13. TruthDare
TRUTH OR DARE
LAKE
Truth or Dare seems like the kind of game you’d run into more often in college. At least, that’s how I imagined it. A rite of passage of sorts.
Does this beat having to go home early and fall asleep in a cold, empty bed, assuming Sutton is too much of a gentleman to sleep next to me?
Yes, yes, it does. Ugh, he’s so—he’s so respectful all the time!
Can’t a girl just want to whore out occasionally?
I need him to bust inside of me so hard that he changes my AncestryDNA results.
Unlike men, women have layers. The surface layer that I present to the greater world loves crossword puzzles and videos of baby animals. This is the deep, depraved layer of myself that shuns self-help books and wants to be choked. The dichotomy of woman.
I must’ve zoned out because the next thing I know, I’ve got every eye stuck on me.
“Well, which will it be?” Crew asks, spurring the gossip-hungry hyenas that wait patiently for a leftover piece of drama to tumbleweed into their cave. His friends perch on the edges of their seats in excitement.
If I pick truth, everyone will think I’m a wimp.
If I pick dare, I’ll have to subject myself to whatever it is that the goddamn hockey team has cooked up for me.
These guys beat each other up for a living.
Their idea of a good time is probably getting a dentist’s consultation for the tooth they broke mid-brawl. My bones may be in jeopardy.
Bones or reputation, bones or reputation, bones or—
“Truth,” I eke out quietly, anxiety ravaging the stronghold of my heart. I assume Crew is the most levelheaded of them all, considering he’s the captain, but he could have me answer something truly diabolical.
I’m terrible at hiding my emotions. Whatever I feel mars my face, and truth-seekers can usually pinch out more proverbial gold by using my nonexistent lying skills to their advantage.
I wait for the deathblow. My pulse is pounding like a war horse’s cloven hooves against a bloodstained battlefield, cortisol and alcohol are forming one hell of a cocktail in my gurgling belly, and I’m ready to dart for the nearest exit if it saves me from humiliation.
Footnote: don’t ever play Truth or Dare with hot people unless you’re pleasantly wasted.
Here it comes: the deciding factor if I’m cool enough to hang around Sutton’s friends. Please be a safe question. I need a win right now, World. Haven’t I been through enough?
Crew doesn’t even break a sweat. Then again, someone as good-looking as him probably never sweats. He shines. In fact, all of Sutton’s friends have been blessed in the gene department.
“Are you really a big fan of hockey, or is the school forcing you to make us look good?” Humor truncates his words, followed by the same award-winning smile that I see on the side of every bus.
Relief rains down on me, sloughing off the shoulders of a girl who tries too hard to be accepted—who compromises her comfortability to run with the wrong crowd.
I thought for sure he was going to annihilate me with some load-bearing question, but unlike our gracious game host, he doesn’t nurse even the tiniest trace of mischief in those clear-blue eyes.
The truth scalds my tongue.
Even in good faith, this has to be about their reputations off the ice, no?
I know my real answer. The school caught wind of Buford’s extravagant display all over social media after he dumped my ass, and Tamara is hopping onto that momentum.
For the college’s sake, the articles will be more hockey-oriented, and sure, some of the student population is genuinely interested in the game, but others thrive off scandal.
I still hate hockey with all my heart, but Sutton has definitely made me hate it a little less.
“It’s, uh, growing on me,” I say, keeping the details to a minimum.
Sutton uncharacteristically drapes his arm over my shoulders as if he’s marking his territory. Or maybe I’ve been watching too many trashy rom-coms. What? Sometimes I need to unplug my brain at night.
Axel cups his hands around his mouth. “Boo. You’re boring her, Cap. Who’d want to talk about work at a party?”
“I happen to think work is interesting, thank you very much. And unlike you heathens, I’m not trying to scare her off ten minutes in,” Crew retaliates.
Foster—who I’m beginning to think is the resident troublemaker of the group—links his fingers together and cracks them. “Let me show you how it’s really done.”
Shit. What happened to baby steps?
When I glance over at Sutton, his cheeks are dusted in a light shade of carnation pink, and he squeezes my shoulder, which may or may not be voluntary.
“Harlan, truth or dare?” Foster asks, his lips quirking into an untrustworthy grin.
Poor Harlan pauses, stuttering like a satellite getting recalibrated.
Self-doubt simmering on the back burner, his last-ditch effort to save face is not in vain. “Truth,” he chooses, narrowing his eyes at his teammate.
Honestly, it takes balls to resist peer pressure.
Intrigue seeps into my synovial cavities like liquid silver, cooling, hardening. I take a page out of Harlan’s book and act before I think, snuggling closer to my own personal heater despite the numerous eyes on me. When I’m with Sutton, my thoughts are nothing but shipwrecked pieces of debris.
“Where’s the craziest place you’ve ever had sex?”
Harlan’s whole face turns a shade away from death, rendered speechless by his friend’s betrayal. No layman’s terms for the sexually inept, just a cold, hard question. I take it that Harlan is more private with his personal life than some of his friends.
The underside of his neck grows red. “Um, I don’t know, a bed?”
Foster pretends to tsk in disappointment. “A bed? That’s it? Not the back of your friend’s minivan in the Wendy’s drive-thru at three in the morning?”
“Oh my God, were other people in the car with you?!” Harlan exclaims.
“That’s not important. What is important is that we get you pumpin’ in other places than your bedroom. The couch, the shower, the kitchen table.”
I think all these options—while pretty tame—are starting to give Harlan hives.
I love some public sex myself, but it’s not for everyone.
One time I had a quickie in the elevator of an old hotel because it had a million floors.
The guy I was with just pressed all the buttons, went to town, and prayed that nobody was stupid enough to use a death contraption from the 1900s for transportation.
“People eat off of that.”
A rumble of a laugh stirs in the pit of Sutton’s chest and vibrates through me, and the hydrated crackle in his throat opens a floodgate of hormones inside of my body that I have to bat away like pesky inconveniences.
His bergamot smell—compounded by that impressive mullet curling down his nape—is bound to make me lose my panties by the end of the night.
The chatter of the party falls on deaf ears, muffled underneath my current daydreaming detour. If I hadn’t gotten stupid wasted, I could be riding his cock like a cowgirl in the back of his car.
There’s a light jab in my side that shears the fantasy away and brings me back to the present. Merit is in the hot seat now, mulling over the pros and cons of each avenue before ultimately choosing dare.
Harlan seems like a pretty reasonable guy. I doubt he’d dare her to do anything borderline dangerous.
“I dare you to kiss the hottest person in the room,” Harlan says.
A smile breaks over Merit’s lips, and she leans over to share a kiss with Crew while the party explodes into hoots and hollers.
It’s teeming with passion, but it isn’t clumsily urgent.
It’s calculated, rehearsed. They kiss like they have all the time in the world—like they’ve learned to quell their baser instincts to make room for unconditional love.
Merit now focuses on my not-boyfriend with dark, kohl-slathered eyes. “Sutton, truth or dare?”
I feel his whole body stiffen, almost as if he wasn’t expecting to be picked on. When he glances at me for reassurance, his whole expression screams help me.
I’d put him out of his misery if I could. Sutton has never struck me as the type to enjoy party games.
“Truth,” he blurts out, intentionally—or unintentionally—giving our bodies some room to breathe.
Merit, thankfully, takes a page out of Harlan’s book and keeps the interrogation to a minimum.
“Do you have a crush on anyone?” she inquires, failing to smother a smile when Crew rubs his hand back and forth over her shin. The two are so disgustingly obsessed with each other that I simultaneously loathe and love them.
Sutton told me that Merit was off-limits when she and Crew first met. Coach’s daughter and all that. They snuck around her father’s back, defied all the odds stacked against them, and then came out the other side stronger. They didn’t let anything get in the way of their relationship.
Merit’s question cuts me to the quick, as painful as a freshly torn nail bed. Keratin bisected, thready pulse throbbing against air.
Sutton could say anything at this point. For someone who’s so easy to read, he can be unpredictable at times.
My stomach lurches from the steady influx of ethanol, and I’m beginning to think that my body is going through withdrawals because Sutton hasn’t touched me in ten minutes.
When he looks at me, I expect to be greeted with hesitancy, but his eyes shine brighter than firelight. A bed of coals breathed to life, a once-cold hearth now crackling with a warmth that could eradicate even the coldest of winters. I observe my disproportionate reflection in his dilated pupils.
“Yeah, I do,” he answers, still refusing to sever eye contact.
He’s talking about me. HE’S TALKING ABOUT ME!
The whole crowd oohs as if the culprit isn’t sitting right in front of them, and it’s taking some superwoman strength in me not to mark my territory right here and now, meshing my lips with his like I’ve been deprived of physical touch for the better half of my adolescent years.