Chapter 13 #2
They keep it simple for dinner—burgers and dogs grilled over a fire, a vat of brown sugar beans, and a smattering of pickled veggies soaked in Forty’s homemade brine.
Everything hits the spot, the perfect meal for a summer night spent outdoors.
After everyone’s good and stuffed, they sit around the fire in camping chairs, working their way through a case of Coors while also taking swigs of a communal bottle of Jameson.
By the time the sun has dipped below the horizon and left the world covered in hues of navy and violet, they’re all perfectly toasted.
Mikey clears his throat, sits up a little straighter in his chair. “So, who’s going to start?”
A collective chuckle runs through the group, but no one raises a hand. On the opposite side of the circle, Cooper, Grace’s fellow newcomer to the summer and all its traditions, pipes up. “Start what?”
“Evidently, there is a universal need for everyone on this ranch to know everyone else’s sexual history and business,” June gripes, using her turn with the whiskey to take an impressively long pull. She exhales once she’s gulped it down and asks, “Whatever happened to truth or dare?”
“No,” Caleb says from across the fire. His eyes are glassy and he’s got a boyish smile permanently etched into his mouth. Drunk and content. “You know the rules.”
“Fuck the rules,” June bites back.
Raymond snorts. “Just because some of us have more embarrassing exploits than others doesn’t mean we just toss tradition in the trash.”
“But you already know all the exploits!” June barks, throwing her hands up.
Pierce cuts in now, and he must be tiring of all the bickering, because his voice rises above the crowd at a volume Grace has never before heard him reach.
“The game,” he says, looking between Cooper and Grace.
He waits until the rest of the murmurs die down completely before finishing his sentence. “Is called ‘Never Have I Ever.’ ”
“Not sure I’ve played that one before,” Grace admits. There aren’t many group drinking games she has played, come to think of it. Parties and gatherings and any sense of camaraderie and inclusion weren’t exactly Braxton’s style.
“That’s fine,” Pierce says. “We’ll teach you. Now, everyone, please.” He urges everyone with a beckoning hand, then holds his up, fingers stretched out like he’s ready to give a high five. Everyone complies.
Even Crew, who sits to Grace’s left, though he does so with a throaty sigh that tells her he has probably been subjected to this game one too many times.
Pierce, satisfied with everyone’s participation, nods.
He keeps his focus on Grace as he says, “All right, now—how it works is, we’ll go around the circle, and when it’s your turn, you’ll tell us something you’ve never done.
For example”—he holds up his hand to emphasize that it’s his turn—“never have I ever…” He considers for a beat, then his gaze moves toward Caleb, and he smirks. “Hooked up with a cougar.”
Smug laughter sounds throughout the circle, and Caleb sinks back into his chair after dramatically pulling down his index finger. “I hardly think forty-five is a cougar,” he mutters.
“It is when you’re twenty,” Pierce counters.
“So, you see”—he turns back to Grace, then points at Caleb—“because this fine young chap here has in fact hooked up with a cougar, he puts a finger down. The first to have all fingers down has to do something decided on by the group. Last year, Mikey had to roll down the hill naked. He was picking sticker burrs out of his ass for a week.”
Mikey, clearly remembering this all too well, rolls his eyes.
“All right,” Grace says, though preemptive seeds of embarrassment have begun to sprout in her belly.
There’s so much she hasn’t done. And even with the beer and liquor, she isn’t sure she’s ready to dive into the why behind her general inexperience.
But she figures she’ll likely get more questions, more resistance, if she doesn’t play. So she holds up her hand and nods.
“Okay then,” Pierce says, grinning. He kicks Forty’s boot with the toe of his own. “You’re up, old man—though I can’t for the life of me imagine there’s anything you haven’t done in the centuries you’ve been roaming God’s green earth.”
Forty cuts him a look, then smiles, saccharine sweet, as if to say: Game on. Pierce seems to recognize his mistake before Forty even begins speaking, and his eyes fall shut. “Never have I ever,” Forty declares dramatically, “shit my pants on a date.”
Pierce’s eyes squeeze together. “I deserve that,” he says quietly, shamefully pulling his thumb into his palm. The group is cackling, clearly all well aware of this story. Grace smiles, though she sits on the outskirts of their memory, not fully able to enjoy it.
Beside her, Crew leans in, and in a voice only loud enough for her to hear, says, “He ate some very questionable beef chili in town. We tried to tell him not to, but he learned the hard way. She ran for the hills, then told all her friends. He hasn’t had much luck with the girls in town since, as you can imagine. ”
Grace looks at him, finds his eyes full of warmth and soft, golden hues, accentuated by the fire. She smiles, now able to picture the scene. “That’s disgusting,” she says quietly, and Crew grins, leaning back into his seat.
The game continues around the circle, and Grace learns some very interesting things about everyone.
To Crew’s chagrin, Cooper reveals he’s never had a threesome, which prompts Alec to dramatically put a finger down and boast about the fact that he has.
Mikey has never sent a nude, a statement that is loudly, vehemently refuted by Raymond, who swears up and down that Mikey sent an unsolicited dick pic to someone on Tinder once.
Mikey denies this, then points around the circle and demands fingers go down.
Grace watches everyone except Crew, Forty, and Pierce comply.
When it’s Harrison’s turn, he lets out a deep, considering sigh, sinking back into his chair.
Everyone stares at him while he contemplates and then smiles across the circle at June and Grace like they’re easy targets.
And when he says, “Never have I ever kissed a guy,” Grace realizes they are.
She and June look at each other, June’s face a map of irritation, and both put a finger down.
“Weak,” she barks at him. “Should earn you a shot.”
Grace’s eyebrows lift as Harrison denies this with waving hands. “A shot?” she asks.
Pierce nods. “I forgot about that. You see, propriety is not something we accept in this particular game. If you choose to say something as tame as…I don’t know—never have I ever been on an airplane, you have to take a shot. Salacious confessions only.”
Grace’s stomach knots up even tighter, especially considering there’s only two more people until her turn.
She’s running through the potential options, scraping her brain for something that’s spicy enough to please the group, when Raymond speaks his piece.
“Never have I ever…” He purses his lips, thinking.
Then, like a light bulb has blinked on in his brain, he grins. “Had a pregnancy scare.”
This earns him a few well-deserved groans. A couple of the guys seem to be reliving it, curling into themselves as that long gone terror sets in. Grace chuckles at Alec’s literal shudder.
When Crew clears his throat, readying to take his turn, the group leans in, a hush falling over them. They are rapt, quieter than Grace has seen them, as though missing even a syllable out of Crew’s mouth would be a grievous error.
“Never have I ever…”
Out of the corner of her eye, Grace sees a slight movement around the circle, like everyone’s leaning even farther in.
Crew must be stingy about sharing nuggets of information about himself, must maintain a hefty professional boundary between himself and those on Halcyon’s payroll.
She wonders if perhaps he’ll take the easy way out, offer something tame and choose to toss back a gulp of whiskey.
But he surprises her by instead saying, “Never have I ever had a one-night stand.”
“Bullshit,” Mikey yells almost immediately. “I call bullshit.”
Crew shrugs. “Call it whatever you want,” he says with a hint of aloofness. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”
“You’ve never hooked up with a woman and then never spoken to her again?” Mikey argues, remaining unconvinced.
“Weren’t you like…a football star in high school?” Caleb asks, eyes narrowed.
“So?”
“So,” Caleb parrots, looking at Crew as if his implication should be obvious. When it clearly isn’t, he scoffs. “What kind of D1 linebacker doesn’t have a single one-night stand?”
Again, Crew shrugs. “The kind who had a girlfriend.”
June chimes in then, “And in the military?”
“Look.” Crew leans forward, elbows resting on top of his thighs, and stares all of them down.
Everyone stops murmuring and looks at him.
Everyone except—Grace notices—Forty. He sits across the circle with a soft, knowing smile on his face.
Like this back-and-forth is all silly to him, like he isn’t going to waste his time trying to disprove something he clearly knows to be true.
“If I’d known y’all were going to try to fight me like a pack of hyenas, I wouldn’t have said anything at all.
But since you’re so damn curious, I’ll say one thing and one thing only, and then we drop it.
” Crew speaks with such comfortable authority.
There isn’t a shred of doubt in his mind that everyone will comply.
When everyone stays obediently, expectantly quiet, Crew blows out a breath.
“I don’t have any interest in casual sex.
I never have. Intimacy shouldn’t be something you can check in and out of like a fucking motel.
There should be a connection. Otherwise, it’s just bodies in repetitive motion. ”