And as with everything else, this, too, would pass.

 

 

Chapter 10

William

I’d come over to spend time alone with Jenna—and to work on this crowd issue, too, I guess. I never imagined I’d be sitting in a circle of my friends playing drinking games and watching my cousin get inebriated while his fiancée laughed. In fact, I’d never seen Adam drunk before.

“Never have I ever…watched Star Wars in just my underwear,” Mia says with a smirk while looking straight at Adam.

“Aw, shit,” he says and then grabs his glass of beer and chugs it. “Half of this should count as a shot.”

“Not according to the FDA’s alcohol content guidelines. Drink up, son, or hit the hard stuff,” says Heath, who holds up his shot glass and clinks it with Adam’s beer mug. Heath downs his shot while the women laugh.

“Fine.” Adam sighs, then holds his mug high in the air and lets out a huge belch. Everyone is laughing and teasing him, especially Mia.

“Damn, I’m gonna need to switch to light beer or donkey piss. They taste about the same,” he mutters.

“Oh no, we’re getting you wasted tonight. I plan to use every opportunity to make you drink,” says Heath. “C’mon, everyone, who wants to see Adam Drake soused?”

Everyone raises their hands but Adam and me.

“Me! Me, definitely me!” Kat laughs, and Mia makes a face at her.

“The Force is with you, young Bowman, but you are not a Jedi yet,” Adam says to Heath. I wonder what the quote has to do with the drinking game.

And this game is a strange one. We are supposed to make a statement about something we have never done, and if the other people in the room have done it, then they are supposed to drink. The object of the game, of course, is to get intoxicated. I wonder why we need a game to do that. Why don’t we just sit around the table and drink?

“My turn, then,” Adam says, and he gets a funny look on his face. I’ve seen him make that face before…when he’s planning something devious. “Never have I ever sucked a dick.”

“Ah, come on!” Heath and all the women clink glasses and drink. Adam looks extremely happy with himself.

Me, I’m not happy at all. As I watch Jenna laugh and drink, I feel that same tight curl of jealousy inside. Who is she thinking of? Doug? Another man? Other men? Suddenly, I want to hit something. I don’t like imagining her with other men.

I only want to imagine her with me.

But I’ve trained myself not to go there. If I expect something, I don’t handle the disappointment well when it doesn’t happen. Suddenly, though, I am imagining it.

Her head is turned up to mine, her pale hair cascading over her shoulders. Her mouth is open and she’s kissing me like she did last weekend…like the heroine in a movie. Like Arwen kissed Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring. Though we aren’t standing by a giant waterfall and that annoying music isn’t playing super loud in the background.

The others are continuing the game and I’m ignoring everything that’s going on around me, caught up in that image.

“Earth to William!” Alex is saying. I haven’t had to drink once tonight. I doubt it’s going to change now.

“What?” I ask.

“I said, ‘Never have I ever had sex with a woman,’” Alex repeats.

Everyone is looking at me, though I suspect Adam already knows the answer because he’s talking now, saying let’s just move on to the next one. He’s trying to protect me. Since he came to live with us when he was thirteen and I was eleven, it’s always been like that. We might genetically be cousins, but in many ways, he’s my older brother.

But this time, instead of accepting his help, I shake my head. “Neither have I,” I say. And I make it through another round without having to drink.

It’s Heath’s turn. He glares at Alex. “Well, since Alex stole mine, then I need to amend what I was going to say. So…never have I ever made out with a chick.”

The other men drink and so does Jenna. Everyone makes noises of surprise. After she downs her shot, she looks up, eyes round and wide. “What?”

Alex starts laughing. “Don’t mind the men, they are all just picturing it—and getting turned on.”

“Yep. I kissed a girl—and I liked it!” She starts to sing the Katy Perry song and everyone else laughs.

Finally, I have a chance to drink, so I down a shot and immediately start coughing and sputtering. I’ve had tequila before, but I don’t really like it. Beer is much better. Maybe I’ll be like Adam and switch to beer.

“William!” Heath says, slurring his words. “You devil… Details! I need details.”

I shake my head. “You aren’t going to get them. Play your game. I guarantee that you aren’t going to get me drunk before you pass out.”

“Challenge accepted!” Heath says.

It’s Mia’s turn again. “Shit…this is getting hard!”

“That’s what she said,” replies Adam with a smirk.

Mia frowns, looking at him between narrowed eyes. “You’d better change that pronoun, mister. And quickly, unless you want damage to your most favorite body parts.”

“Hey, they’re your favorites, too. Okay, how about….that’s what you said?”

Mia laughs, snorting through her nose. “Much better. All right, let’s take this game in a nonsexual direction…”

“That’s no fun,” says Jordan, who is elbowed by his girlfriend, April. She still seems flushed and angry from the previous round, when Jordan was the only one who had to drink to, “Never have I ever been in a threesome.”

We end up playing three more rounds. Jordan’s challenge, “Never have I ever kissed my step-cousin,” elicits a lot of swearing and rude gestures from a now fully intoxicated Adam.

Just as I’d predicted, I end up the only sober person at the end of the game. I’m silently gloating about it, and I don’t even care.

Afterward, everyone sits around, either talking or continuing to drink until they pass out (Heath), or trying to sober up by making coffee (Adam). I end up going back into Jenna’s room to get my shoes and stop short when I find her curled up on her bed, crying.

It’s not loud sobbing. In fact, there’s hardly any noise coming from her, and the noise that does come out sounds like a kitten. She doesn’t even notice I’m here. Do I grab my shoes and leave, or do I try to comfort her? I have no idea how I can comfort her, and I could end up making it worse. I’m frozen with indecision until she wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand and sighs. I perceive that she’s no longer actively crying.