When I was a kid, it was always my highlight of the year when the funfair was in town. The fair came to our town at the end of each summer, in those days in which mom wouldn’t let me go out without a sweatshirt or jacket anymore because she knew I’d stay at the fair until it got dark and cool outside.

My favorite things to do at the funfair were those stalls at which you could play games to win prizes like sweets, toys, or gigantic plush toys. I wasn’t all that fond of the fun rides like all the other kids, because I was kind of scared of them. When I got 12 years old, my mom finally allowed me to play at the shooting gallery – something I was waiting for since, like, forever. But as soon as I fired my first shot at the ugly plastic flowers around five feet in front of me, I wondered why I begged my mom all these years to let me play this game. The next shot wasn’t any better, and I had only one more left.

“You’re not gonna shoot anything like that,” someone laughed behind me. I turned around and saw a small boy standing there, wearing a red cap over his short dark hair, and I felt my cheeks blushing due to embarrassment.

“It’s my first time,” I said, my voice lowered.

“I can tell. C’mere, let me show you how this works.” Saying that, he took the gun from me without waiting for my response and positioned himself with his elbows on the stall’s counter. “You need to support yourself, or your hands will shake too much and you won’t be able to hit your aim.”

“I know that,” I mumbled, though I didn’t.

But he did. “Then why didn’t you do it? So, if you have a strong position, giving a good shot will be much easier. Of course you also have to aim properly, like this …” He aimed at the flowers, and without saying another word he shot at them – with success. The flower hovered to the ground, and the boy said to the man in the stall: “Give me the water pistol.”

So the man gave him the package with the huge water pistol, and then the boy gave it to me. “That’s what you wanted, I bet,” he said, having this huge grin on his face.

I frowned at him. “Doesn’t this need, like, five hits?!”

“Maybe.”

“But you only had one. I didn’t even pay for five shots, so I couldn’t possibly have won this.”

The grin on his lips just grew wider. “This must be your lucky day. Just take it, and be happy.” Saying this, he pressed the package against my chest, so I took it.

But I wasn’t very happy about it.

“By the way,” the man in the stall suddenly said, looking to the other boy, “Amber, your mum’s been looking for you. Go and see if you can find her.”

“Will do,” he – she?! – replied to him before turning to me again. “So, enjoy your prize.”

“Your name is Amber?” I asked. “And this isn’t my prize. You shot it.”

“Don’t be so fussy now. Yes, my name is Amber – why, do you got a problem with that?” One of her eyebrows turned upwards, as if she was ready for a fight.

“Uhm – no, it’s cool,” I said and glanced down at the water pistol. “Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome. Have fun!” And then she turned around and disappeared between the groups of people around us before I could even tell her my own name.

After that incident I often looked around the people at school, wondering if this girl was one of my schoolmates, but I didn’t find her. I thought that she maybe attended another school – it was a big town, after all – but I couldn’t just check out every single school and look for her. So I decided to wait for the next funfair, which basically everyone visited, especially us children.

When the day finally came, I went to the funfair earlier than I used to – right in the morning. Though there already were some people around, it was still very quiet compared to how it would be later in the afternoon. The fun rides were still closed, only some game and food stalls were opened.

Maybe I could get some sweets and wait for her …

“Long time no see!”

I spun around, my eyes widened in surprise, and there she was. “Amber – you’re here early.”

“You’re one to talk,” she said and approached me, looking just as amused as the year before. As if she didn’t change at all. This time she wasn’t wearing a cap to cover her short hair, and now I could see that actually she didn’t really look like a boy. But maybe that’s because I now knew that she wasn’t one. “Besides – I’m always here, bro.”

I felt a grin appear on my lips as she called me ‘bro’, but then I frowned in confusion. “What do you mean, you’re always here? Do you live here or what,” I said jokingly.

“Kind of. Wanna ride bumper cars?”

I was still confused, but I shook my head. Luckily the rides were still closed, so I wouldn’t have to tell her I’m scared of them. “How? They open in the afternoon, silly.”

“I know. My parents work here, silly. Come on!” Without waiting for me to respond, she turn around and ran towards the bumper car platform.

I looked after her, my jaw dropped, and I really didn’t want to follow her – but I did. “What do you mean, your parents work here? Do they own this place?” I asked her once I arrived the bumper cars where she was waiting for me.

Amber grinned at me. “Kind of. Hey, you never told me your name.”

“You never asked,” I replied. “I’m Henry.”

“Are you good at this, Henry?” she asked with her head nodding towards the cars.

Oh. “Uhm, I guess?”

She raised her eyebrow at me. “You’re lying, so you either are terribly bad at this or you never rode it, which I doubt.”

“Okay, you got me. I am terribly bad at this.”

There was a moment of silence, and then she grinned at me once again. “You never rode one.”

How was she doing that?! “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. Come on, now – it’s fun, I promise.” Amber pulled a handful of various chip coins out of her pocket and kept two of them from which she handed one to me. “You need this to –”

“Yeah, I know,” I interrupted her. Only because I never rode one of these things, that didn’t mean that I didn’t know how they work. – Actually, I only knew because I watched my older brother riding them a load of times.

“Good,” she said and jumped right into the car which was the closest to her. “Actually there isn’t anything you can do exactly wrong. Go, choose a car.”

Hesitating for only a moment, I moved towards the car beside hers and climbed into it. I felt how I got all weak in the knees as I put the coin to its slot, and glanced at Amber which was doing the same, watching me. “Are we even allowed to do this?”

“Do you really care?” A smirk crawled on her lips, and then she started her car by pushing the chip coin into the slot. “Hurry up, we only got around three minutes.”

I stared at her with big eyes – now or never. Though I wouldn’t mind about never riding a bumper car, but, what the hell. I started the car, clinging to the steering wheel, and followed Amber onto the platform. This was actually easy … and fun.

“So? Not too bad, is it?” Amber called over to me.

“Well – no,” I replied and smiled at her. But my smile quickly vanished when she suddenly drove swiveled sideways, hitting my cars with hers. “Hey, stop this!”

Amber laughed. “This is called bumper cars, remember? Here, I give you a chance.” Saying this, she drove to the other end of the platform and turned the car so she could face me. “There you go.”

“Do I really have to?” I shouted, driving small rounds far away from her.

She let out an annoyed sigh, but I could still see the amusement on her face. “Yes, or I’m gonna hit you again. Come on!”

I hesitated. Not only because I was scared, I also didn’t want to hurt her. But then again, she had probably done this even more often than anyone I knew. “Alright …” Taking a deep breath, I accelerated, driving right towards her. I felt the sweat on my hands and held tighter onto the steering wheel as she came closer … and closer … and closer, until I almost reached her – and she drove to the side, letting me crash into the row of empty cars which were standing at the edge.

Letting out a scream in shock, I felt myself jump in my seat – which kind of hurt, but I survived it. “Why did you do that?!” I shouted.

Amber was laughing. “Because you were about to hit me on the front, and those are the heaviest.”

“Yeah, I noticed. So?!”

“You were scaring me,” she said, driving circles around me as soon as I drove towards the center of the platform.

I raised my eyebrows. “Liar.”

Amber grinned at me, shrugging a shoulder. “Maybe.”

Even though she kind of annoyed me, I couldn’t help but grin back at her. But before I could say anything, my car suddenly got slower. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Time’s over.” Her car hadn’t stopped yet, but she just jumped out of it and walked over to me. “You okay?”

“Pft.” I waited for the car to stand still and jumped out of it as well, ruffling the back of my hair. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied, bumping her shoulder against my chest – that’s how much smaller she was than me. “Maybe because you were scared of it?”

“Huh – I wasn’t!”

Amber just laughed and ran off the bumper car platform, making me run after her.

Before I met her, my highlight of the year was the funfair itself, and spending way too much money for its game as well as food stalls. But then my highlight of the year became Amber Liu.

Each year we would hang out on each one of the three days the fair was in town, and we always had so much fun together. With her, I wasn’t even all that scared of all those fun rides anymore – though I was really glad they didn’t have roller coasters.

But the older we grew, the harder it became to say goodbye. From 365 days we always only had 3 days to spend with each other, but those were already enough for me to fall in love with her. And then, in my last year of high school, I got accepted at the college I’ve always dreamt to go to.

“Where is it again?” she asked me as we were both sitting on two horses of the fair’s biggest carousel with an ice cream cone in our hands.

I mine before I answered her, my voice a mix of happiness and sorrow at the same time. “Boston.”

“Oh,” she said, looking away from me. It was only a very short moment in which I could see sadness in her eyes before she smiled at me again. “Congrats, bro. This’ll be awesome.”

I looked at her with furrowed eyebrows, and I nodded. “Yeah, it will. But I won’t be able to see you for, like, three years.”

“Are you saying you’re gonna miss me?” Her smile turned into a wide grin.

But I didn’t return it. “Are you saying you won’t?”

 Amber only replied with a sigh, focusing her attention on nothing but her ice cream.

During my years in Boston, Amber rarely left my mind. Sure, I met new people, made friends, flirted with girls – nothing serious, just being the charming young man I became. Sometimes I think that I just tried to distract myself from her because I was missing her so much, but I just couldn’t forget about her completely. And no girl compared to her, ever.

The funny thing is that our whole friendship was only based on that funfair – we never stayed in touch outside of it, which I only realized when one of my college friends asked me about the photo I once took with her that I then set as my cell phone’s background.

Somehow it just never occurred to us that there was still a life apart from the funfair – especially not to her, I guess, since she was basically a part of it.

It was the end of summer when I came back home, which meant that the funfair was about to come to town. Amber was about to come to town.

And I was terribly nervous.

Like I used to before I left my town, I went to the fair in the morning already. Of course my mom still insisted that I was wearing something that’d keep me warm later, so I was wearing one of my hoodies.

With my hands in the pockets of my jeans, I walked through the area until I stopped in front of the shooting stall. The corner of my lips turned up into a half-smile as I walked closer, debating whether to try my luck or not.

“D’you wanna shoot something?” the man behind the counter asked me. It wasn’t the same one like back then, but I’m sure they’re related to each other.

It only took a moment for me to decide. “Yeah, sure.”

With my elbows on the counter to steady my position, I pulled the trigger and shot the first plastic flower. And the second. And the third.

“Well, congrats, young man,” the guy said to me as I returned the gun to him. “What’s it gonna be?”

“Nothing,” I said, grinning at him, “keep those for the kids.”

Just after I turned around to continue walking through the fair, waiting to finally run into that certain girl, she suddenly stood in front of me.

Her hair got longer, and though it was still short there were a few strands of hair hanging in her face. She had gotten taller, of course, and more feminine than she had been back then.

But all these things didn’t matter. Because when she grinned at me, I could clearly see that Amber didn’t change at all – she only became more beautiful to me.

“You must have had a great teacher, Henry.”

I returned her grin, as wide as I could manage. “Only the best.”

All these years before, we weren’t dating or anything – nor did we ever touch or even confess to each other. But when she jumped into my arms I couldn’t help it. I kissed her. And she kissed me. And we both knew that we have never been only friends.

“You did miss me, didn’t you?” I asked her, hours later when it was already getting dark at the sky above us and we were sitting in one of the gondolas of the Ferris wheel.

“Mhm … M–”

“If you say ‘maybe’ now, I’m gonna bite you.” Saying that, I bent over to her and gave her a small bite on her shoulder.

Amber laughed. “Stop that! Okay, I did miss you … kind of.”

I faked gaping at her, knowing that she was just kidding me – like so many times. “Of course you did. I hope you didn’t meet any nice boys in all those other towns and cities you’ve been to in all these years.”

“I did meet some,” she said, leaning close to whisper in my ear, “but they bored me.”

There was a shiver running down my spine as she did that, but I tried to ignore it. “No one can compare to me after all.”

“Look at you, Mister I’m-so-cocky-Lau.”

“I’m just being honest,” I replied, smirking, and wrapped my arm around her shoulder to pull her closer to me. Just then the Ferris wheel stood still, right when we were at the top of it. Looking down to the many lights of the fair underneath us, I said: “Do you ever get, like, bored of it?”

“Of what exactly?” she asked, snuggling against me.

“Well … this.” I nodded towards the ground. “The fair and everything. Life on the road.”

“Mhm …” Amber watched the fair for a few seconds without responding to me before she said anything. “It’s not exactly boring, you know. You get to meet new people every day, see many different cities … It’s not boring.”

“But?”

“Nothing.” She looked up to me and smiled. “I’m just … curious sometimes.”

My fingers moved up to play with her hair. “Curious about what?”

“About, you know.” She shrugged. “Having a normal life. Living in a house. Going to college,” saying this, she grinned up at me. “I’m so proud of you, Henry.”

I blinked at her, surprised about that sudden remark. And before I could say anything, she pulled my face down to her and kissed me. A smile appeared on my lips as I felt hers on mine, and for that moment everything was perfect.

“I want to show you something,” she whispered into the kiss without pulling away. “Maybe you’re gonna be proud of me, too.”

“Okay,” I answered, and with a chuckle I added: “But first we gotta get down here.”

She grinned, and then the Ferris wheel continued moving.

Soon after we were on firm ground again, Amber pulled me by my hand towards the back of the Ferris wheel where a bunch of cars and vans were parked. It was quite dark since the fair’s lights didn’t reach that place, but Amber knew exactly where to go.

But I didn’t. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” she replied, and after a few more steps she stopped in front of a small caravan. Even through the darkness I could still see the grin on her lips when she turned to me. “So?”

I glanced at the van and then looked back to her. “What, is this yours?”

Amber nodded, her grin only growing wider. “Yep. I got my license!”

“Are you serious?” I gave her a wide smile and wrapped my arms around her waist, pressing a kiss on her cheek. “Congrats, Amber. I am proud of you.”

She hugged me in return, squeezing me with happy laughter, and then pulled me towards the caravan. “Come on, I want to show you my so-called home.”

I’ve never been in a caravan before, but I don’t think anyone looked exactly like hers did. There were blue curtains covering the small windows, CDs were spread all over the small table next to a CD player, and her bed in the back of the van wasn’t made. Okay, maybe that was pretty normal. But it wasn’t to me, because all this stuff belonged to Amber.

And I loved Amber.

“Wow,” I said. “Cozy.”

“Kind of,” Amber replied and leant against the table. “It’s small, yeah, but after sharing one of these with my parents and then my sister, this is actually like a mansion for me.” She laughed.

“I bet it is,” I grinned, and then I noticed the guitar leaning against her bed. Cocking my head to the side, I looked at her and asked: “You play?”

A chuckle came over her lips, and she nodded. “I might not study music like you have, but I’m not that bad.”

“Never thought you would be – though, obviously, I’m better.”

Amber gasped and laughed at the same time as she hit my arm. “Damn, you became such a cocky idiot. Okay, then – prove it.”

“As you wish,” I laughed, walked over to her bed and sat down on it with the guitar in my hands. There were a couple of songs I could play, but then I realized that I didn’t even know what kind of music Amber liked. My eyes wandered to the table she was leaning against and I spotted OneRepublic in her chaos of CDs, so with a grin on my lips I started playing one of their songs. “I’ll find the places where you hide / I’ll be the dawn on your worst night / The only thing left in your life / Yeah I would kill for you, that’s right.”

When I looked up at her while singing and playing the guitar, I could see a growing smile on her lips, and then she stood right in front of me. “If that’s what you wanted / If that’s what you wanted / …”

Before I could continue, Amber took the guitar out of my hands and put it back to where it was when we entered her van. “I want it,” she muttered, and suddenly she was sitting on my lap with her arms wrapped around my neck and her lips pressed against mine.

A grin crept up on my face, and I whispered against her lips: “Which part, the killing one?”

“Oh, shut up, will you?”

We both chuckled as we lay down on the bed with me on top of her and with our lips still attached to each other’s. During college, I must have been one of the very few guys that had no ual encounters at all. I just didn’t want to. I only wanted to experience these things with her, and now I finally did.

Of course I often had imagined how it would be like, how it would feel like – and in the end, it was so much different than I ever thought it would be. After some starting difficulties with the and the pain she was feeling at first, we finally made love to each other slow and gentle.

“I want you to stay with me,” she whispered as she wiped the sweat of my forehead with her lips, and I smiled weakly.

“Then I will.”

Amber looked up at me, her thumb caressing my cheek, and she smiled as well. “Promise?”

I nodded, leaning down to give her another kiss on her lips. “I promise.”

But the thing was that we both knew that our time was limited. We both lived very different lives, and we both weren’t ready yet to give it up. Maybe one day, but not now.

It didn’t matter, though. We still would have our 3 out of 365 days each year until we would make a decision how to go on from there.

Until then, Amber Liu was just the girl from the fair – and therefore the girl I’ve given my heart to.