Chapter 22 #4
“Oh, I got one, I got one. I’ve carried a torch for Ari since I was sucking on my mom’s tit. All of you stop. How many of you have to drink here?” asked Taylor, looking around her.
James shrugged, while a few guys took shots. Even Tiffany. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Will, sitting next to me, remained unmoved.
I let out sigh of relief, but then I thought about it again. It was a stupid game, and Will had promised me he wouldn’t drink.
What if she really was the girl he’d always been in love with?
“At least I have the balls to do it.” complained Tiffany.
“There are some fakers here, Will? You can drink water too. But you have to drink.”
William’s behavior hadn’t gone unnoticed by Taylor, and what she’d just said confirmed my doubts.
Ari was the girl Will had told me about. How did I not see it before?
She’d never tell me, and probably Will wouldn’t either. There was only one person who would’ve told me the truth. I looked at James, and he immediately looked down when he noticed.
Bingo.
“Just the truth? This sucks! Drink or nothing?” Marvin said at some point, but Taylor rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be a pain, it’s more fun like this.”
“I’d like to see June and Ari go inside.”
“Go watch a porno and don’t mess around.” James cut off him before throwing a drink back, followed by Tiffany and Marvin, as if the statement was still a part of the game.
“There are only four guys playing. The girls are the majority, so mathematically speaking, we’d all end up making out with each other and have to put on a show just to satisfy—” Poppy tried to say her part, but Tiffany shut her up immediately.
“Shh, shut up. In this case, it isn’t adding up.”
“I’m just saying that it’s not worth it. Otherwise I’d say, I wanna see James and Will make out,” explained Poppy. “Or maybe James and Jax.”
“Already seen. Weak. You’re not missing anything,” declared Taylor haughtily.
My eyes darted quickly to Blaze, who went as white as a sheet.
“Or James and Brian,” another girl suggested.
Brian’s nervous laugh informed me that he’d just come back in.
“What the fuck are you laughing at?” James tensed up.
The dark-haired guy narrowed his eyes. “I’m laughing because I bet that you’d like it too.” A chill fell over the room in a second.
“Try to come near me, and I’ll kill you,” threatened James, broadening his shoulders as if his stature wasn’t intimidating enough already.
“Oh yeah? Let me see.”
Obviously, James couldn’t move a muscle, especially toward Brian, especially right after juvie.
“No. Guys, enough.”
Amelia. She hadn’t said a word up to that point.
Something told me she was the missing link. The missing piece. Brian shook his head annoyed, and walked out.
“Okay, no dare. Straight to the closet,” grumbled Taylor irritated.
“Closet, meaning?” I asked, without getting an answer.
“Closet? And what fun is that if I can’t watch?” sneered Marvin.
“Come on, move it. Get out of here,” he invited Tiffany, who looked used to these games.
“Tiff in the closet with June,” finished Marvin, pointing at me. James almost spat his milk out on the window.
“No, wait a second, what do I have to do?”
“Guess,” laughed Marvin, while Tiffany was already standing up.
“What’s so funny? You can’t force me to do anything.”
“Of course, nobody’s forcing you. You just have to spend seven minutes in the closet with her. And do what you want, you don’t necessarily have to make out with her,” explained Will.
Tiffany adjusted her studded leather jacket, then called my name.
“June?”
“Um.”
She’s not even gonna jump on me? I thought, looking her up and down. She’d weigh half what I do.
I groaned a lazy “Okay,” and stood up.
A few guys shouted while William immediately got irritable.
“Yeah, but in there, not here in front of everyone.”
“Come on, Will, don’t be a pain in the ass,” I heard Marvin say when Tiffany and I reached Poppy’s walk-in closet.
I stared speechlessly at Tiffany, who seemed perfectly at ease with the situation.
“I don’t know,” I whispered before going in.
“Jeez, it’s just a kiss. You’re so puritanical,” a guy exclaimed.
“What if they don’t do it? It’s not worth it,” I heard him say to someone else, but James seemed to extinguish all doubts.
“Don’t worry. Tiffany knows how to be convincing.”
I groaned again, this time discouraged. I didn’t have an issue with Tiffany, but I didn’t want to be the victim of their sick games.
“Do we fit?” I asked when the brunet flung the door open, making me go in first.
“It’ll be tight.”
She winked at me, and when I gave her a bad look, she got serious. “We fit, see?” she said, pointing out the little room full of clothes. She closed the door, and I felt so embarrassed.
I sat down cross-legged in front of Tiffany, who did the same.
Now what?
“Have you ever kissed a girl?” she asked, staring at me.
“No.”
“Wanna try it?”
“Um.”
“Obviously you don’t have to.” She shrugged.
“Tell me something, Tiffany—why me?”
“What do you mean?” She studied me, wrapping a lock of hair around her index finger.
“I don’t know, why not someone else?” Am I really the laughingstock of the class?
“Just because you’re new. Taylor will get sick of picking on you soon.”
“Shouldn’t there be someone who keeps an eye out?” We heard male voices coming from outside. “They’re just talking, I’ll tell them.”
I got flustered.
“Don’t worry, June, I’ll say we did it. No need to actually do it.”
Tiffany’s sincere smile made me breathe a sigh of relief.
“Thank you.”
“You don’t think I’m pretty?” she asked.
“What? Are you joking? You’re gorgeous,” I admitted without a filter. “I just, um, I don’t know, I’m embarrassed.”
“Who do you think the prettiest one is?” She motioned toward Poppy’s room.
“Amelia, maybe Ari,” I answered without thinking about it.
“Would you make out with them?”
“No.” I made a grossed-out face. “I never thought of them that way. They’re—or they were—my friends.”
“But I’m not your friend,” she said, leaning toward me.
She stopped an inch away from my face, giving me the choice of whether or not to delve into the contact.
I closed my eyes, and in a moment of insanity, I brought my mouth to Tiffany’s cherry-red lips, which seemed to welcome me without any rush.
We savored each other slowly, getting to know every little nip, and sucking on each other’s parted lips, almost forgetting our tongues, which only started to move toward each other when the kiss became more intimate.
Just as Tiffany licked my lower lip more passionately, her hand slid under my sweater.
She squeezed my bra, applying light pressure on my skin with a brazenness that not even Will had ever had.
“Tiffany.”
I pushed myself back, motioning for her to stop.
I looked down embarrassed, but my gaze drifted down her tight-fitting shirt, exposing what it shouldn’t have as well. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
“What is it?” she asked me, smiling.
“No, nothing.”
“Two more minutes,” she announced, looking at her phone. “If you wanna talk—”
Okay, now I’ll ask her. I don’t care if I look like a moron.
“So do you just like girls or—”
I wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of my hand.
“It depends, I mean, I don’t know. Let’s say I prefer girls. They’re better too,” she answered with soulful eyes. “But think about it, June. Anyone in their right mind would choose to be with women if they could pick their own sexual orientation.”
“You’re right. Guys are so . . . guy-like,” I exclaimed, making her laugh.
“And stupid. But it’s not their fault. Poor things, their male hormones shrink their brains.”
We kept laughing until she took a break.
“But I don’t turn my nose up at all of them. They have some good things, don’t they?”
Right then James flung the door open.
“Seven minutes is up,” he announced raspily.
I noticed he was slouching. Why didn’t he come in standing up straight?
“Are you two still dressed?”
“Jamie, enough,” scolded Tiffany.
His gaze was fixed on our lips. “See, take James—” Tiffany pulled him into the closet by the edge of his tracksuit pants. “He’s only useful from the waist down,” she explained as she slid the other hand down his bronzed chest.
“Go fuck yourself,” he shot back, moving backward.
“Come on, you know I’m joking! You guys say a lot worse. If a girl does it, you get all offended?”
“Such as?” I asked, frowning.
“You don’t want to know what they say about you. You’d better stay in your bubble of innocence for as long as you can.”
“Can you shut up?” James rebuked her.
Tiffany got up and hugged James without too much fuss, focusing her shiny lips on his ear.
“She smells good,” she whispered to him, looking at me. “It’s a nice scent, sweet and soft. Just like you like.”
I saw James gulp. Tiffany burst out laughing.
“See? Like I told you, they only think with one thing.”
“Get out of here,” James ordered her, although Tiffany had already left. My cheeks started burning. I had to get out of there too.
I stood up, but his imposing figure stopped me.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I felt his body press against my side. It didn’t matter to me if he’d had something to drink or if it was the full moon—the fact remained that he didn’t give a shit about me. James and I exchanged a fleeting glance.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Tiffany was right. I couldn’t choose what I felt when I was around James. The temperature in the closet had just skyrocketed, and all it took was him coming in.
“You better get out of here,” James muttered huskily, glancing at me one last time.
“Yeah,” I stammered, following him out of the closet.
“All right, that’s enough. I’m fucking sick of this game,” James told Taylor, who thought otherwise.
“Why, the best is yet to come. Will, truth or closet?”
“Why’d it take you so long to come back, June?” Will ignored Taylor, but he scrutinized me.
“Um.”
“June, what did you do?” demanded Will, concerned. I hesitated a moment before sitting back down next to him.
“Nothing, we didn’t do anything,” lied Tiffany when she noticed William’s nervousness.
“I asked June.”
“Will, chill and try not to start with that bullshit. I’m already pissed,” answered James for me.
“You want her. Is that what Taylor meant earlier?” Oh no, not again.
Taylor crossed her arms like she was enjoying the show.
“I don’t want shit from White, I already told you. If she and I wanted to, I would’ve banged her already. In your bed.”
He hadn’t just said that. Not in front of everyone. He couldn’t’ve just done that. William stood up and got in James’s face.
“You son of a bitch.”
Nobody said a word anymore, not even Taylor.
“Literally, Will.”
“You’ll never have a girl like June because you don’t deserve her!”
“Oh yeah, and let’s hear what I deserve. An asshole best friend who turns his back on me for a nobody?”
“You deserve someone like Taylor or Tiffany, or like all the others you screw!” yelled an enraged Will.
“Happy now?” James asked Taylor, as she gloated in front of a still-furious William.
“Me? Happy? And why not? The only one happy here has to be Will! It’s your lucky night. You have to kiss Ari.”
Taylor’s words made Amelia frown, and then me.
“I don’t think so.” Will was irritated.
“You can’t say no. You didn’t drink twice in a row, so you have to follow the rules.”
“Can’t he go in with June?” Ari asked.
“What fun is that?” Taylor laughed.
“No.” Will doubled down, refusing to budge.
“Well, if you’re that devoted to June White, you can head to the closet. Especially since you wouldn’t do anything with Ari, right?”
Taylor’s Machiavellian thinking disgusted me then pleasantly surprised me.
“Right, June?”
That bitch was right.
It wasn’t possible. My head was spinning. I couldn’t be agreeing with Taylor. Was a shot all it took?
I thought about it quickly, and concluded that Taylor was right.
Why live with the fear that the guy who liked me preferred someone other than me? If he wanted to make out with her, he would’ve already. Not to mention that I made out with Tiffany, and I was terrified to tell him because I didn’t want to make him angry.
“Go on, Will,” I whispered, swallowing my pride.
“Thank god it’s called seven minutes in heaven,” a guy clarified, noticing Ari’s and William’s solemn faces as they walked toward the closet.
In a second, Will did the gentlemanly thing and let her go first, then he shut the door. And I felt myself collapse. Seven minutes in heaven? More like seven minutes in hell.