by L A Cotton
“Well, thanks anyway. You didn’t have to let us crash. I appreciate it.” Paul extended his hand and I accepted, but before I could add that he should be thanking Ana, not me, Mari’s high-pitched voice shrieked over the music, “Party games.”
Paul’s face turned beet red while the rest of us snickered at Mari’s overexcited announcement.
“If she wants us to play charades, I’m out of here.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Paul mumbled under his breath as Mari made her way over to us. Someone cut the music and everyone in the room stopped their conversations to watch the birthday boy suffer embarrassment at the hands of his girl.
Mari clapped her hands, a huge grin plastered on her face. “So, I figured it would be fun to really get this party started…” Tyson smirked at me and I smirked back. This shit was actually turning out to be pretty entertaining. “Ana?”
Ana?
Ana stepped out from behind the small crowd that had formed behind us and rolled her eyes in my direction.
“Get over here already.” Mari beckoned to Ana who walked toward us holding a bottle in her hand. Mari snatched it from her and waved it in front of Paul and then turned on the spot and waved it to everyone else. “Spin the bottle.”
The room filled with a mix of groans and cheers. I caught Ana’s hand and pulled her into me, bringing my lips to her ear. “Spin the bottle? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Ana slapped her hands against my chest and shot me an agitated look, “What? I don’t like it either. In fact, I hate it, but Mari was so excited, and well, I didn’t want to upset her.”
My jaw tensed, the muscle pulsating just under my skin. What were we? A bunch of horny teenagers? But before I could think of a way to pull the plug on Mari’s idea of a party, I was being bustled into a circle and ordered to sit down.
Perched between Ana and Jamie, who was winking at a girl across the circle, I glared at Mari hoping she’d get the hint. This was not cool. In fact, it was fucking stupid. But she was well on her way to being wasted and drunk girls were a handful.
“Okay, let’s start with the rules,” Mari started, but the chorus of boos drowned out her voice. “Hey, hey, quit it. The rules. Number one, the bottle’s choice is final. Wherever the bottle lands is the person you partner with. Two, if you’re too chicken to take your turn, then you have to take a truth or dare…”
“Mari, seriously?” Paul’s voice cut her off. He sat a few people away from me. He had buried his head in his hands, but now he was scowling at Mari.
“Come on, it’s just a little bit of fun.” She swung around turning her back on him and continued, “Three. If the girls have to kiss, then so do the guys.”
This caused another round of boos and one guy threw his empty cup into the center of the circle. It skimmed Mari’s arm, but she remained unaffected.
“What the hell is up with her?” I whispered to Ana who was watching Mari with the same look of confusion as was clouding her friends’ faces.
Ana shook her head, but Elena leaned closer and said, “Bitch has lost it. If it wasn’t Paul, I’d be trampling all over this shit.”
“Hey, some of us are single, remember. This could be fun.” Cassie grinned a little too suggestively before turning her attention to one of the guys across from us.
“Okay.” Mari clapped her hands together again and handed the bottle to a dumbstruck Paul. “Birthday boy’s up first.”
Holding the bottle in one hand, Paul glanced at us for help. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but Mari gave him little time to back out as she nudged in into the circle and started chanting his name. Soon, most of the circle was chanting and Paul placed the bottle down before spinning it. Shuffling back to his space, the bottle began to slow. Seated next to his girlfriend, Paul must have worked out it was going to be impossible for him to get Mari or one of his friends. His eyes followed the bottleneck as it passed a couple of guys in dress shirts with lazy grins on their faces, the blonde who was eye fucking me earlier and two of her friends, before landing on the girl chosen for him.
Paul gulped, loud enough that I heard him. Shit was about to get real. Mari had instigated the whole thing, but would she really be okay with her guy kissing another girl? I knew where I stood on that, and if anyone so much as looked at Ana, things would turn to shit pretty quick.
“Paul meet Emma.” Mari giggled and then hiccupped before taking a large gulp of beer from her cup.
“Mari, you’re not serious?” He looked at her with wide eyes.
“It’s just a silly little kiss. Come on; this is supposed to be fun, right?”
The girl Mari called Emma edged forward on her knees. She wasn’t begging for it, but she didn’t seem bothered that she was about to kiss someone’s guy either.
“Are we doing this or what?” she said almost sounding bored.
Paul looked at Mari once more for her to tell him this was all some kind of joke. She didn’t. Paul groaned and shuffled into the circle. The two of them knelt awkwardly in front of us for what seemed like an eternity. I almost felt bad for the guy. Obviously unwilling to wait any longer, Emma leaned forward hooking her arms around Paul’s waist and slammed her lips on his.
Paul’s arms grappled to hold her at arm’s length, but she was like a praying mantis pinning him against an invisible wall. The unfamiliar crowd exploded with cheers and laughter as Emma’s mouth all but ate Paul up, and I sneaked a glance at Mari. She was also laughing, but it didn’t come naturally. It was strained. Forced. And I was sure I saw her eyes gloss over.
“Okay, okay, time’s up.” She cleared her throat.
“Hmm, what, huh? Shit, sorry.” Paul smiled meekly at Emma who just backed away and returned to her seat, wiping her smeared lip gloss from her lips with her arm.
Hoping that would be the end of that now that Mari had gotten a taste of her own medicine, I cursed silently when she announced, “Emma, you’re up next.”
Chapter 15
~ ANA ~
An hour into the game, I was relieved to have avoided my turn. Not that it would have mattered all that much. I was picking truth or dare unless by some small miracle the bottle landed on Jackson or Elena. Which was virtually impossible since they were seated on either side of me.
“James, you’re up.” One of Mari’s uninvited guests had just kissed Cassie—much to her delight—and was now up to spin the bottle.
“Here goes,” he slurred before spinning the bottle and waiting.
Even I laughed when it landed on Nate.
“Oh, hell no!” Nate threw up his hands and shook his head at James who was wiggling his eyebrows.
“Pucker up, Tolman, I’m coming for you.”
“Fuck off, I choose dare.”
“Pussy.” James barked a laugh before rubbing his forehead for a few seconds. “Aha, got it. Strip.”
Nate didn’t reply as he stood and started taking off his clothes. Lydia tugged at his leg urging him to stop, but mischief gleamed in his eyes and it was clear that no one was going to get him to back down.
“All of it, Tolman,” James stated as Nate kicked off his jeans. “Boxers, too.”
“Come on, man, I played fair. No one wants to see my dick.”
“I do.” A menacing grin spread over James’ face.
“Nate, don’t,” Lydia warned, narrowing her eyes at the three girls seated opposite us. They had been eyeing up Nate, Jackson, and Tyson all night, and I wondered where Mari had met these people. They didn’t seem like the type of girls she would hang around with, and as far as I was aware, she had Paul, and by proxy, she had us.
“Babe, I got this,” Nate smirked as he strolled right over to James. He yanked his boxer briefs down and thrust his hips in James' face. James screamed like a girl and fell backward covering his eyes with his hands. Laughter filled the room and Nate quickly pulled up his boxers and returned to our side of the circle as if he hadn’t just face slapped another guy with his dick.
“Seriou
sly, Nate,” Lydia scolded him quietly, but even she couldn’t hide the smile on her face.
“Just so you know; I never back down from a challenge.”
“Nice, hmmm, work, Nate. You’re up.” Mari handed him the bottle, and we waited for him to redress.
The next couple of turns were almost boring. Nate landed on one of the girls—Mindy, I think—but she chose truth. Nate, being a total guy, asked her if she’d ever had a threesome to which her answer was ‘of course.’ Mindy chose Elena, who wasted no time stalking forward and planting her lips right on the dumbstruck girl before she could back down. The guys enjoyed the brief lip show, but it was typical Elena behavior. When Elena prepared to pucker up to her turn, a good-looking guy called Lewis, Tyson almost burst a gasket. One look at the rage on his face, and Lewis opted for truth as well.
“I want to dance,” Mindy whined to her friends who all nodded in agreement, but Mari was already handing the bottle to Lewis. Her eyes scooted around the circle as if she was mentally calculating who was left to take a turn.
“Just another couple of goes.”
Lewis placed the bottle on the floor and spun it. It rotated again and again, whizzing passed me again and again. Certain I’d escaped again, I almost missed the neck of the bottle settle in my direction.
Shit.
“Ana, you’re up,” Mari said a little too enthusiastically, but it was nothing compared to the instant change in Jackson. His whole body tensed beside me, so much so that I found myself reaching out to touch him.
“I choose truth,” I said mentally assessing the possible things a guy I didn’t know could ask me. He’d probably go with a sex question or something personal about Jackson and me, questions I could deflect.
“Is it true you used to cut yourself?” The words rolled off Lewis’ tongue as if it was a completely normal statement to ask someone.
Jackson inched forward and then snapped, “What the fuck did you just say?”
“Whoa.” Lewis’ hands came up in front of him. “It’s just a question, man. She picked truth, so I asked.”
“A fucking insensitive one. This game is over.”
Unable to breathe, let alone move, I waited for the circle to disperse. Jackson stood, hostility radiating from him, and extended his hand to me. I let him pull me up. Everyone had gone to refill their drinks or gather at the far end of the living room where some of the girls had started to dance.
“Come here.” Strong arms enveloped me, and I relaxed against Jackson still in shock at Lewis calling me out like that.
“Fucking prick. I should throw him out.”
“No, no, let them have their fun. Rumors travel fast, Jackson, I know that. I just didn’t expect it. The party will be over soon, and then we can go back to living in the shadows.”
Jackson pulled away from me and looked down. “Is that what you think we do?”
“We used to, not so much anymore.”
“And which did you prefer?” he asked his eyes questioning me.
“I liked being invisible.”
“Ana, you were never invisible to me.”
I was about to respond when Elena ducked her head around my shoulder. “Well, let’s hope we never have to live through that again.”
“Who are they, anyway? Do you know them?”
“I know a couple of the girls, total bitches. James is okay, he’s in my biology class. Lewis is a complete jerk. Thinks he’s God’s gift.”
The three of us looked over to where Lewis was chugging on a beer.
“You’re telling us.”
“It was a nice thing you did for Mari, Ana. You too, Jackson. She might be a little loco, but she’s trying. I think in her own strange way this was all just an attempt to fit in.”
Jackson snorted and I jabbed his ribs. “Let’s make sure she thinks it worked then because I am never doing this again,” I replied.
~
An hour later, I started to clean up around everyone. I was tired and beginning to feel like Mari’s friends were outstaying their welcome. Much to my surprise, where my tension had multiplied, Jackson seemed to relax, and although he avoided Mari’s guests, he and Tyson had spent the last thirty minutes playing quarters. As I moved around the kitchen collecting up empty cups, I couldn’t help but keep glancing back at him. He deserved to unwind—to be a normal college student—just for one night.
Once the trash was full, I left the kitchen through the back door to dump it in the trashcan. The back door clicked shut behind me. It was dark, only one or two stars twinkling in the sky. The edge of the forest was just visible. When we first moved in, it had scared the shit out of me, but now, I realized, no one ever ventured this far away from the main buildings on campus. Jackson was right; it was our own little paradise.
Trash taken care of, I turned to make my way into the house, but an arm wrapped around me from behind covering my mouth as a scream ripped from my throat instinctively.
“Shut up, we wouldn’t want anyone to hear you, now would we?” a drunken voice slurred in my ear.
My heart pounded against my chest, adrenaline pulsing through me. Jackson was right on the other side of the wall, but the music would drown out my screams. So I remained still in my captor's vise-like grip, trying to formulate my next steps.
“You were so fucking smug choosing truth. Am I not good enough to kiss? You only like the bad boys or something? Is that it? Well, I’ll show you bad, you little bitch.”
A hand clamped around my throat and my own hands flew to Lewis’, trying to claw and scratch at the skin enough to break his contact with my neck. He pulled us further away from the house while I fought to breathe.
“I’ll show you how a real guy can make you feel.” His voice didn’t sound right; it didn’t match the strength of his body, and although his grip on my neck has loosened a fraction, I still couldn’t get a full breath.
Lewis moved in front of me, and I reared back against his hold on me. Even in the dark, I could see the black in his eyes. Lewis wasn’t just drunk; he was on something.
“Lewis, you don’t want to do this,” I tried to say in a firm, non-aggressive manner, but he just glared at me. His soulless black eyes looked right through me.
“Time for me to claim that kis-”
I stumbled backward as Lewis’ hand was ripped away from my skin. His body crashed into the wall, and Jackson drew his arm back and sent his fist flying into Lewis’ face. I heard a sickening crunch and Lewis slumped down onto the ground.
“Did he touch you?” Jackson faced me, his breath coming hard and ragged. His fists bunched up at his sides.
I shook my head and held his stare. He was so close to losing himself.
“I’m okay.” I wasn’t, not really. My neck felt like it had been snapped in two and my throat burned, but Jackson didn’t need to know that right now.
People rushed out of the door behind us and Elena started yelling strings of Spanish expletives. Tyson and Nate checked Lewis over who was out cold. Nate pulled out his phone and started punching in a number, disappearing off in the yard somewhere with his cell attached to his ear. Lydia and Cassie stood hugging one another watching me with sad smiles. Paul was nowhere to be seen, but Mari was standing off to the side. My eyes connected with hers and some indecipherable emotion flashed in her eyes. There was no time to consider what was really going on, as Jackson gathered me into his arms, barked orders at Tyson, and led me back inside the house.
~
Elena forced a hot mug between my hands and ordered me to drink. I took a sip and stared at the frothy liquid. The coffee burned as it slipped down my raw throat.
“Okay?”
“It hurts,” I replied quietly.
Jackson was pacing the length of the living room like a bull to a red flag. When Lewis started to come to, it had taken Tyson, Jamie, and Nate to haul Jackson off him. I hadn’t witnessed it, but Elena filled me in.
The house was quiet now, except for the sounds of the guys’ hushed whis
pers. Dennis had arrived within minutes of Nate calling him and the two of them had escorted Lewis to medical to get his nose looked at, no doubt fabricating a story to cover for Jackson.
“Did you see anyone take anything tonight? Other than just alcohol?” I whispered to Elena while still staring into my mug.
“No, why? You think he was on something?”
“I don’t think, I saw it. His eyes, they didn’t look normal.”
“Well, shit. What was Mari thinking inviting these guys here tonight? And speaking of Mari, where is she?”
I’d been pondering that question for the last thirty minutes. Until they turned up, Mari hadn’t once mentioned inviting strangers to the party. And now that things had turned to shit, she had disappeared.
“Paul,” Elena yelled across the room. “Where did Mari go?”
Paul’s eyes darted around the room and then his face paled. “She, hmm, I thought she was with you guys? She’s not here?”
Elena shook her head and the guys stopped their conversations to listen to the scene playing out in front of them.
“So, she invited those fuckwits and then just up and left when Ana was attacked?” Elena didn’t hold back the accusatory tone in her voice.
“Elena,” Lydia warned from her seat opposite us.
“No, Lyd. Ana was attacked in her own home, and Mari, the girl who invited him here, has gone AWOL. That shit doesn’t fly with me.”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation. I’ll go find her.” Paul thrust a hand into his hair and looked at me for something. What, I couldn’t decipher, but he would get no sympathy from me. Not tonight, not while the bruised skin around my neck burned with pain.
Nate approached us and Lydia stood letting him wrap an arm around her. “We’ll head out and let you get some rest, Ana. We’ll get to the bottom of what the hell happened tonight.”