Chapter One – Jack #2
“What would Daryl think about this?” asked the human shield, her voice booming over the others.
I was guessing Daryl was the groom and that she was his sister.
One of the girls in back leaned over her table, where the others couldn’t see, giving me a distracting view of her cleavage.
When she realized I’d noticed she grinned and leaned back, as things otherwise devolved into chaos, women debating the merits of men in general and Daryl in particular.
“Ladies!” I shouted, bringing them to order. I only had a brief window to turn this ship around and gain Rosalie’s cooperation. “Let’s play a game.”
At that, silence ruled. “What kind of game?” Cleavage asked me.
“The only game that matters,” I said, relishing both the quiet and their attention. “Truth or dare.”
One of the girls sputtered her drink, but some others cheered, “Yes!” and one clapped her approval.
“You go first,” I told the bachelorette.
She set her drink down slowly. I imagined her rowdier friends—or relatives?
—had talked her into this, because she was a plain girl, the kind you could pass by every day at work and never notice.
But when she smiled at me her whole face lit up and I saw what Daryl might have seen. “Truth or dare?” she asked.
“Truth,” I said.
They conferred as a group, before she returned with their question. “How many girls have you slept with?”
I was a bit taken aback. “Uh—more than I can count?”
“Really?”
“Bragger.”
“That’s bullshit—”
“How many guys have you slept with, Susan?”
The bachelorette eyed me. “That wasn’t really an answer.”
“Sorry. If I could count them, I would. But let’s have a redo—more truth.”
She grinned and they huddled. “Okay—what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever had sex?”
My stomach churned but I kept smiling. “Here.”
“Too easy!” protested Cleavage.
“Truth or dare,” I asked back before I lost them again, staring the bachelorette down.
“Dare,” she said, and the room hushed. By the rules of the game I could dare her to do anything—but it was far too early for that.
My eyes scanned their number and I read them, noticing those who’d taken off their rings for the night, the ones that were drinking now so they’d have excuses come dawn, the way the glowsticks gave all of them an ethereal glow in the room’s dim light.
My eyes narrowed and I knew what needed to happen next.
“I dare you to go flip the light switch.”
The bachelorette’s eyebrows rose, but Cleavage ran for the door on her behalf.
As she got outside, the light snapped off—Rosalie somewhere, most likely listening in, making sure I behaved and didn’t whammy them.
Cleavage came back triumphant, too drunk to realize she’d done nothing, her blonde hair haloed in pink.
“Thank you,” I said, rewarding her with a grin as she took a seat much nearer the stage.
“Ask me,” she pleaded.
“Truth or dare,” I asked.
“I dare you to touch him, Tabby!” another girl said.
“You heard him, you’ll get a disease,” muttered the human shield from earlier.
“Dare,” she proclaimed.
“Then I dare you to come sit beside me up here.”
Cleavage—aka Tabby—turned grandly and flipped her friends off before joining me, scooting close. I made sure not to scare her—and I thought I saw the bachelorette give her a jealous look.
“Truth or dare,” Tabby asked the human shield.
The shield crossed her arms. “Truth.”
Tabby asked the human shield, not me: “Why’re you such a bitch, Pam?”
“This is a stupid game,” Pam protested.
“It is not,” said the bachelorette, daring Pam to challenge her authority on this night of all nights.
“Fine. I’m such a bitch because—because,” she sputtered, looking for an answer.
“Tell us,” I encouraged. Surely Rosalie couldn’t mind me pressing a little, surely she wanted to turn this room over—
“Bobby’s cheating on me.” The words poured out of Pam’s mouth, and her hands fell in fists to her side.
“What?” the bachelorette wheeled on her, full of sudden sympathy. “Oh my God, Pam.”
“There’s this girl at his work—I saw photos on his phone.
” A dam broke inside her, tears welled out, and the girls circled round.
Even Tabby hopped off the stage to be near her.
“I didn’t want to say anything,” she said, wiping one eye.
“It’s your weekend, Lori. I’m here, and I know he’s home with her. ”
“Oh, Pam, I wouldn’t have made you come if I’d known,” Lori, my bachelorette, apologized.
“I’m so sorry,” Tabby said.
“You all didn’t know,” Pam said, pulling her in for a sloppy hug.
“None of you did.” They were a throbbing mass of girl-power for one moment, supporting Pam and plotting Bobby’s demise, and I was reminded why I loved women—on top of their beauty, they were strong.
For themselves, and one another, all the time.
“Come here, Pam,” I suggested gently. She rose up, eyes blinking wetly, and made her way to the stage. I patted the seat beside me. “Don’t worry. I don’t bite.”
She sat down beside me, her purse clutched in her lap like I might steal it.
I could sense her doing the internal math that kept her away from me—not just thinking that this whole thing was silly or risqué, but the knowledge that men like me didn’t typically find girls like her attractive—that after you’ve had two kids, lose your waist and get a belly, sometimes you feel like you fade away.
Her rejection of me wasn’t about me—it was her rejecting all mankind, preemptively.
“You know that phrase, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else?” I asked.
Pam nodded mutely.
“Sometimes it’s true,” I said, then looked over at one of the quiet girls. “Truth or dare.”
She looked around, like I might’ve been talking to someone behind her. Then I watched her steel herself. “Dare.”
I let my eyes travel, looking at each of them one by one, an interloper in their lives, a witness to their grief, a testament to their hope that one frantic party would give them memories to last a lifetime. “I dare you to take that necklace off, and throw it to the back of the room.”
The women conferred amongst one another with their eyes and then with trembling hands, Lori’s quietest bridesmaid unfastened the glowstick necklace and tossed it.
“Thank you….” I told her, asking for her name.
“Jamie,” she almost whispered, then turned immediately to her friend. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth.”
“Tell us the deal with Gabriel.”
Tabby laughed and Lori made a ‘ooh’ sound. Even Pam chuckled. The woman—Susan, by power of deduction—groaned. “He’s good for me, all right?”
Pam looked to me. “Hideously unattractive man,” she clarified, for my sake.
“I heard that—and I know, I know,” Susan said. “But,” she stood and got into the spirit of things, likely as her third drink hit. “Ladies, he is good at going down.”
Lori rocked back, laughing, and Tabby shouted, “I knew it!” as the others hooted.
“What? James would never go there!” Susan stood up for her new man.
“You should never waste time with a man who won’t,” I said, backing her.
“See?” she agreed with me. “Whereas Gabriel?” she turned to address her friends. “That man needs a snorkel.”
“Good, ‘cause I’m getting him one for Christmas,” Jamie said, coming out of her shell now that she was in the safety of the dark. Everyone laughed, even Susan.
If this didn’t count as a good time, I didn’t know what would. And yet: “Truth or dare,” I announced to the group at large.
“Dare,” Tabby shouted back.
“I dare you to take off your necklace, too.”
Tabby gave me a mischievous look, and then whipped it off like it was a belt and chucked it behind her. “Truth or dare,” she asked back. “Pick dare.”
“Dare it is,” I said.
“I dare you to kiss Pam.”
I felt Pam stiffen beside me. “Oh no,” she said, scooting away bodily.
“I would never do anything that someone was uncomfortable with,” I said, and saw her shoulders slightly slump.
She didn’t want me to do anything—but she didn’t not want me to do anything, either.
“You let me know if that changes, though,” I told her, with eyes full of intent.
Blood rushed all over her body, distracting both of us for different reasons.
We were down to three glowsticks worth of light, and the girls had come back from too drunk, to just drunk enough.
“You told me earlier that I wasn’t her type,” I told Pam, with a nod to Lori. “So if I’m not, who is?”
“Daryl,” Lori said with a grin.
“Daryl. Daryl’s so this, and Daryl’s so that,” Tabby said in a sing-song, coming up to sit on my other side. “I mean, the man could probably pick up a truck, yes. But there’s more to life than that.”
“Like what?” I asked her.
“I dunno. Music? Poetry?”
“Head!” shouted Susan, and everyone giggled.
While I laughed along with the women, Tabby wriggled her hand in between us, and started tugging at the outer seam of my jeans. “Where’s the Velcro? Why won’t your pants come off?”
“Oh, they do. Believe me. Is that what you want?” I moved to stand up, leaning against the pole behind me.
“It’s too dark to see,” Jamie complained.
“I don’t know about that. I can see you all just fine—and I think it’s time for the last truth or dare.
” I knew more than enough about them now to give anyone who was interested a good time, personally.
“Is the truth that you want me to get the lights turned on again? Or do some of you want to dare to see what we can do in the dark?”
The moment froze, as each of them considered what that might mean.
Then Lori grinned wickedly and reached for her necklace.
“I have to stay true to Daryl, ladies. But far be it from me to stand in anyone else’s way of a good time.
” She popped the clasp of her glowstick off, and chucked it to the back of the room.
Susan looked from side to side, and took hers off, swinging it overhead like a lasso with a whoop! before throwing it.
Which left Pam. I turned toward her and gave her a warm smile. “Yes, no, maybe so?”
She swallowed audibly, but then decided, yanking her necklace off with force and hurling it to the back of the room, leaving me and the women in darkness.
“What now?” Tabby asked from the front of the stage.
“Now, this,” I said, reaching for my phone.
I turned the flashlight on and brought it up to make my face look spooky.
I made a ghost noise and they laughed. “So—on our continuing journey through what I always assumed women’s slumber parties to be—get those tables out of the way—set them against the back walls, please.
” My phone put out just enough light that all the women could participate, setting all the tables and chairs back.
“Good.” I reached up and undid the metal clasp that kept me fastened to the leash, leaving the collar on.
I stepped forward and leapt off the stage into the center of the clearing they’d provided, and they gasped, like I was a figure in a painting come off the wall.
“Seven minutes in heaven,” I said, and set a recurring alarm on my phone.
I whipped out a chain of five condoms, one for each of them.
“I did warn you all I was a man-whore,” I said and made a show of tearing them apart to hold in my bowled palms, feeling like some sort of sex magician.
Things would’ve been easier if they were heteroflexible, but since they likely weren’t, this was the next best thing.
“I’m going to turn off the light—and then each of you will have thirty seconds to find somewhere to hide from me—if you want to—or someplace to set up shop. After that, I’ll find you, one by one, and offer you a condom. If you’re not interested don’t take one. If you are—I’m yours until the alarm.”
I could practically hear their heads swivel as I laid out my terms, looking at each other, being scared to take me up on my offer and also scared to deny themselves—or others!—it.
“After everyone’s seven minutes are up, Vegas rules apply.”
“What’re those?” Lori asked.
“The usual—what happens here stays here and all.” I rested my thumb over the button to turn the light off. “Does that sound fun?”
“Sex with a stranger hide-and-seek, oh yeah, totally do that all the time,” Pam said dourly.
Tabby laughed and turned towards me. “Start counting.”