A little story I wrote with just some sweet summer love. Very light and cheery for a change, and I hope you like it. After you read it, please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

“Okay,” I said to him, half-gazing at the warm embers in the fire, half gazing into his light eyes. Through the light blue of them, I could see the red, orange and yellow flames reflected into the world. “Lets play a game.”

All the campers had gone back to their cabins, and since we had the day off tomorrow, Kristen said we could stay late at the fire. So Christian and I were sitting by the fire, enjoying the dying warmth emanated from it.

“Oh yeah?” he replied, smiling. I could hear that he was teasing me from the sound of his voice, the end of his statement curling up like a question. “What game do you intend to have us play? Would it be knot? Or the trust game? Or have you found some way to play the hug game with just the two of us?”

I laughed at him and gently nudge him in the shoulder. “We’re going to play Truth or Dare.”

The air around us suddenly seemed to go silent, all except for the cracking fire wood and the lapsing waves hitting the soft sand in front of us. Both of us had been at the Truth or Dare game the last night before all the campers came in. How intense it had gotten was legendary; I could still hear some councilors talking about it in hushed tones. Marissa was a legend at that game now, all because of Christian.

“Hey guys!” Lindsey shouted to all of us excitedly in all of her shortness. She was loved amongst the campers for a reason; she acted just like them, and with her pigtales and girly attitude, it was probably because she most like them out of all of us. “Let’s play truth or dare! It’s the last night before we have to actually start working and not just partying; lets go down with a bang!”

We all laughed at her and foolishly agreed. It was all going great, with some very interesting dares (we were in the middle of a forest, mixed genders, and really had only the light of a tiny lantern in the middle of the circle we formed. It’s really not a surprise what happened…). What made the game interesting was when it was Marissa’s turn to ask someone “truth or dare?”. She decided to ask me.

Christain and I had been eyeing each other, and I guess some (like Marissa)would say we had been flirting with each other (especially when we had to do a trust building exercise…which was form a human knot. I ended up having my head in his crotch. With a guy you barely know, it was about as awkward as it got).

“El, Truth or dare?” Melissa asked me.

I had already made up my mind. I wasn’t going to be spilling my guts out to everyone here, so I immediately responded with, “Dare”.

“Hook up with Christian.” Hey eyebrows rose, as if to challenge me. I personally wasn’t going to back down—I had had my head in his crotch, a make-out session wasn’t really going to be more awkward.

However, what made this particular dare different was Christian’s response.

He simply got us and left. He didn’t say a word, didn’t look back. He just got up and left into the pitch-black forest.

I didn’t know why, at the time. Christian had done lots worse here already (This wasn’t our first game of truth or dare, to say the least, and the others games weren’t exactly kid appropriate—what can I say? We were all a bunch of teenagers, high school seniors to college sophomores). I couldn’t understand why he just got up and left us. But he did, and only spoke about it to me.

“Why would you want to do that again?” Christian said. I could hear his playful laughter turn hard and icy into frustration.

I was walking back to my cabin after fourth block, planning on cleaning the cabin during the free period before dinner when I ran into him.

“Ellie! Wait a second,” Christian shouted, jogging up to me and dodging roots in his way.

I ignored him, my pride offended from last night. Instead of stopping, I pulled a classic move and sped up. He caught up with me though, and kept up with my pace. “Ellie,” he tried again, and again I ignored him.

“Ellie, please, let me explain about last night.” In reply, I turned my head, looking instead of into his sky-blue eyes and sand colored hair into the forest around us. “Please El, just one minute. Give me one minute, okay?”

I turned my head forward, but didn’t say anything. He took it as the okay to go on.

“I don’t know how to say this, and I know you’re probably hurt and offended, and I’m not going to say that you shouldn’t be. But what I did last night wasn’t because I hate you, or didn’t want to kiss you—believe me I—” He cut himself off then, as if he had said too much information.

“You what?” I said, stopping abruptly and turning to face him. His face looked relieved, and words started pouring from his mouth. It seemed as though he was talking faster than most girls do (myself included).

“Honestly, I would love to kiss you. You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I’m crazy about you. But I don’t want to kiss you because of a dare. I want to kiss you because…well…for the sake of kissing. Honestly, Ellie, I cant stop thinking about you, everything I see reminds me of you somehow, and we’ve only known each other for what, a week? Eight days tops? I know I’m crazy, but at least I admit it. So that’s why I didn’t make out with you last night; why I left the game. Please forgive me, or at least speak to me.”

At the moment, the only thing I could think about was the fact that he had humiliated me in front of all the councilors. I was hearing laughter about it everyone where I went, or worse, pity looks. I hated pity, and I didn’t want any part of it. It didn’t matter that he was probably just as crazy obsessed as I was, just as insane, and just as adoring as I was.

“That’s why? Because you wanted to feed some fantasy of yours? What did you think we would kiss under the setting sun on a romantic beach? Is that why you humiliated me?” My words were cold and sharp, and I could tell they had pierced him to the soul. His face broke and I quickly wanted to take my words back, to eat them up. But it was too late, he had already heard them and was already broken by them.

Before I could see any tears run down his face, he nodded and walked off. I was frozen in place; how could I have been so mean? How could I have acted so coldhearted? Now there was no chance to fuel my fantasy. I would be lucky if he so much as glanced at me after what I had just said.

“Because this one is just us, no one else. So no one else can tell us what to do,” I said, trying to convince him. I had one question in mind that I needed him to answer before anything happened.

There was a moment of heavy silence. He just sat there, gazing at the fire, deep in concentration, obviously contemplating my suggestion. It had been nearly six weeks since that dreadful day of truth or dare; nearly six weeks to get to know each other. And since we were assigned the same schedules, we really knew a lot about each other. I knew nearly everything about him, except his age.

I’ve asked him before, told him I was 18, made hints for him to say his name, even give me a clue. All because I wasn’t going to start anything with someone who wasn’t legal.

When you looked at the two of us together, we looks like we could both easily be 16 or 18, but we looked the same age (the other councilor’s in my cabin have discussed it with me). Really, the age shouldn’t bug me, shouldn’t be such a small difference. We knew he was at least 17 to be watching a senior camper cabin. But that one year made all the difference. I knew it shouldn’t, but after my best friend got in major trouble because she was dating someone under 18 right after she turned 18 (her boyfriend of two years), I didn’t exactly want to risk that happening to me.

So naturally, to avoid any messes like that happening to me, any guy I even considered had to be 18 or over. And I wasn’t going to risk anything just because he looked like he could be 18.

“Alright.” He said suddenly. “For you, El, I’ll play the game with you.” He finally turned from the fire, and instead of his eyes being cold and hard, they seemed warm and happy, almost as if the fire had melted the ice and made him humor me.

There was a reason why I was suggesting this game, when we were alone. It wasn’t just because we had nothing else to do (because I’m sure we could find something to do), but because I was on a mission.

“Who should go first,” I asked. I already knew what I was going to ask, and which answer I was going to share.

“How about you, he said, turning his body to face mine more properly. I looked at our feet in the sand. My flipflops and his thick sandals were lying a pile a few feet away. I dug my toes into the sand, enjoying how the top was warm from the sun and the fire, but as I dug my feet into the mixture, it got colder and colder.

I wasn’t really looking at anything he was doing, so when his toes touched mine I looked up in alarm. He was smiling shyly at me, as if waiting for me to say whether this was against the rules or not. I wasn’t going to move, but I wasn’t going to encourage him either. Well, at least not until I asked my question.

“Alright,” I whispered, breaking the silence. “Truth or Dare?”

He smiled and said, “Dare.” This put a tiny damper on my plans, but I quickly made up for it.

“I dare you to pick truth next round and answer the question no matter what.” I had to make sure he would answer it, and with my wording he wouldn’t be able to get up and simply walk away like he did six long weeks ago.

He smiled sadly, as if half expecting that. It didn’t make sense, but who was I to judge his mind? I’m surprised he was still able to handle my company with my crazy mood swings. “You’re turn,” I said even more quietly, barely audible.

“Truth or Dare?”

“Dare,” I said a half second later, not really caring what he dared me to do.

Getting a mischevious smile on his face, he said, “I dare you to pick dare next round no matter what.”

I laughed at his dare. I always chose dare, didn’t he know that by now? Regardless, I went along with it and nodded.

“Truth or dare,” I said, looking him in the eye.

“You already know the answer that one,” he said, holding my eyes captive. They were a greenish blue, a mix of the two with equal streaks of both.

“Alright,” I said, taking a deep breath, knowing this was it. This was the moment of truth, this was what would decide whether we could even hook up or not. “How old are you?”

I saw a twinkle in his eyes. Almost immediately he answered, “Eighteen.”

I took in a breath, and smiled at him. Almost instantly, I found his feet mixing in with the sand some more around mine. Unknowingly, I moved forward, tangling our legs together. I could just reach out my arm and touch his face we were so close.

“Truth or dare?”

“Dare. Always and forever,” I said, half breathless. This game had gotten much more serious than just a game, and we both knew it.

“Kiss me.”

We both leaned forward, and our lips collided for only a second before he pulled back. It was only for a second, but I unintentionally leaned forward with him, to continue our tiny little sweet kiss. I almost expected him to push me away, but instead I saw a fire in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in his eyes. I had only seen that fire once before in my life, and the results were me loosing my virginity with a one-night stand.

He wrapped his fingers into my hair, pulling me closer to him. I did the same, finally tangling my fingers into his hair. It was cut in a way that made him look amazing and wonderful and hot and breathtaking. At this moment, I was glad it wasn’t styled with hair gel, or really anything. We were kissing so fiercely, I didn’t even realize Christian was now on his pack, looking up into my eyes.

There was a small strand of hair lying by his eyes. I pushed it out of the way with my fingers gently, as if her were a small child. But fixing just one hair didn’t look right; the other hair was going in the opposite direction, so I decided I would just plain attempt to style his hair without any spray or gel. Lying on the beach with only the moonlight to see, he looked even more breathtaking than usual. It was hard to imagine that he was the one that wanted me just as badly as I wanted him.

After his hair was fixed, he kissed me again, but it was gentler this time, not as ravish and needy. It was sweet and caring. It was one of the last kisses we had shared that night.

“Come on,” he said, rolling me onto my side while he got up. I just lay there, staring at him, marveling at the miracle that had just happened. He grabbed my waist and lifted me up to my feet. I guess being so petit had it’s advantages.

Taking his hand, we slipped on our shoes then walked back to the trail towards the cabins. I knew that tonight would be continued, most likely tomorrow on our day off, but for now, we were enjoying ourselves and the peace. Perhaps Truth or Dare wasn’t such a horrible game after all.

Soundtrack to this story:

Happy - NeverShoutNever - The Summer

Another happy story from me, wonder whats going on? Well, I'm glad that you read it and I hope you review it somehow. Either via twitter ( cbeyondbooks) LiveJournal (bookluvrwriter) e-mail (see profile) leaving an anonymous comment here. Thank you so very much again and I hope you enjoyed it! Also, please check out my other stories! I've heard great things from all of them. Thanks again!

-Hope Flies