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“Do I get to know where we’re going, or should I be reporting a first-date kidnapping?”
Eddie watches Richie’s eyes dart to him before dutifully returning to the road ahead. They make a turn past a brightly-lit steakhouse and a generically fancy storefront that may or may not sell clothes. “Well,” he says with a cheeky grin that inevitably precedes a petty joke, “if you wanna take your ex-wife’s word for it…”
Eddie rolls his eyes, but he’s not wrong. Myra’s open disdain for Richie played no small part in Eddie’s rapidly evaporating guilt about the divorce. Whatever was left of it, if anything, must have dried up in the California sun, and that’s after only a day and a half spent soaking it up.
When he finally pieces together the gist of their destination, Eddie rolls his window all the way down so he can lean into the hint of sea breeze seeping into the din of car exhaust and restaurants winding down from the dinner rush.
It’s mouthwatering despite Eddie’s full stomach, and the increasingly salty air fills him with another craving entirely.
As they roll to a stop behind the umpteenth Tesla Eddie’s seen today, he turns curious eyes on Richie. Catches him looking, too, with his own window rolled down and a big, mushy smile on his face.
Eddie wonders if Richie’s after-dinner date plans include night swimming. A quick glance at the back seat reveals no waterproof tote bags discreetly packed with reflective gear, protective shoes or swimwear, but as much as he trusts Richie to have taken basic safety precautions into consideration, it would also be so him to suggest skinny dipping. In the dark, when they’re marginally more likely to get away with it.
He almost asks, but he’s pretty sure he’d get an actual answer this time, and Eddie’s discovered lately that he likes surprises. He’s looking forward to coming up with a few for Richie when he makes it up to New York.
Richie takes them out onto a wooden structure that extends well beyond lapping waves that are just beginning to reflect oil-paint smears of multi-colored lights. Eddie shuffles through several words to identify the structure – boardwalk, boat dock, jetty – until he lights on pier and has a belated eureka moment.
“Oh,” he says. “Santa Monica? Were we that close to Santa Monica?”
Richie doesn’t comment on his having probably missed several signs on their way in, although that fondly amused look he’s had on and off since breakfast is back in full force.
“Before we get out of this car,” he says, like he isn’t still struggling to angle it just right in a spot, “what’s your opinion on romantic cliches?”
When it’s finally safe to distract the driver, Eddie forgets to unfasten his seatbelt in his hurry to lean far enough across the center console to score a kiss. He could swear a flash of theme park lighting hits them at just the right moment, maybe flickering in the passing shadow of the rollercoaster Eddie hears crashing along somewhere to the left and above them.
Despite his ongoing wrestling match with the polyester annoyance, he laughs, and his hand digs into Richie’s thigh. “I think I love them.”
Richie unbuckles the damn thing for him.
They loiter there behind the steering wheel long enough to toe the genre trope line separating tasteful romance from ill-fated slasher couple – but not long enough to earn any knocks on the window.
“And anyway,” Richie reminds Eddie, dipping into a conspiratorial whisper in the quiet half-light before they reach the boardwalk proper, “I’m probably the only axe-wielding maniac in the area.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Eddie says, exaggerating the cursory look he casts around at the sparse crowd. “Isn’t California supposed to be full of serial killers?”
“Aw, don’t worry, Eds, ‘long as I don’t happen to see any mullets around, you’re one-hundred-percent safe with me.”
Eddie answers by giving Richie’s hair a playful tug. Richie’s retaliation leaves Eddie’s badly tousled; he half-asses an attempt to tame it in a passing reflection before they’re both distracted by a “Rock Shop” booth selling nothing but the tackiest of tacky souvenirs, the highlight of which is definitely a gaggle of seashells glued to look like turtles, complete with googly eyes and little hats. One even has on a miniature pair of glasses.
They dig their respective wallets out in such quick unison that it’s all Eddie can do to stop laughing long enough to semi-politely pay for a set. Richie is so delighted when he hands him his glasses-less turtle, you’d think he was the out-of-towner enjoying the grand LA tour.
With a flutter of his eyelashes, he says, “I’ll cherish him always,” and Eddie resolves not to hold a grudge against an inanimate object for stealing a kiss that could have been his.
“You know how many people have probably touched that?”
“At least two,” Richie snarks, taking Eddie’s wrist in hand to tow him over to the Pacific Park entrance – hard to miss, adorned as it is with a giant metal octopus, its bulbous head lit up red and its gracefully-arranged tentacles pitch-dark against a light-polluted sky. In a move that wildly amplifies the nostalgia of bumming around an amusement park on a hot summer’s night, Richie jumps to land a high-five against the lowest-hanging octopus limb.
Eddie high-fives Richie before he pushes his glasses back up his nose for him. Just for that awestruck look. Richie always gets a little teary when Eddie manages to catch him off guard, but it’s extra obvious with so many cotton-candy lights around.
They get carried away at the ticket kiosk and wind up buying way more rides than they have any hope of using before the park closes. Richie calls it an excuse to come back – “If you want to.”
“Uh, yeah, did you see the arcade back there? Who am I kidding, of course you did. We have to come back.”
“Hell yes, but if you also wanna try a barcade, let me know how pretentious you want it, on a scale from one to ten.” By mutual silent agreement, they steer clear of the ferris wheel despite it being the closest ride to them; they’ve got romcom tropes to uphold, after all, and that’s an obvious, tantalizing finale.
Instead, they join a short line for the West Coaster – ha, ha. Eddie’s just about to drop a casual, “Hey, you think that might be kinda prophetic? How long would a person have to live on this side of the country to count as a ‘West Coaster,’ anyway?” – but then Richie cups a hand to Eddie’s ear so he can hear a second ocean in the echo of his own pulse, and in his best either-a-secret-agent-or-a-drug-dealer Voice, says, “It actually goes up to eleven, if you’re interested.”
Eddie turns so Richie’s palm hovers against his cheek. “Where does calling it a ‘barcade’ fall on that scale?”
Richie lets go to hold both palms out. “That’s what they’re called! Bars with arcade games? Arcades with bars?”
“Lots of bars have one or two games in them,” Eddie points out.
“It’s a gimmick – okay, no, that’s it, calling it. We’re going,” Richie says decisively. The ride operator has to flag them down before either of them notices that it’s time to actually get on. The family of four ahead of them – excited kids tugging along tired, smiling parents – leaves the front seat fortuitously unoccupied, which of course means that Richie makes a beeline for it while Eddie definitely does not think about any of the many roller coaster mishaps he’s ever read about.
As soon as the safety bar is down and the park employee has double-checked it for them, Richie interrupts Eddie’s own inspection via an elbow to the ribs.
Eddie’s gaze drops to Richie’s seashell turtle as he digs it out of his shirt’s front pocket and perches it on the bar between them.
“Photo op?”
Eddie laughs. His bespectacled turtle joins it, and Richie snaps a picture with not a moment to spare before the ride kicks into motion and they have to save their mini-me’s from fatally plummeting to the floor of the car.
“Best shot while it’s moving,” Eddie challenges. “Winner gets to choose our milkshake flavor.”
“We’re splitting a shake?” Richie’s excitement somehow totally drowns out the shudder-inducing clank-clank-clank-clank of the train being forced up a short incline. There’s not even enough of a drop at the end of it to make Eddie’s stomach dip, but Richie lets out a victorious whoop all the same. Eddie figures, why not, and echoes it.
It’s a lightweight ride by anyone’s standards, two relatively slow loops around the park that make picture-taking a pretty low-risk endeavor. Eddie suspects he’ll be getting to see some of the more intense roller coasters the grand old state of California has to offer before his time here is up, but gentle things like this have their place.
They compare photos after the ride. Richie is particularly proud of the ones he snuck of Eddie concentrating on snapping blurry pictures of unidentifiable tiny objects in the foreground; his expression in them is uncannily serious for someone on any kind of thrill ride. It’s funny enough to qualify as a best shot for sure, but before Eddie can say as much, Richie looks up from his phone and says, “And here I thought I was supposed to be the artistic one. Proposing a contest you already know you’ll win is poor sportsmanship, Edward.”
Eddie takes his phone back to admire the picture Richie had been looking at. This one is surprisingly crisp-looking. In the background, the ocean is catching just enough light off the park to make the red and blue-lit turtles look like they’re glittering. Or, Eddie’s red and blue-lit turtle and what little of Richie’s isn’t dwarfed by his fingers. Mm.
Not half bad, he thinks. Wary of saying anything too scandalous in the possible presence of families with kids, all he actually says to Richie is a cocky, “Safest bet.”
Back by the cluster of fast-food-y places they passed on their way in, Eddie chooses Richie’s favorite ice cream flavor, anyway. That gets him a raised-eyebrow, “I’m on to you” look, which he answers with an innocent shrug and a “can’t prove it” grin, because maybe he just happens to be craving strawberry on a full stomach.
Richie picks them out two straws –those awful paper ones, which Eddie has already said earns swaths of California negative-twenty points for livability. Instead of cramming them both into the lid, he pockets one as a replacement for when the first becomes a soggy, unusable mess, and they start back toward the alluring – but oh so very rigged – line of carnival games.
“If this was a romcom, one of us definitely would’ve won something by now,” Richie complains after their fourth straight strikeout.
“That only works if one of us promises to ‘win you something nice.’”
Richie laughs and slings an arm around his waist. “That’s been the goal this entire time.”
Likewise. Eddie steals the milkshake from Richie while he’s distracted by a potential fifth booth, makes a face at the sticky-sweetness of it and promptly passes it back. Richie chuckles and takes a long, noisy slurp.
Whack-a-mole looks promising. Their initial attempt to win by sharing a game morphs into a side-by-side competition, a simultaneous sixth and seventh attempt that finally yields a victory in the form of a plush tiger – and bragging rights for Eddie.
“Wouldn’t the orca have made more sense?” Eddie wonders as they’re walking away with their prize and half-gone milkshake in hand. “I mean, we’re on the coast.”
Richie shudders. “With those creepy fake eyes? They’re the clowns of the whale world, Eddie. They kill for fun.”
“I don’t think that last thing applies to, uh, most clowns,” Eddie offers optimistically. “But you know, I guess it works. As a tribute to my cat-like reflexes.”
Richie bats at him with a fluffy tiger-paw, which Eddie embarrassingly fails to grab. “And ‘cause you’re both cute!”
“And strictly man-eating,” Eddie retorts. The more Richie roars laughter at the – unintentional, but who’s to say Eddie can’t pretend otherwise? – double-entendre, the more Eddie’s cheeks warm despite the pleasant after-dark temperature. That’s points against New York and its round-the-clock humidity, for sure.
They just barely have time to catch one more ride without any risk of missing out on the main event, although that’s only because they’re among the last park-going stragglers hoping to wring a little extra fun out of this venue before it inevitably becomes necessary to retreat to less family-oriented nightlife. Or home, wherever home happens to be for tourists and locals alike.
Eddie peers sidelong at Richie while he vacillates between the Sea Dragon and Inkie’s Scrambler. There’s a non-zero chance that the latter will make him sick – “blow chunks,” he says, and although Eddie wrinkles his nose, he still promises that, no, it definitely wouldn’t ruin their first “official” date.
“It might even make it better,” he says, pausing by a trashcan and waggling what’s left of their shake at Richie, who gives him a thumbs up. Waste not, want not, unless you’ve moved on from dessert to talking about puke. “That way we get a good story out of it.”
“More things I’ll never live down? Now I’m thinking it’d be more out of character not to.”
Their minds made up, Richie winds down the brief pre-ride prep by making up for his first missed opportunity to rib Eddie about this ride’s height requirement. Which is, of course, like four feet.
“It’s a good thing you have me for a chaperone.” Eddie intercepts Richie’s elbow on its way to his ribs and would have put him in a loose headlock, too, were it not for the dirty look the ride operator sends his way when he starts to.
The ride itself is a lot of fun. Longer, scramblier and maybe faster than the West Coaster, although that could also just be the centrifugal force from all the spinning. As it is, no one throws up and no one gets prematurely kicked off and/or out. Richie laments the absence of those twistable table things the teacup ride had in 1980s Derry. Those things were lethal in the wrong hands, only it was usually Richie making himself sick; Eddie raises an eyebrow at him. The answering look on Richie’s face says he’s remembering the same thing, and I’d do it again!
The park employee in charge of the ferris wheel is already signaling “last one” by the time Richie and Eddie clamor through the gate and into a waiting car. There are at least two other couples that Eddie can see, mercifully spaced out between empty cars for maximum privacy.
Richie still waits for the ride to kick into motion before he shimmies ‘round the bench to join Eddie in watching the ocean come into full view. It’s like staring into space, if space could rise like the sun on the horizon. It’s all inverted. Flashing lights eclipsed by distant waves.
Eddie makes a blind grab for Richie, gets his arm around his shoulders and hauls him in close enough to bury his face in the expanse of him, instead. His neck tastes like sunscreen and sweat. The sticky aftermath of a long, hot day.
Richie twitches and laughs beside and beneath him; Eddie chases the vibration with his lips, simultaneously hungry and sated. No more need to distract himself from the thousands of miles that usually separate him from this man.
“Fuck long distance,” he says to the spiderweb of metal bars through which the little array of rides is visible. “I missed you.”
Richie is playing with Eddie’s hands, now, stroking the smooth skin between his knuckles with the pads of his own fingers. They fit, and it feels nice despite Eddie’s nagging awareness of how thoroughly his hands are in need of a washing. Maybe when they’re done here, he’ll walk down to the rising tide and dip his hands in. Maybe he and Richie will wind up splashing through it and soaking the car on the way home.
“You’ve said,” Richie says in a tone of voice that begs Eddie to repeat it again anyway.
“I’ve… implied,” Eddie corrects with a teasing smile. If lunging so fast into Richie’s arms at the airport that it backed him up against his car and slammed the waiting door shut counts as mere implication.
Richie sets Eddie’s hand down on his thigh, beside his stuffed tiger, and Eddie leaves it there. Richie could be thinking of a half-dozen other examples and last night’s sleepy “love you” when he smiles wide and wonders, “So, how many times do you think we can call things like this ‘first dates’ before it stops being allowed?”
They’re circling back up to the top again, now, and catching a nice breeze as they go. It works its way between the folds of Eddie’s shirt and pushes the drone of overplayed radio pop out to sea. Richie’s pineapple button-down flutters like he’s submerged in sun-warmed water, revealing enticing flashes of bare skin every other second. The line of his collarbone. Thick, dark hair. Eddie loves him for dressing for a beach excursion in the middle of a fancy restaurant. If a single person in that place didn’t leave feeling overdressed, they were wrong.
“Fuck ‘allowed,’” he says. “We can call our wedding a first date if we want.”
At first he worries that Richie might actually be making good on his threat to throw up mid-ride, but in the next instant he translates Richie’s expression behind his hand as surprise and realizes, oh. Oh.
–“And what am I doing talking about marriage on a first date, anyway,” he amends, waving his hands at Richie in a very ‘please don’t panic, I swear I’m not as overbearing as I just sounded’ way. “Sorry, Rich”—
Richie lowers his hand so Eddie can see his cheshire grin and hear his laugh over the passing screech of heavy machinery on their way back down. “I don’t think we can make ‘no talking about marriage on first dates’ a rule if we’re planning on calling our wedding a first date.”
Eddie groans, but his cheeks hurt with the force of the smile he’s been wearing on and off – but mostly on – all day. “Stop saying ‘first date,’ you’re making me remember that awful Adam Sandler romcom”—
“I saw that one! As a fellow egghead, I really rel- egg- ted to him”—
Eddie wishes he had some popcorn or, hell, even Dippin’ Dots to toss at him. “Stan is an egghead. You just have a big head.”
“And it’s only gettin’ bigger,” Richie croons. Eddie follows his gaze out to the end of the pier. Where the narrower part of the boardwalk widens out again, there appears to be a restaurant – more notes-to-self for future reference. There’s no place like a coastal city for catching up on years’ worth of seafood meals, and no date like Richie for enjoying them with.
Eddie plants an appreciative kiss on Richie’s forehead. “So, based on movie cliches, should we assume we’re gonna get stuck up here at some point?”
Richie’s eyes dart in faux concern to the noisily grinding machinery they pass again on their way back down. “I don’t think this thing even stops.”
The one in Derry always did, Eddie recalls. He also recalls how unclear it always was whether that was an intended feature of the ride or just a frequently recurring glitch. The one time they got stuck for longer than seemed plausibly normal, he’d been elbow-to-elbow with Richie in a much smaller passenger car than this one. He may no longer be able to say for sure, but he’d bet it was Richie who resumed their cramped wrestling match way up there – ominously swaying gondola, freaked-out-then-exhilarated laughter and all.
After double-checking the warning and caution signs littering the swinging-door entrance to their car, Eddie gives the whole thing an experimental rock that jostles Richie more than it jostles the carriage.
Richie’s hardly even startled, of course; the next words out of his mouth are a suggestion that they try doing it in unison – only once, because it works a little too well and they’ve gotta maintain some plausible deniability to avoid getting banned or, god forbid, actually breaking something.
They slouch, laughing, in their seats as the car rights itself. Nice and steady for a few more cutesy turtle pictures.
“We should photoshop a little milkshake in between them,” Richie says, as Eddie’s already thumbing through his phone’s selection of food emojis and trying to remember how people edit them into pictures.
“We should’ve waited to throw ours out,” Eddie mourns, but if Richie doesn’t know how to do quick-and-easy photo editing on a phone, there’s always Bev. He could make sure Richie wakes up to a handful of cheesy selfies and a parodic tourist snapshot. Or he could save it, get it printed on a postcard, and mail it to him from New York. The only thing missing in that scenario is getting to see the smile on his face in person.
He doesn’t dodge Richie’s second attempt to elbow him in the ribs because he’s too distracted by that thought to see it coming.
“We can buy another one if you want.” They both know he knows that’s not why Eddie’s pulling whatever face he pulls when he gets especially preoccupied, but Richie’s never been the type to come right out and ask. He gives Eddie the space to volunteer whatever he’s comfortable volunteering; Eddie wishes he weren’t still trying to get used to that.
But the last thing he wants is for the tail end of a day this good to be soured by this taste in his mouth. He knows how stuff like that can linger.
“Can I be a downer on our big date, just for a – ugh, never mind, I’m going to,” he says to Richie’s worried, raised eyebrows. He hardly pauses for a breath. “I don’t want this to end.”
The way Richie searches him, he could be selecting possible interpretations of “this” from a drop-down menu superimposed over his close-up view of Eddie’s face.
“You want me to try to jam the gears?”
The corners of Eddie’s lips rise as unstoppably as their carriage does, cresting the peak of the ferris wheel where the moon is at its closest and the noise below them is as far away as it can be. Eddie’s hand finds Richie’s. Turns out, the pads of his fingers fit just right against Richie’s knuckles, too.
“I don’t want to go back to New York alone so we can twiddle our thumbs for another however-the-fuck-many months waiting for a good time to do this again. We should be on our thousandth date. This should be a… a regular thing.”
And he should be more prepared for Richie to make a soft, stricken noise somewhere in the back of his throat before he kisses Eddie. Eddie can feel more than sweat dampening his cheek where he reaches up to cup it.
He kisses Richie back like he’s making up for lost time – no, just like he wants to enjoy all the time they haven’t lost. That’s enough, he thinks, and is it so much to ask, after everything?
“What are you asking, Eds?” Richie finally says. There’s so much dark, star-studded ocean and sky spread out in front of them, Eddie has no idea just how far out they’re seeing. Richie’s still sort-of crying. “Should I follow through on that kidnapping thing, or – or come – go back with you?”
“Nothing major,” Eddie assures him. Yet. His brain catches up late. He says, “Yeah,” and then he says, “I – just do something reckless with me, I don’t care. Come to New York to help me pack, let me overstay my welcome, book us a flight to the first city on the departures screen. But only if you want it, too.”
“I want that so much,” Richie gasps. Eddie can barely hear him over the approaching hubbub of an amusement park on the verge of closing, but he thinks Richie looks as hungry as he feels. He can see another nine hundred ninety-nine nights like this laid out on a banquet table, and he’s the kid in a pie-eating contest about to take home the blue ribbon.
When they pass back through the boarding platform, Eddie is sure they’ll finally slow to a stop, but the ride must have at least one more cycle in it, because it keeps going. That’s less than half a minute, maybe, for the two of them to spend joining their pinkies together just to seal the deal with a kiss and giddy laughter. The whole idea is terrifying and thrilling and so incredibly satisfying.
Eddie is sure that neither of them catches another glimpse of any panoramic LA-Atlantic Ocean views before they reach the ground, but then again – he’s not sure they ever fully reach the ground at all.