“Work in the kitchen?” she asked. “What?”
I smiled at her. “I’m a chef. For three weeks, until my hands were completely healed, I couldn’t work without gloves on. Which fuckin’ sucks, by the way.”
“The circus has an opening for a chef,” her eyes gleamed.
The rest of the night flew by, and before I knew it, her sisters were calling her name so they could leave.
Every last one of them gave me a once-over before disappearing.
Simi hopped from her barstool and brushed against me as she did. Then she leaned over and finished my beer, taking long gulps of it. When she had nothing but foam left, she leaned back, brushed the back of her hand against her mouth, then licked her lips clean.
Eyes on me, she winked.
It was the single hottest thing that’d ever happened to me.
Which was quite frankly embarrassing, but it is what it is.
“Later, gator.” She squeezed my arm.
Then, to her hurriedly escaping back, I called, “After a while, crocodile.”
She tossed me a smile over her shoulder, her blonde curls bouncing as she did, then pushed through the bar door and disappeared.
“She’s cute,” I heard the bartender say.
I looked over at him and pulled out my wallet.
He was shaking his head before I could pull my credit card out. “Sorry, man, but she beat you to it. Paid when you went to the bathroom that last time.”
I cursed.
Then I got up and headed to the door to catch her. I had to give her some cash.
I drank five beers. That was four times what she drank.
But when I got into the parking lot, she was gone.
“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled.
A flyer crossed the parking lot, bright orange and going fast. But suddenly, it changed directions, and I found myself with it plastered against my pants leg.
I bent down to pick it up so I could throw it away, but the words on the sheet caught my eye.
“Singh Circus,” I read. “Come one, come all. To the best experience you’ll ever encounter.”
I then scanned the rest of the paper and realized tomorrow night was the last night they’d be here.
Plans started to form in my brain, and I found myself grinning into the darkness.
CHAPTER 5
Let’s have a genitalia switch day. Men can finally figure out how a vagina works. Women can dress up their dicks in tiny outfits.
-Text from Sienna to Coffey
COFFEY
I wasn’t sure that I’d get the time off.
In fact, after calling in sick at the restaurant for the last few weeks, I probably should’ve gotten the shaft. But the owner was an understanding woman and knew that I needed some time to recoup after a debilitating few weeks. Not only had she told me to take the night off, but she’d told me to take the rest of the week off and that she and her husband could handle the dinner crowd as long as they needed to until I was comfortable coming back to work.
Walking up to the ticket booth, my hands shoved deep into my pockets due to the frigid nature of the night and forgetting my gloves like a dumbass, I smiled at the woman behind the glass screen.
“One adult ticket,” I told her.
She narrowed her eyes.
“You’re him.”
I tilted my head. “I’m him?”
“The one that Simi spoke about,” she said. “Your eyes are exactly the way she described them.”
My eyes were unique. They were the one thing that tied me to my mother that I actually somewhat sort of liked.
“She’s talked about me?” I questioned.
The woman nodded, and her perfect ringlet curls bobbed with the movement.
“My sister has done nothing but tell us about you. But some of my other sisters were at the bar yesterday, and they saw you talking to her for three hours straight. They also said that you protected her from those drunk guys.” She narrowed her eyes. “If you hurt her tonight, I’ll cut your dick off.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing tonight to hurt her, but I certainly wouldn’t be doing it on purpose.
“Val,” a man’s voice came from the ticket booth next to me. “Let him in and stop threatening his dick. You know Simi will murder you if she finds out.”
So this was Valhalla. Well, she certainly lived up to her name. Simi had relayed all of her siblings’ names to me last night at the bar.
“Simi could try,” Val smiled as she snapped her fingers at me. “Give me your wrist.”
I gave her my wrist, and she strapped the plastic armband on. It barely fit and was so tight that I could already feel my circulation becoming limited in my hand.
“Just tug on it a bit,” the man, whom I assumed was Simi’s brother, Keene, said. “It gives a lot more than it looks like it will. One day, we’ll graduate to actual adult-sized armbands.”
Then he jerked his chin toward the park entrance. “She’s in the purple tent.”
I nodded my head at him and started walking through the front gates.
I also noticed that I was one of the few ones with a purple wristband.
There was one other person, and that person looked like he was going in and out of the circus personnel areas as if he was allowed to be there.
I moved under the large metal arches that said “Singh Circus” in big marquee letters and came to a stop right inside the front entrance.
The circus itself was huge. I could make out multiple tents around the sides of the large fairground area, with one really massive tent right in the middle that was red and white.
There were a crap ton of booths, too.
Kissing booths. Apple carts. Funnel cakes. And on and on it went, making me shake my head in surprise.
I’d thought the circus was going to be a Podunk one that Heartsway usually attracted. But this one? Wow.
I’d heard of Singh Circus before, of course. It was kind of like Cirque du Soleil in Vegas. It was just a huge brand name that you knew because it was that good.
But I hadn’t realized just “how” good.
My jaw was likely dragging the floor as I made my way around the outskirts of the fairgrounds, looking for the elusive purple tent.
I found it in the very back, tucked away behind a much larger, green tent.
Walking right up to the flaps, I pushed them aside and came to a sudden, bone-jarring halt right inside the entrance.
My breath left me in a whoosh as I got my first look at what an “aerial artist” did in a circus.
Blonde curls bouncing; the very first sight I saw when I entered was that beautiful head traveling right toward the floor.
The red fabric that was wrapped around Simi’s legs was unraveling at what seemed like an unsafe rate of speed, allowing her to fall fast toward the floor.
“Sim…” I called out, but before she could hit the floor, her legs went out wide, the fabric stopped unraveling, and her curls brushed the grass floor beneath her.
She twisted, placed both hands on the ground, and turned her head so that she could face me.
Then she smiled.
“You came!” She beamed, lifted herself up, then pulled herself free of the long yards of fabric.
“I did,” I confirmed. “I saw the flyer in the parking lot last night as I tried to catch you and pay you back for my beer.” I offered her a narrow-eyed gaze. “But then you were already gone. Seems awfully suspicious that you got out of there so fast.”