Page 33 of The Best Kind of Forever
“Take your pants off!” Gage shouts giddily, and his request is followed by some agreeable catcalls.
“Do not take your pants off!” Fulton yells, glaring at Kit.
Kit shushes him with a finger, then finishes off the number by bending down and twerking in his face.
I don’t even know what to say, but then the song fades out and Fulton claims his spot on the end of the couch. Wheezing laughter breaks out between Bristol and Casen, and the two are red in the face with each knee slap and windshield wiper chortle.
Kit slips his shirt back on, throws a few kisses to the crowd, then slumps down in the adjacent armchair. “That was fun, Fully. Same time next week?”
“If we’re doing this again, you better feel me up next time,” Fulton mutters.
Once Casen catches his breath and wipes the tears from his eyes, he stands up. “I’ll go.”
Each step is imbued with hesitancy as he approaches the cups, and he picks up the fate that lies in that plastic, red hole of doom. “Eat a raw egg or take a shot of ketchup,” he announces.
My face screws up in disgust.
“Yeah, no. That’s a big, fat no.” Casen downs his drink as quickly as he can, nearly sputtering when he comes back up for air. “Jesus. Is this straight tequila?”
“Yes, yes it is,” Kit replies with a proud nod.
Casen rolls his eyes before sitting back down, and Bristol jumps to the table, snatching a cup for himself. “Let your teammates go through your hidden camera roll and post something to your Instagram.”
“Ohhh, this is a good one,” Kit snickers.
Bristol hands his phone over to Hayes. “I’ll letHayeschoose one, with agreement from everyone. But it has to be appropriate, and it can’t get me in trouble with Coach or my agent,” he explains, armed with a dark look and an even deadlier scowl.
Everyone scrambles around Hayes, and some conspiratorial murmurs wend their way into the atmosphere. Hayes throws his head back, a raucous chuckle barging out of him. He’s picked the most horrifyingly unflattering picture of Bristol he could find. It’s a photo of him taken with one of those fisheye lenses, and he’s in nothing but a speedo, eating a banana, with his bare feet hogging the whole bottom half of the frame.
He shows the phone to Bristol. “Dude, why does this exist? Like, I get taking it for fun. But why would you keep it?”
“You’re not uploading that to the internet,” Bristol growls, grabbing the device out of Hayes’ hands.
“Twenty-four hours. After twenty-four hours, we’ll take it down,” Hayes negotiates, holding his arms up. Some of the guys have to hold back their laughter.
“It’s really not that bad,” I pipe up, biting back the inelegant chuckle that’s storming inside of me. I don’t know why Bristol didn’t delete that image thesecondhe took it. A Navy SEAL team couldn’t waterboard that picture out of me.
After a minute of arguing from both sides, Bristol begrudgingly agrees to twelve hours, and the guys are losing their minds as all the likes start to flood in.
Fulton’s smirk is infectious, and he points at the screen like an iPad toddler. “Look, this comment says, ‘Bristol, I want to suck on your toes—’”
“Okay! Aeris, I think you should go,” Gage says loudly.
I swallow the coil of anticipation in my throat, reaching for the drink that’s going to get my blood rushing in either one of two ways—humiliation or arousal.
The second I read the dare, I want to will this nightmarish experience out of existence. This was a bad idea. It’s like when you make the wrong decision in a story-based videogame, and you have to live with a domino effect of consequences.
My heart feels like it’s been drop-kicked out of my chest, and I chew my bottom lip. I can’t do this, can I?
“What does it say?” Casen asks.
Here goes nothing.
“Lick whipped cream off the person sitting next to you. Anywhere below the neck,” I recite, my pulse hiccupping, mortification a missile aimed directly at me.
I consider the potential outcomes. One, and the most reasonable option, is that I drink and don’t subject myself to this twisted game. Two, I pick Bristol, and things become really awkward. Or three—and my favorite option—I pick Hayes.
Gage’s mouth parts into anOshape, same with Kit’s.
