I wanted to touch her—hold her hand or caress her cheek—but I didn’t. “I’m sorry. That’s really shitty.”
“It’s for the best,” she said. “She’s my mom, and I’ll always love her. But I couldn’t save her. I wanted to. For a long time, I wished I could be enough to make her want to get better. I don’t know where she is now, but I hope someday she gets the help she needs.”
I reached over and pinched a bit of cotton candy between my fingers. It was soft, but gritty. A little bit like Brooke.
“Me too,” I said.
She stuck out her pink-stained tongue. “I don’t think I can finish this. Do you want the rest?”
“No, I’m good,” I said.
“We should go on some rides.” Her eyes lit up but her smile faded quickly. “Wait, can you go on rides? Because of… you know.”
“Yeah, I can go on rides,” I said. “There’s actually not much I can’t do.”
“Really?” she asked. “You can do pretty much anything?”
It felt weird to talk about my heart. We didn’t very often. And the way she said pretty much anything made me wonder what she really meant. Although I was kidding myself if I thought she meant sex. Obviously she wasn’t thinking about that. Even if I was.
“Yeah, I don’t have many restrictions,” I said. “Mostly things with big pressure changes, like scuba diving. I can’t fly in a small plane because of the unpressurized cabin, or go hang gliding. But that’s about it.”
“Wow,” she said. “It seemed like there was more.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, you’re just always very careful,” she said. “That’s good, don’t get me wrong. I figured it was because the doctors had given you a long list of things that were off limits.”
“No, I’m in good health, so I’m free to live how I want for the most part,” I said.
“That’s good.” She gazed at me for a few seconds. What was she thinking? Then she blinked and her smile was back. She looked past me, her eyes focusing on something. “Oh my god. What about that one?”
I looked where she was pointing. It was a huge contraption that looked like a human slingshot. A two-person seat was strung on thick cables between a set of four poles. I watched while a couple got strapped in. The seat bounced and swayed a little as the cables went taut. Then an air horn blew and the seat launched straight up, shooting past the height of the poles. The seat rocked and turned over as it fell. The tension in the cables kept it bouncing up and down, until finally the seat was lowered and the couple stumbled off, laughing and high-fiving each other.
“You want to go on that?” I asked.
“Did you see how fast they flew up?” Brooke asked, her voice filled with awe and excitement. “Have you ever been on it before?”
“I’ve never even seen it,” I said. “It must be new.”
“Let’s do it,” she said.
“I don’t know if I should.”
“You just said you can do pretty much anything,” she said. “It’s not like it goes as high as an airplane. Come on, Seb. Live a little.”
It was probably stupid for a twenty-four-year-old man to worry about what his mother would think, but that was the first thing that came to my mind. My mom would faint if she found out. But Brooke was right. I was far enough out from my surgery that I had very few restrictions. I could go on it.
“Please?” Brooke asked. She bit her lower lip and scrunched her shoulders.
Like I could tell her no when she looked at me like that. “Fuck. Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Yes!”
She grabbed my hand and half-dragged me to the ticket booth. I was having second—and third and fourth—thoughts as we waited our turn. Watching the thing launch again, closer this time, made me wonder what the hell I was doing. How could I knowingly put myself in danger like that?
Before I knew it, I was in the seat, strapping myself in. The over-the-shoulder harness almost didn’t fit. It pressed against my chest when it locked into place, but the compression made me feel a little better. I glanced over at Brooke and she grinned.
“Ready?” she asked.