The Replacement Girlfriend

Chapter 28

28. Alone Together, You & I (Part Two)

The next twenty minutes used up more of Krislynn’s brain cells than any other moments in her life thus far. She wasn’t exactly a thinker, except the spontaneous times her head got an idea, but even then she wasn’t the brightest tool in the shed. She had trouble understanding what the both of them, Jace and herself, was going to end up doing that night. There was no doubt that they’d see Chase and everyone else again, but her concern was that night – what were they going to spend it doing?

Neither of them remembered the way back to the bungalow, and worse, neither of them could remember a single phone number even if they had a working phone in hand. They were stuck there like two kids lost at a big supermarket – one without an intercom.

“I guess we could wait in the car,” Jace suggested. “Though I query it wouldn’t do much.” He paused and sighed as he took out his phone and held down a key. The Blackberry lit up almost instantly displaying the word ‘welcome’ before the screen blacked out once more. It must have been the tenth time he’s done that, Krislynn realized, but each time the phone only teased them, bringing up their hopes before crushing it.

Remembering that Michelle and Seth were playing games at the stands to win prizes, Krislynn and Jace decided to walk back to the heart of the amusement park and try their luck there. Although their motives had been pure in the beginning, they both soon forgot the seriousness of their situation and caught themselves lost in a couple of games. Krislynn won a keychain, a toy doll and a small plush elephant from a couple of mini games, all of which, she gave away to some of the younger kids who didn’t win a prize.

Jace smiled at her with subtle admiration as he bit into a large pretzel he had brought only a moment before. “That was pretty nice of you,” he said. “You didn’t even know them.”

“I like kids,” she told him. Her hands reached up to the back of her head and pulled the elastic out of her ponytail. Even though the temperature during the daytime felt a lot like the middle of hell, the night was surprisingly cool, and her ears were raw from the overexposure of the night chill.“I lived in a trailer park back in Canada,” she explained. “So I used to help the mothers babysit their kids whenever I got some free time. It’s sort of hard making a living as it is. Paying daycare fees on top of that is just murder.”

“I sort of try to help people out whenever I can.” Krislynn shrugged and then idly shook out her hair which fell like a dark, velvet curtain around the back of her head. She watched Jace stare at her in enchantment and then shake his own head in embarrassment as if to stir up the thoughts in his head.

One hand holding onto his pretzel, he stuff the other in the pocket of his tie-dye colored shorts. “You’re so different from all the other girls I’ve met so far,” he quietly murmured before taking another nibble. “Still, you could have held onto the keychain or something – to remember our eventful expedition by.”

Krislynn laughed. “Chase’s house doesn’t use keys,” she said. “It has those security pin things so it wouldn’t have been very useful even if I held onto it. Besides, if I were to keep something, it would have to be...” Her words trailed off as her line of vision landed on a big, bug-eyed panda bear, with little, white wings on its back. In complete truthfulness, it wasn’t that attractive looking of a creature, but that simple fact might have only accentuated her desire to hold the plump plush in her arms.