arm and watched the lights go by.

Something in my chest loosened for the first time in a week.

"My father used to walk me down here on Sundays," I said. "He bought me taffy, and he made me pay him back in chores."

"Dom Taddeo charged a child for taffy?" Asher said.

"He said I'd appreciate it more."

"Did you?" he said.

"Every piece," I said.

Under the blanket, his hand left my shoulder and slid down my arm.

It came to rest on my knee.

I looked at the old man's back.

He was whistling, and he did not turn around.

Asher's hand moved slowly up my thigh, under the blanket, under my skirt, with a gentle weight.

"Yours to start," he said, quietly, into my ear. "Tell me to stop."

"Don't you dare."

His fingers slid between my thighs.

They found the cotton of my panties and stroked the damp center of it, once, up and back.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

"Not a sound," he said. "There are four hundred people within sight."

"You're the one doing it."

"I'm aware."

He hooked the cotton aside and touched me bare.

I gripped the edge of the seat so hard that my knuckles hurt.

He found my clit and rubbed it in a lazy circle, and my hips tilted up an inch off the wicker.

Lights went by on my face.

A man on the rail raised a beer to us, cheerfully, and I lifted my hand and waved.

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