Page 25 of Best Friend Burden

"Well, I don't think I'd ever seen you take Truth,” I said. “Other than just now, when I kind of dared you to.”

“Yeah, well, I'll pick it on my own this time.” He smiled coyly. “Truth.”

I looked out the car window at LA, with its high contrast of bright lights and pure darkness. There was a kind of artificial quality to it, but that was where its beauty came from. Everything was fake, but it was fake in an intentional way, almost like a painting. Even being here, none of it felt real. It was like being in a movie, not reality.

“What do you do for fun?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when you're not beating yourself up... or off.” I paused, hoping for a laugh, but he ignored it. “What do you do other than work and regret life?”

“I play my guitar,” he said.

I made a buzzer sound. “Wrong answer! That's for work. What do you do that's just for you, for fun. Anything that has no purpose other than you enjoy it.”

“To be honest, nothing,” he said. “Well, except...”

He trailed off. “Go on,” I told him.

“You're going to think I'm a total nerd.”

“I thought rock stars don't care what other people think.”

He shook his head. “Nah, that's just what they pretend. I've met a few of them. Huge names. They're the most insecure people you've ever met. Like, this one time at a party, I met—”

“Nope,” I told him. “You're trying to distract me. Name dropping might work on your LA friends, but they're all just people to me. I want to know what you do for fun. You had something in mind.”

“It's embarrassing,” he said.

“That's the game,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. By this point, he was turning into the apartment's garage. “Cardistry.”

“Cardistry?” I asked. “What's that?”

“Card magic.”

He drove the car into his spot and put it into park, turning off the engine.

“Like card tricks?”

“Back when I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to take a guitar everywhere I went, so I brought a deck of cards with me to, you know, work on hand dexterity. I spend all day on the bass now so I don't still need them, but sometimes I pull out a deck and play with it just for fun.”

I wasn't sure if he was serious or not. On one hand, he didn't seem the magic type, but on another, why else would he tell me this?

“You any good?”

He shrugged. “Does it matter? It's just for fun.”

We took the elevator up to his apartment. When we got inside, he closed the door behind him and looked into my eyes. For a while, he didn't say anything, just stared with the two of us standing close in the doorway.

His face approached mine and said, “I suppose I should ask you Truth or Dare, right?” He used a soft tone, almost a whisper, but with enough strength behind it to still sound very masculine.

“Only if you want.”

He was moving in closer, and I could feel his breath on me as he kept his eyes locked on mine and put his hand on the wall behind me to lean against.

“Truth?” he asked. “Or Dare.”

---