Thrill Ride Read online

  “I’m sure.”

  “His roomie is twenty-one. There will be booze.”

  “I’m not twenty-one.”

  “So? He doesn’t card, you know.”

  “I have to be at costume at eight in the morning.”

  “So?”

  “Thanks so much, Jordan, but I just can’t.”

  “All right. Don’t wait up.”

  She slung her purse over her shoulder and was gone.

  I sat on my bed. Another exciting night.

  It actually turned out not to be too bad. Zoe, our floor monitor, knocked on my door about eight.

  “You the only one left on the floor?” she asked.

  “I guess so. I haven’t seen my suitemates, and my roomie went to a party.”

  “Brilliant! Come on down and join me, then. I just called for a pizza, and they delivered a large instead of a small.”

  Her room was awesome. Painted pink instead of white like ours. She had posters of England on the walls: Stonehenge, a guard standing outside Buckingham Palace.

  “How did you end up here?” I asked, just before I bit into the mushroom pizza.

  “Came on holiday with my parents a couple of years ago. Loved it! So I came back the next summer. Worked the rides. The summer after that I worked tickets. This year I’m bossing people around.”

  “You mean on the floor.”

  “No, luvie. I oversee some of the ride crews. I’m the hall monitor, so they don’t take anything out of my paycheck for staying in the dorm. And I might as well be, I’m here anyway. So how are you liking your position?”

  “You mean as Gretel?”

  “Oh, God.” She looked like she might hurl her pizza. “You’re a Gretel?”

  I nodded.

  “So sorry, Megan.”

  I smiled. “It’s not that bad.”

  “It’s bloody awful is what it is. Little ones crying ’cuz they can’t have a toy. It’s my least favorite place.”

  “Thanks a lot. At least it’s air-conditioned.”

  “It is that.”

  She’d left her door open, so as girls returned for the night, they stopped by. She had lots of warnings for everyone—don’t look for a summer love, keep cool with the guys, don’t end the summer with a broken heart.

  By the time I left her room, I didn’t know if I was glad or not that I’d come here for the summer.

  The phone woke me. Not the soft ring of my cell, but the clanging of the dorm phone. I groaned, buried my head under the pillow, then decided that since it was after one it could be Jordan calling with an emergency.

  Groggily, I scrambled for the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Roomie!”

  She sounded totally wasted.

  “Jordan?”

  “Listen, I missed curfew so I’m going to sleep in Parker’s bed tonight.”

  More information than I needed to know.

  “Whatever.”

  “I just didn’t want you worrying.”

  But I was worried a little. I mean what if he’d deliberately gotten her drunk to take advantage of her?

  “Jordan, be careful, okay?”

  “Always.” She giggled. “I’ll see…oh, wait. Parker wants to talk to you.”

  “Why me? Jordan, no—”

  “Hey.”

  Okay, I so did not like the way that his voice sent pleasant chills through me, and I was a little angry that he had flirted with me last night. Angry for Jordan, not about me. I had a boyfriend, and I wasn’t interested in Parker, but he needed to treat my roomie better.

  “Did you get her drunk?” I asked pointedly.

  “No, she did that all on her own. She said she invited you to come to the party. So why didn’t you come?”

  His voice was lazy, sultry, and quiet. I could hear people and music in the background. Why hadn’t I wanted to go to a party? Why had I chosen to spend the night eating pizza in the dorm? Because just this guy’s voice had me thinking things that I shouldn’t be thinking. I thought about his stupid voice more than I thought about Nick.

  “I’m not into the party scene.” What a lie. As a rule, I loved parties, but how could I have fun at a party when my boyfriend was hundreds of miles away? It seemed like cheating or something.

  “It’s not a wild party—”

  “Jordan sounded pretty wild.”

  “Jordan is always wild. She’s all about having fun.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “What about you, Megan? You like to have fun?”

  “Well, duh? Yeah!”

  “So why didn’t you come to the party?”

  “I already answered that.”

  “Except that you lied.”

  I stuck out my tongue, even though no one could see.

  “Look, I need to go,” I said.

  “Why do I get the impression you don’t like me?”

  “I don’t know you well enough not to like you,” I said. “But shouldn’t you be spending time with the people who are there?”

  “Yeah, probably. The next time I have a party, you should come, okay?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “But you won’t come, will you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why?”

  Because his voice intrigued me and that was oh so dangerous.

  “Because I have a boyfriend.”

  “So? We could be just friends.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s why you keep calling to talk to me. Because you want to be friends. How do you think Jordan would feel about that?”

  He released a low groan. “Yeah, that could get awkward.”

  “That’s what I thought. ’Night, Parker.”

  I hung up before he could say anything else. I was rooming with the good-time gal.

  It took me a long time to go back to sleep. And when I did, I dreamed about Nick. Only whenever he talked, he sounded like Parker.

  Only 53 Nick-less days to go, and counting….

  Chapter 7

  “Okay, so tomorrow is the big day, right?” Patti asked after we’d changed out of our costumes and were heading out of the building.

  “That’s what they say.”

  We stepped out into the bright sunshine.

  “You sure wouldn’t know it by our boring day. I hope we have more customers tomorrow.”

  All during our shift at H & G’s, we’d stood within the circle of the counter with four cash registers, only one being used. She’d rung people up, I’d bagged the items. Totally boring.

  “You should watch what you wish for,” I told her.

  “I’m wishing for something to make the time go faster. Don’t suppose you’ve overcome your roller coaster phobia.”

  “It’s not a phobia.”

  “So today you’ll ride with me?”

  “No, today I’m going to sit out by the pool, enjoy the sunshine.”

  “All right, then, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She walked off, and I headed toward the entrance. It was actually starting to get a little more crowded along the midway. It was Friday and people were coming in early for the weekend. The park would actually stay open until ten o’clock tonight, midnight tomorrow. Tomorrow I would start working the late shift, so I could sleep in, which was great because I am not a morning person.

  I edged around a little kid who was running to get somewhere, his mother chasing after him, and knocked up against a guy.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, embarrassed but continuing on.

  Someone grabbed my arm and spun me around. I found myself staring into gorgeous green eyes, sparkling eyes, amused eyes.

  “Megan?”

  I swallowed hard, almost shook my head no, mostly because I couldn’t believe who I might be staring at. “Parker?”

  He slowly grinned. “Yeah. I recognized your voice.”

  “I recognized yours, too.”

  He had black hair, cut pretty short. I imagined that working on the roller coasters, he’d want to be as c