5. Start With A Shot
Chapter five
Start With A Shot
G iven how many people were there—well over a thousand, according to Anne-Marie—and the fact that he’d walked in the opposite direction of the eventual direction me, Sydney, and Bruno walked, the chances of us lining up anywhere near JP and his friends were slim.
Of course, that didn’t take into account the fact that the universe seemed to conspire against me at any given opportunity.
“Where did your secret crush get Jello shots?” Bruno asked loudly.
“Secret crush?” I repeated, insulted. “I don’t—”
“Sure you don’t, chérie ,” Bruno and Sydney said in haunting unison, their voices eerily similar to Anne-Marie’s.
“You’re both dicks,” I muttered.
“You must have been dropped on your head as a baby if you’re just figuring that out,” Bruno said.
About twenty feet away, JP was reaching into a gallon-size Ziploc bag and pulling out Jello shots, handing them out to a bunch of other people wearing the same “SIX FOR SAM” T-shirt he was wearing. I watched as he handed a shot to a woman with glossy black hair, medium reddish-brown skin, and a similar embroidered sweatband to the one he was wearing. She said something to JP, who smiled and responded before she threw her arms around him. He chuckled and hugged her back, and I definitely wasn’t jealous in any way, especially after they parted and the woman wiped a hand beneath her eyes before laughing again.
“Or maybe her secret crush has railed her head into the headboard a few too many times,” Sydney added.
Bruno let out a howl of a laugh, loud enough that it caught JP’s attention. Sparkling blue eyes met mine and I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow in mock judgement, my eyes flicking to the woman he’d just given a shot to.
Because of the shot. Not because of the hug.
Which JP clearly understood because that telltale smirk of his crossed his face. He glanced around, seemingly confirming something, then side-stepped a few of his friends and half-jogged over to us, digging into the Ziploc bag.
“What’s this for?” I asked as he handed me a plastic cup full of cherry red Jello.
“We start the race with a toast,” he said, putting the shot in my outstretched hand before turning to Sydney and passing her a lime green one. “You have to wait until they set off the starting pistol, but take the shot the second you hear it, okay?”
“So specific,” Bruno said as JP gave him a lemon yellow shot.
“Trust me. Take the shot when you hear the shot.” He looked up at me, the corners of his eyes crinkled. “No matter how much you hate it when people tell you what to do.”
“Bastard,” I said under my breath, and he grinned.
“Have a good race,” he said, then turned and headed back to his group of friends.
“Wait,” Bruno said after JP had walked away. “Is there actually something going on with you and him?”
I scoffed, taking the lid off my Jello shot and running my finger along the edges. “What makes you think that?”
“Uh…” He held up his lemon Jello shot.
“So because my friend’s brother gave us some of their extra Jello shots, something must be going on?”
“Well no, but—”
Sydney started snickering and Bruno looked at her, then at me, an eager look blossoming on his face.
“Oh my God. He has actually railed your head into the headboard a few too many times, hasn’t he?”
“It’s more like the roof of his car,” Sydney said.
“Shut up,” I said, glaring at them. “Seriously. Anne-Marie absolutely cannot find out about this.”
“That sounds like exactly the kind of thing Anne-Marie should find out about, chérie ,” said a voice from behind me.
My face went cold and my head went light. Every ounce of blood in my face seemed to drain into the pit of my stomach, making it drop so low I wanted to shit my pants. Whirling around, I ended up staring straight at Anne-Marie, who was…
Well, she wasn’t grinning maniacally. Instead, there was a curious look on her face, her long blonde ponytail dangling over her left shoulder as she tilted her head.
Which meant she hadn’t heard what I said. Or if she had, she didn’t know I was talking about her brother. I was half-certain that Anne-Marie carried around pockets of glitter confetti for the sole purpose of being able to throw it in the air if JP and I ever did get together. Unfortunately for her, that would never happen, so I guess she was just going to be stuck with pockets full of glitter for the rest of her life.
But even if she wasn’t wearing something with pockets for some reason, there was no way Anne-Marie would ever hear me say I was hooking up with her brother and not immediately shriek with joy.
“Busted,” Sydney said, sighing dramatically. “I knew she’d catch us the second we broke the shots out.”
“The shots?” Remy, who I hadn’t noticed walking up with Anne-Marie, stepped forward with a frown creasing his forehead. “What sho—”
“Ah, ostie de calisse de crisse !” Anne-Marie swore, noticing the plastic cups in each of our hands, a scandalized look shadowing her eyes. “Where did you—ah, tabarnak , let me guess.” She whirled around, glowering in the general direction of JP and his friends. “My goddamn brother gave those to you and told you not to let me find out.”
“Uh… obviously,” I said.
“Ah, il est un trou d'cul ,” she grumbled. “I told him and he promised— he promised ! Complete trou d’cul . He knows—he knows !—I still haven’t heard the end of last year and— aghhh !”
Without another word, she stormed through the people milling between us and JP’s group of friends, Remy tailing not far behind her. Sydney and I exchanged glances, a guilty look flashing on her face.
“Shit,” she said. “If I’d known I was actually throwing him under the bus…”
“Don’t worry,” Bruno said. “I’m sure he won’t mind if Nellie makes it up to him on your behalf.”
He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t right. I mean, yes, I could’ve absolutely made it up to JP if I needed to. And somehow, I’d gotten to know JP well enough to know he wouldn’t throw me under the bus and tell Anne-Marie about us hooking up or anything. So I wasn’t worried that he’d say something he wasn’t supposed to when she stormed up and yanked on his arm, forcing him to turn and face her.
But instead of looking ashamed or chastised as Anne-Marie reprimanded him in rapid French, JP grinned. He waited patiently for Anne-Marie to finish speaking, then waved over the woman he’d hugged earlier. She glanced at Anne-Marie and burst out laughing, then swung a drawstring bag I hadn’t noticed off her back and scurried forward in excitement. Anne-Marie frowned as she took the bag, working the strings open and peering in before slapping JP on the arm. He snickered, then waved another person over, and another, all of them passing matching drawstring backpacks to Anne-Marie until she was juggling five of them. There was an exasperated huff of an expression on her face, but beneath it, I could see her fighting back a smile. Remy took three of the bags from her so she could hug the first woman and slap JP on the arm again, then they started back towards us.
“What a twit,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Last year the station volunteers got word that Jean-Paul and his friends had brought Jello shots, but they ran out before the first checkpoint. Even I did not get one! And so I told him they could not bring shots again unless they made enough for everyone. So what does he do?” She brandished one of the backpacks she was holding. “He makes sure they made enough for every one of the volunteers and set them all aside for me!”
“How dare he,” Bruno said, his voice flat.
“Exactly. As if I did not have enough to do, now I have to hand these out.” She scoffed again, but before she could say anything else, a creaky voice thundered out of the sound system, even louder than the thumping, blaring music.
“ Bienvenue, coureurs, à la septième Illumi-Nite annuelle! ” There was a pause as a loud cheer rose from the crowd before repeating the announcement in English. “Welcome, racers, to the seventh annual Illumi-Nite!”
Again, a rousing shout vibrated the air around us, even though I was pretty sure almost everyone understood both languages. Still, the energy was contagious, and even Bruno started clapping as the announcer reminded us of the race etiquette—have fun, don’t spit when other runners are down wind, there’s no official timing or winners so don’t elbow people to get ahead of them, which I imagined was directed at people like Mr. Marchand—and the exciting activities waiting for us at the finish line.
“ Nous souhaitons rendre hommage à l'un des premiers membres de la Fondation —”
“Ah, crisse de tabernak ,” Anne-Marie said, wrenching the bag open and grabbing one of the Jello shots, flicking the lid off in a smooth motion and shoving it at Remy before grabbing a second one from the bag. “Already?!”
“What do you mean, already?” Bruno said. “They’ve been talking for ages.”
She waved a hand at him. “Shut up. Get ready.”
“We are ready,” I said, trying not to laugh.
“—tribute to one of the early members of the HueManity Foundation, Samay Mehra, who organized the first Illumi-Nite race seven years ago,” the announcer said. “And who would be personally offended if we took a moment of silence in his honour instead of starting with recognition of one of his favourite holidays: the festival of Holi.”
“Six years for Sam!” someone hollered from somewhere to my left, and an echoing shout responded. When I looked over, I couldn’t see JP, but all the people with the SIX FOR SAM message on their shirts had lifted small, colorful plastic cups in the air.
“Maintenant, sans plus attendre: prêts, ” said the voice on the loudspeaker. “Partez …”
I don’t know if they finished the statement or repeated it in English. Everyone around me shouted “ Feu !”, an echoing blast went off and I immediately understood why JP told us to take the Jello shots as soon as we heard the gunshot sound effect.
I slammed the plastic cup to my lips, watching as huge clouds of coloured powder puffed into the air from the cannons surrounding the starting area. People around me shrieked and laughed in excitement and the crowd started pulsing forward before I even registered the burn of what I was guessing was vodka mixed in the cherry Jello.
“Bleugh!” Anne-Marie said, wincing and shaking her head as she lowered her plastic cup a few moments after everyone else. “That was gritty.”
“Mine was fine,” Sydney said. “You should try to do it faster next time.”
Anne-Marie stuck her tongue out at Sydney, then let out another bleugh sound and made a face as more of the powder floating in the air settled on her tongue. Bruno laughed, then choked as he inhaled a lungful of the coloured powder, which made Remy shake his head.
“Come on, Anne-Marie,” he said. “We should get ahead of the racers and bring those to the rest of the volunteers.”
“Get ahead of them?” Bruno said through his coughs. “How fast d—” He hacked for a moment, then cleared his throat. “How fast do you think you can run?”
“Oh, I am not running,” Anne-Marie said, fishing a tissue out of her pocket so she could wipe the powder off her face. “Remy will drive me on one of the golf carts. We will meet you all at the finish line!”
And with that, she shuffled away through the throng of people surrounding us, now doused in colourful powder and with Remy close behind her. The crowd kept moving forward and I’d barely blinked before I lost sight of both of them.
They weren’t the only ones I’d already lost track of, either. The stream of bodies to the left of us seemed to move faster for some reason and JP’s group was already long gone. But Sydney, Bruno, and I all stuck together as the people in front of us finally picked up speed and the cluster spread enough that we could start jogging.
The loud music and black lights were nearly constant along the race route, but each of the distance markers had an extra little gimmick or bonus at it. At the first kilometer were a bunch of actors dressed up in the kitschiest spectator gear they could find and holding signs that said “You’re almost there!” and “She’s not so good at numbers” and “PAIN” with a picture of bread. The one-point-five kilometer marker had more confetti, though there were also people giving out candy, but the two kilometer mark had an inflatable mini-obstacle course filled with foam.
“ Why would I want to get all soapy?” Bruno complained as Sydney and I dragged him over to the inflatables.
“Why wouldn’t you?” Sydney asked. “It’s like a bouncy castle for adults!”
“Do I look like the kind of person who enjoys a bouncy castle?” he grumbled.
The answer to that ended up being yes, he was the kind of person who liked bouncy castles, because even Bruno was grinning like an idiot when we got to the end. A pile of white suds had collected on top of his dark hair after we slid down a tall inflatable into a pool of foam at the bottom.
And then there was the two-point-five kilometer mark.
We rounded a bend and saw volunteers spraying down racers with Super Soakers and bottles full of coloured water. It was a welcome sight. While it might be night, it had been a particularly humid day and the heat had lingered after the sun went down. I turned to say as much to Sydney when a brown-haired man with a thick mustache jogged past us wearing a white muscle shirt that showed off his swollen biceps and brown chest hair, his skin a rich shade of tanned beige.
“Hey, Bruno!” He clapped Bruno on the shoulder, making him stumble. “You made it!”
“N-N—” Bruno cleared his throat. “Niko. Hey. Didn’t expect to see you here.”
The man grinned, his eyes flicking down and back up. “You thought I’d ditch out after mentioning it at trivia? I’m running for my little brother, remember? He’s dyslexic?”
Bruno sputtered again, his sweaty, flushed face turning a deeper shade of red. “I, uh… I… must’ve forgotten. My… my friend, he’s Autistic. Not that I’m… I mean, his girlfriend, she—” He cleared his throat again. “My friend’s girlfriend is a volunteer and she asked me to come. To run in honour of Remy.”
I raised my eyebrows. Remy wasn’t exactly shy about sharing that he was Autistic since it was just part of who he was, not some negative thing about him. But there was a pretty big difference between raising money and awareness for something in general and saying you were running in “honour” of a singular person. I wasn’t sure Remy would appreciate Bruno acting like it was some big personal act.
“Fair enough,” the man—Niko, I guess—said, still grinning at Bruno. “Well, maybe I’ll catch ya at the finish line. Have a good run!”
“You have a good… running… time,” Bruno stammered, though Niko had already taken off and likely didn’t hear any of it.
“So who was that?” Sydney asked teasingly.
Bruno blinked. “No one.”
“Huh,” I said. “I thought he said ‘Niko,’ not ‘Nemo,’ but if you’re saying it’s no one…”
“Shut up,” he grumbled. “I mean he’s… Niko. He’s a guy I know. Who’s friendly. That’s it.”
“Mmm,” Sydney said. “So he’s the weak spot?”
“Of course not!” Bruno said.
“Oh, so you really are here ‘in honour of Remy,’ then?” I asked. “I thought that might just be you stumbling for an excuse because you were flustered and maybe didn’t know that Remy would find it insulting.”
Bruno’s face flushed pink. “I was just… like… Whatever. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
“She literally said one thing about it,” Sydney said, frowning.
The embarrassment on Bruno’s face grew, but before he could say anything, a loud shout of familiar laughter caught his attention from the station of volunteers ahead of us. All of us glanced over just in time to see Niko take a small plastic bucket from a volunteer and lift it over his head, tilting his face up as he tipped the bucket over to let it splash all over him.
“Oh my God,” Sydney murmured as blue-tinted water dribbled down Niko’s thick neck and soaked the white muscle shirt until it was clinging to his round pecs and showing off a defined set of abs.
“He just might be,” Bruno breathed, his eyes glued to Niko.
“You do have good taste,” I admitted.
Bruno didn’t take his eyes off Niko. Not as one of the volunteers sprayed him with pink water from a Super Soaker. Not as we jogged past Niko. Not as he slowly started to veer towards the edge of the path, his head swivelling to keep watching the display behind him until—
“Wait, watch out!” Sydney said.
Bruno did not watch out. Instead, Bruno crashed into a garbage can. Luckily, he bounced off it, but before he could right himself, he stumbled into a blue bin meant for collecting cans and bottles.
And I mean into .
As in, he tripped and went down ass-first, the cans and bottles clanging and crunching as he half-fell, half-sat on top of them.
“ Oh ,” I gasped, clapping a hand to my mouth as if it could hold in the laugh bubbling up from my chest.
“Oh, no,” Sydney added, her voice shaking with giggles trying to escape. “We have to go help him.”
I bit my lip. Bruno had said something kind of dick-ish, but that didn’t mean I wanted to leave him in a garbage can. Still…
“Would it be horrible if I took a picture first?” I asked.
“Nellie! Of course it would be.”
“So… do it?”
“If you don't, I will.”
I took the photo, but before Syd and I could go over to help, Niko burst past us. His eyes were wide with worry as he bounded over to the recycle bin Bruno was stuck in.
“Oh my God!” he shouted. “Are you okay, Brun-Brun!”
I pressed my lips together, curling them in as I glanced at Sydney. She looked back at me, mirroring my expression.
“Are you hurt?” Niko asked, reaching out to take Bruno’s hand. “Let me help you… and excuse me! Someone come move this. What a horrible place to keep a recycle bin. Who put this here? You could’ve hurt my… my friend!”
“Keep going without him?” Sydney whispered.
I barely hesitated before nodding and the two of us started jogging again, not saying a word until we were far enough away that we knew Bruno wouldn’t be able to hear us laugh.