Page 51 of The First Kind of Love
“Then it’s settled—you’re eating the mystery food!”
Gage springs to his feet excitedly, races to the kitchen, rustles through what sounds like a miniature World War III of aluminum foil and Tupperware, then saunters back out with a phallic-looking tube of meat. The smell is nauseating from here. Putrid, sour, similar to roadkill cooking in August heat.
The minute Hayes’ punishment breaches the serenity of the circle, Hayes recoils in revulsion, a hand over his nose. “Jesus, fuck. Whatisthat thing?”
Next to me, Fulton’s got his head turned away while he swallows back a gag.
“It’s a bull penis. In Jamaica, it’s known as a delicacy,” Gage answers pridefully.
“I don’t even want to knowhowyou got that.”
Gage doesn’t say anything else before shoving both a plate and a fork in Hayes’ hands, vengeance writ in his features (along with a concerning dash of lunacy). “And foryourinformation, I prefer pictures over words. I’m a visual learner.”
Everybody gives Hayes adequate space, enforcing a fair circumference of distance now that he’s got a military-grade weapon in his possession.
Aeris consoles him from across the room. “You should’ve answered it, babe. Pretty sure the majority of people here have heard it already. Just try to swallow quickly so you don’t taste anything.”
Gage, ever the instigator, gets out his phone to start recording. “You know what they say, Hayes. Spitters are quitters.”
Hayes shakes his fork menacingly in Gage’s direction. “Your mom should’ve swallowed you.”
Dear God.
After a solid minute of juststaringthat thing down, Hayes angles his fork to cut a small chunk off, the pallor of his skin deteriorating into a shade of green that I didn’t even know existed. His throat undulates with a thick swallow, and he slowly,slowlyforklifts the food to his lips, forcing himself to shove the tines straight into his mouth without thinking.
There’s an uproar of gasps.
He chews on it for at least thirty seconds, the gummy texture producing these godawful smacking sounds. Excessive chewing noises are actually the worst thing in the entire world. I can barely watch. I bury my face into Fulton’s shoulder, and he clings to me like we’re each other’s saving grace.
When Hayes eventually gets everything down, he sprints to the kitchen, discards the detestable, devil-incarnate beef stick, and washes his mouth out under the kitchen sink’s faucet. The rush of water sounds for about two minutes straight, filling the silence with a much-needed distraction. Someone has the brilliant idea of lighting a candle, Gage now has great blackmail ifHayes were to ever wrong him, and the man of the hour comes loping back, looking no better than a poor, kicked dog.
“That’sneverhappening again,” he swears, popping off the cap of a wet, unopened beer with the point of his incisor. He kills half his drink within five seconds, glaring at the troublesome brunet who—by the sounds of it—is now applying a trap beat over Hayes’ mortifying video.
“You should’ve just answered the question,” his teammate singsongs.
“I’m going to kill”—Hayes’ thinly veiled threat gets drowned out beneath a sickly grumble from his stomach, and it’s loud enough to compel the room’s full attention—“you,” he finishes with half the breath.
Even though Hayes is far from prime ass-kicking state, we as the jury make a collective decision to sit the two far, far away from each other.
Aeris volunteers herself next, bouncing on her butt with so much excitement that I’m not sure if it’s from the adrenaline, alcohol, or burrito high. She doesn’t calculate the spin—she practically throws the bottle halfway across the circle with enough force to take out somebody’s eye. It knocks back and forth before returning to the center of the ring, petering off into one final roundabout before landing on…Kiss Someone of the Same Sex.
Then she turns to me.
Oh, crap. Crap, crap, crap.
Don’t get me wrong, Aeris is one of the hottest women I’ve ever seen, but I’ve never…kissed a girl before.
I blink.
She blinks.
My eyes jump to Fulton.
He blinks.
Is Hayes going to beat me up? He’s notlookingat me like he wants to beat me up, but I’m scared, nonetheless. HayesHollings is a household name known for sending opponents out onstretchersduring games. I’ve watched him play alongside Fulton. I’ve also watched him shoulder check another player so hard that he flew about five feet into the air before his whole body folded in on itself. That’s not natural.
There’s a rush of lightheadedness—a compacting of my temples like the skull-bursting pressure of surfacing too quickly in the water. “Oh, um…”
