Our final New York destination: Nathan's Famous. It was all the way out on Coney Island, which is not actually an island but is so far away from Manhattan on the lurching, sluggish F train that it felt like an entirely different world.When we finally got there, the beach was as wide and flat as a parking lot, the waves small and distant. There were a lot of people, and some on them were actually swimming, which no one in Oregon did without a wet suit. The pacific is cold.
Though Ashton seemed drained, we strolled along the boardwalk past bumper cars and an arcade popping with digital gunfire. People were flying kites and skateboarding and jogging and hawking cheap souvenirs, like huge foam sunglasses and T-shirts that said KEEP CONEY ISLAND FREAKY.
"You want to ride the Cyclone?" I asked, pointing to the roller coaster in the distance. "Or the Wonder Wheel?"
Ashton shook his head. "Let's just get the hot dogs."
Because he seemed so tired all of a sudden. I suggested, ever so delicately, the idea of going back to the hostel. But Ashton wouldn't hear of it.
"I need my daily dose of nitrates," he said. "Plus, we're tourists, and it's our jobs to be touristy."
So we turned up Surf Avenue, where the enormous green sign for Nathan's loomed above the street. There was a big outdoor seating area, with seagulls perched near the plastic tables waiting for scraps. The air smelled like the sea and beer and grease. Not that appetising, in my opinion, but Ashton's whole demeanour had changed. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning.
"How many should I get?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said, scanning the menu. "Two?" I was going to have to order the Caesar salad, since this wasn't exactly the place to get a tofu dog.
Ashton scoffed at two. "Sonya 'the Black Widow' Thomas ate more than forty. Says right there on the sign."
"But that was a hot dog-eating contest," I said. "This is just a meal."
Ashton considered the statement. "True. I'll settle for...four. One with chilli, one with sauerkraut, and two plain."
"You're taking your life in your hands," I said disapprovingly.
Instead of eating with the rest of the crowd, we took our food back to the beach and sat on the warm, gritty sand. It was littered with cigarette butts and half-buried beer cans. But still! The ocean was a gorgeous blue-green, and the weather was perfect, and we were together.
"Can you believe that two weeks ago we were on a beach in California?" Ashton asked.
"Crazy," I said, taking a stab at a limp piece of lettuce. "We've done so much."
Ashton waggled his eyebrows at me. "Not enough, if you know what I mean."
"Pervert," I said, nudging him.
He bit into his second-or was it his third?-hot dog and nudged me back.
I decided to abandon my wilted, greasy salad and lay back in the sand, watching the kites swoop and dive above me.
I must have fallen asleep for a little while, because when I woke Ashton wasn't next to me anymore.
I looked around for a moment, and when I didn't see him, I got up and began walking toward the boardwalk. Maybe he was buying me a Coney Island shot glass to go with my Cedar Point snow globe.
But he wasn't doing wither of those things. Instead. I found him leaning against a fence, shaking.
And vomiting.
I reached out to touch his shoulder, but he waved me away. I took a step back. "You need to see a doctor, Ashton," I pleaded.
After a moment he looked up, his face pale and his eyes red and watering. "Before you go all drama on me," he said, " it was the hot dogs. Not the you-know-what."
"And how do you know that?" I asked.
"I'm fine now. And actually, this is totally awesome," he said, wiping his face and trying to smile at me. "I could se beat that Black Widow lady, I'll just eat and barf, eat and barf, and that way I can consume an unlimited number of hot dogs."
I sighed. "You are sick, Ashton. In a lot of ways."
"But you love me," he said, reaching for my hands.
"I do," I said. So much.
Ashton fell asleep on the train home, and I practically had to carry him up to our cell in the hostel. He seemed feverish, but I told myself it was just sunburn. Windburn. Whatever it needed to be, as long as it wasn't another infection.
I sat for a long time, listening to the sounds of the city all around us, but mostly just watching him sleep. Were his cheeks less full? His eyes deeper, more sunken? It could be happening so slowly, so subtly, that I hadn't been able to see it...
I lay down beside Ashton and curled my body around his, remembering how I'd refused to tell him my bedtime story back in Las Vegas. I pressed my cheek against his beating heart and vowed I would never say no to him again.
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word count - 909
This chapter takes me back to NYC at Christmas, we went to Coney Island and in fact sat in the same Nathan's and had a hot dog or two. They where pretty great.
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terrible things - ashton irwin
Fanfiction"Here's a certainty," he said. "I love you, Lavender Moore. And I will never not love you, for the rest of my life." - When Lavender decided to take a road trip across the US, the only person she wants to go with her is her best friend Ashton, who s...