Page 48 of Game Night: Truth or Dare

“You okay?” Bianca asked.

“Yeah. Great. Just need to stretch.”

“You looked like you were about to doze off,” some guy said, half-smirking. He’d been in my writing class freshman year, but I didn’t remember his name.

“Yeah, well.” I shrugged and got to my feet. “It’s comfy in here.”

“Want me to come with you?” Bianca asked.

I did a quick silent check-in, unsure if she was worried about me venturing off on my own, or if she wanted to get away from Smirky McGee. I cocked my head, silently asking what I should say, and she pursed her lips in a way that seemed to mean Up to you.

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll grab another drink and do a circuit. I may be back in a few minutes.”

“Okie dokie,” she said, her tone letting me know I’d interpreted her expression correctly. So off I went.

Back in the kitchen, I poured myself another drink, but with way more soda than vodka. I’d turned twenty-one in the fall, so it wasn’t like getting hammered was a novelty for me. Anyway, I come from one of those families where drinking isn’t an issue. Like, my parents were big believers in demystifying the whole alcohol thing. I’d been having wine with Thanksgiving dinner since I was thirteen.

The point is, I wanted a little vodka to numb that Ben-Quinn-related prickle, but not a lot of vodka, because if I ran into him, I didn’t want to be a messy bitch.

So I hung out in the kitchen for a few minutes, sipping my drink and talking to Angie Hawkins and her townie boyfriend, but Angie is kind of an idiot, so after a while I excused myself. I thought about heading to the living room—maybe burning off a little steam on the dance floor would do me some good? But that was the most crowded spot, which meant a higher chance of encountering Ben. The last thing I needed was to see that tattooed chucklefuck freaking on somebody. In the end, I decided I’d been having a nice time in the den, talking shit and letting Bianca run her fingers through my hair. I headed back.

When I first stepped through the archway, I thought maybe I was in the wrong room. It was still dim and cozy, and the fireplace still crackled, but everything else felt different. There were more people now, maybe a dozen, and they’d all shifted to a loose circle in the middle of the floor. I relaxed as soon as I saw Bianca, but the second she saw me, her eyes got huge and she started shaking her head like no no no.

I froze, not getting it. “What’s up?”

Everyone turned to me, the newcomer, including the guy whose back had been to the door. I should have recognized him anyway, with his super-short dark hair and his big blocky shoulders in his dumb little polo shirt. When he angled his face toward me, though, there was no mistaking him.

Ben Quinn.

I hadn’t been this close to him in a long time. Maybe ever. We’d never spoken. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there, gawping at him. He didn’t look like anything, you know? Just a dumb oval face with dark hair and dark eyes. His lips were parted a little, and I noticed his front teeth weren’t even. He was cute, I guess, but in the most boring way possible. In fact, the only interesting thing about him was that he looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. Otherwise, he was just some generic dude, and I wondered—for about the trillionth time—what had caused Elliot to dump me and chase after this nobody.

For almost a year, I’d felt like trash whenever I saw Ben, whenever I thought of him. I was the guy who’d been left by the roadside when my boyfriend dumped me for a freshman. A freshman who was older than most of the senior class. A geriatric freshman who wasn’t even interesting or funny or cool. A guy whose whole personality was that he’d been in the army or whatever.

And the shittiest part was, because there was nothing interesting about him, and because he was only cute in the blandest way possible, it made me think something must be wrong with me. Was I too skinny? Was my nail polish too much? Was my nose too big? What had made my ex look at me, then look at Ben, then decide I was the worse option?

(Elliot had been no help, the closed-off motherfucker. He’d just made some noise about “maturity levels” and “growing apart.”)

So, all this flashed through my mind in, like, half a second. Bianca snapped me out of it, hitching up into a kneeling position. “Ollie!” she said, too loud. “Hey! I was…” She sat there for a minute, her eyes drilling into me while she tried to remember how to talk. “Want to go get a drink with me?”

“Ollie! Join us! We’re playing Truth or Dare!” That was Ayla Wainwright, completely ignoring the fact that Bianca had just spoken to me. Ayla meant well, usually, but she was garbage at reading a room, and she could be a lot sometimes.

But her outburst got me thinking. Truth or Dare? There were possibilities here.

Like, everyone knows that’s a game for babies. I was bored with it before I left high school. Just an excuse to drink and kiss and gossip, and—while all those things were pretty fun—once you were in college, you shouldn’t need a game to make them happen.

But there was Ben, sitting at my feet. His dopey brown eyes were giving away a lot, and he was capital-U Uncomfortable. I fucking loved it. Sure, Bianca had surprised me with the news he’d shown up, but he’d have to be a real knucklehead not to realize I might be there.

Also, what was he doing playing a silly game with a bunch of normal-aged college students? It was hella desperate, him being so old and wanting to fit in so bad. But that desperation might give me an opportunity to have a little fun, to really make him sweat. There were a lot of truths I’d like to get from him. And dares? Maybe I could dare him to fuck off back to boot camp or whatever, so I never had to look at him again.

“Cool,” I said to Ayla, and stepped into the circle, pushing my way past Ben’s shoulder, making a beeline for Bianca, then sitting criss-cross applesauce beside her.

And dead-ass across from Ben.

Maybe I hadn’t thought this through. I’d felt powerful watching him blink and swallow when he first saw me. It was a tiny thing, but I’d felt like a king, a god, breaking the circumference of the circle and striding through and making space for myself to sit down.

But I hadn’t considered how I’d feel planting right across from him. Would I have to sit here, eye-to-eye with this asshole, for the rest of the night?

We looked at each other. He smiled, just a little, a quirk at the side of his lip. A peace offering? An acknowledgement of how ridiculous this situation was?

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