Part One.
"I dare you to…" I said, trailing off as I began looking around my room for inspiration in continuing the game between us that never seemed to end.
Or at least hadn't in the past thirteen years, seeing as it began when Tristan and I were five, swinging next to each other on the playground at recess in kindergarten. It began with a simple, "I dare you to jump of your swing" from his behalf on that fateful day, to the "I dare you to steal that candy bar" the next week (it was a Snickers bar for Randy Vernace; his 6th birthday to be exact), and even one for the books and the ever popular one of the town gossipers, "I dare you to wear your underwear on top of your head for an entire week." Spider-man never saw so many glorious moments until he was thrust on top of Tristan's nine year old buzzed hair cut head.
I could say it was his fault and he could say it was mine that we were still playing our never-ending game of "I Dare You" at 18, but we'd both be lying. It didn't matter who started it. The only things that mattered were who was going to be the first to deny a dare and to always watch out for "Triple Dog Dare Wednesdays" - the third Wednesday of every month and at least half past noon.
I sighed at those memories and found what I was looking for in my room as my eyes wandered into my closet, to the top shelf where my childhood years lay hidden in purple Rubbermaid totes. I left my bed where I was sprawled out against the comforter, through the dirty clothes on the floor, and to the tote labeled "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" despite the fact that there was anything but the given category in there. I giggled in anticipation, knowing me, though probably not Tristan, would fully well enjoy this dare.
"Oh gosh," Tristan mumbled from where I was previously laying, sitting up on his elbows and looking at me through lazy eyes, "she's finally gone crazy. What is it this time, Anna? Another tap-dancing dust bunny, or wait, is it a talking rollie-pollie?"
"That ball of dust was movin', Tris! And that rollie-pollie was totally Spanish. He said 'Hola, me llamo Pedro,' for goodness sake!" I expressed fervently, though not taking his jokes to heart.
I reached for the tote above, dug through it for a second or two, and grabbed a head of hair. Snickering, I hid the item behind my back as I scolded Tristan for trying to sneak a peek around my torso, though I was barely able to finish my sentence through fits of laugher.
"I dare you to… make out with Ken," I chortled, thrusting the doll at him and putting on the most serious face I could manage at the time. "Make it real, too. Don't want to hurt his pride too much, Trissy."
Tristan moaned as he brought his lips to Ken's mothball scented face.
"Ohhh baby!" I chided as I fell onto the floor in a fit of laughter while sounds of (dis)pleasure came from my bed.
"I dare you to… stick your hand in the port-a-potty. Not that one, Anna. That one," Tristan said as he pointed to number five (not 17, the one I immediately glanced to as it looked completely untouched, unharmed, and unused). A greasy man exited from number five, chili dog and nacho cheese stains encrusting his white t-shirt, blending in perfectly with the ones under his armpits.
I groaned, and let out a squeal as a foreboding smell came from number five as we walked towards it. The numbers eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, and finally six went past as Tristan dragged me closer to the stench and the number five.
"You've got to do it, Anna. It's June 23, a Wednesday last time I checked? And if I'm not mistaken, it's at least a quarter past two. Triple Dog Dare Wednesday, Anna. You gotta do it," he said, smirking out his words between his lips.
I began shaking my head in refusal, but froze as I thought for a moment about the repercussions if I were to not accept his dare. A loss, indefinitely, to him after thirteen years of playing our game of Dare, over a simple cleanliness factor that would easily be solved in ten minutes with a sink and a bottle of anti-bacterial soap? Not likely to happen. Never, does Annalise Von Locke, ever turn down a dare. Obviously, I'd rather stick my hand in port-o-potty feces than lose pride and dignity to not only my best friend, but biggest competition.
Plus, the monstrosities which were to follow if one didn't accept a dare were unheard of.
The gloating, the "Na na na na na naah's", the, cringe, defeat by a man (though barely a man he was not, but anatomically speaking he was and made known at his birthday party a month before when Randy questioned his, er, masculinity) was something I couldn't even stomach. And that was saying a lot, seeing as it was only hypothetical thinking.
"You've got yourself a dare," I said, bracing myself for port-a-potty number five, squinting my eyes and plugging my nose as I opened the door and took my dare.
"I dare you to… take Mr. McGreevy's dentures," I whispered. Tristan looked at me like I had three heads and opened his mouth to question me, but I cut him off and continued. "Not just take them Tristan. You've got to replace them with those Halloween vampire fangs that glow in the dark."
We were in the kitchen of the lounge at Seabrook Senior Living and Retirement Home, currently volunteering at their annual "Fall Frolic" to get community service hours to repent for a triple dog dare gone awry. It included Mayor Davidson's toupee, Bernie, the town bum, and a box of sprinkled doughnuts - luckily, Tristan and mine's name rang infamous within the town, so we got hours of community service rather than a night in a holding cell.
"Pfft, too easy," Tristan remarked, as he switched out the plastic fangs with Mr. McGreevy's dentures that were previously resting on his napkin as he was eating his lima beans. "PUT THESE BACK IN WHEN YOU'RE DONE," Tristan yelled, pointing to the vampire fangs on the napkin. "I CLEANED THEM SO NOW THEY'RE FRESH AND DON'T HAVE FOOD IN THEM."
Mr. McGreevy smiled and continued before shoveling another and final spoonful of beans into his mouth, gums flapping as he chewed the last bit and mumbled, "Beans, beans, good for your heart. The more you eat…"
Unable to control ourselves any longer, much less be able to stick around for the outcome of the situation, we bolted from the lounge. Minutes later after we broke down hysterically outside of the room, we heard a faint shrill that made us stop in our tracks as we made our way to the patio for an upcoming jazzercising session.
"Gertrude, the vampires are here! They've already bitten Frank! They done turned him into one of them! Quick, get the garlic!"
"VAMPIRES? QUICK, SAVE THE BEANS!" came Mr. McGreevy's recognizable voice above the mayhem in the dining area.
"I dare you to… eat that slug; no salt. Or hot sauce. Or ketchup, Tristan," I said as I saw him look through the window to the refrigerator.
"Maybe A1 though; a little Worcestershire here, a little teriyaki there. People would kill for this anywhere else, Tris. Consider yourself lucky I'm this generous," I said as we began walking up my driveway one late summer night or morning if we were taking time into consideration. The fireflies had already come and gone, and the morning dew was already starting to encase the lawn in a brilliant shade of crystal.
"Woman," he groaned, "stop with the insects. Didn't you torment me enough with those damn ants? They crawled down my throat, Anna. Crawled, for Christ's sake!"
"I dare you to… profess your undying love for Tyler Johnson's dog, Bo, at the bonfire tonight. And mean it, Anna; make him want to, uh, mark you because your words are so meaningful. You know how Bo doesn't like to be let down; it's not good for his Labrador ego. He's only so strong, Anna… only so strong…" Tristan said, trailing off, grasping my hand in theatrics and trying not to let the laughter he was hiding show.
That night was not fun. It was not fun at all.
I walked into the house smelling like dog pee and showered for at least an hour as my best friend stood outside of the bathroom door, no longer bothering to hide his laughter.
"I dare you to… meow in response to everything. Make it real though; add a little purr here and a seductive me-oow there," I said.
Tristan had a job interview at Pet Palace and I was driving him, as Tyler asked me for a favor in dropping Bo (who was trying to make moves on me that would make anyone, animal or human, blush) for his grooming.
"I'm never going to get a job, woman," he grumbled, in reference to where I had him "moo, bark, quack, howl, and whinny" times before. Surprisingly though, he did get the job at Wendy's with the quack, the only reason why he couldn't keep he job was because they needed a person who spoke fluent Dutch, not Duck.
"A dare for Anna? A dare for my Anna, banana, fi-fy-fonana that she's not going to remember in the morning but wild enough to make Miss Drunky uncomfortable… "
My heart sped up at the words 'my Anna' but I threw it out as the alcohol and not the fact that I had feelings for my best friend. We were sitting out back in the screened-in porch on a futon that had seen its better days, but no better moments than the ones Tristan I brought to it.
It was the night of our shared graduation party, and I would be lying if I told you we weren't completely intoxicated. Everyone who was invited was long gone; home with their person of the night or preparing early for what would be a horrendous hangover. Our mothers were "coincidentally" out with their book club that night, for they knew they could trust us with the party; knew they could trust us to stay levelheaded throughout the festivities.
And we did.
Tristan and I stayed sober long enough, right up until Randy Vernace and his girlfriend, Leslie, left. They were the last ones to leave and right as their car started, so did the drinking for us. It was then many minutes and discarded bottles and cups of who knows what that led us to the situation we were in.
"You make me uncomfortable sometimes, y'know," I said before hiccupping and bringing the drink in my hand to my lips for another swig of unidentifiable punch that included less legal substances than the advertised Sprite and fruit punch. I leaned my head back against the old futon we were on, my hair fanning behind me as we sat there, enjoying the night and each other's company.
"I do?" he asked, eyes widening at the sudden realization. He brought his lips to his drink and stared at me over the rim of the red plastic cup.
"Yeah. You give me - hic - this look sometimes like you - hic - want to jump my bones; but hey, I feel the same - hic - way. What's a girl to - hic - do when her best friend - hic - looks at her? Don't wanna - hic - ruin the friendship. That - hic - wouldn't be very nice…" I trailed off, my incessant rambling taking over the words flowing from my mouth just as the alcohol was with my body.
"You notice those?" Tristan asked, scooting ever slightly closer to me on the futon, his cup banging against the wood of the deck as it suddenly fell from his hand.
"Mmhmm," I said as I moved closer to Tristan, sighing in content as my body found his own, morphing to mine as I slid into the contours his side provided. He moved his arm around my shoulder, pulling me against him as we closed the space between us. We sat there for a moment and all that was heard was the synchronized beating in our chests; his, picking up ever so slightly when I brought my arm around his waist and snuggled even closer to the guy my fate of dares rested with for the time being. The hiccupping was long gone, and all that was left now was the tension of a dare.
"One more dare for the night, okay Tris? You know that tomorrow morning the last thing I'm going to want to do is a dare with a splitting headache," I said, yawning as I turned over onto my back, my head resting in Tristan's lap. He began stroking my hair, a gentle lull into dreams. "If you keep doing that, I'm going to fall asleep. That means no dare, which means that in the morning when you wake me up with some spectacular dare of yours, I'm going to hurt you in the most painful--"
My words were cut off by Tristan's mouth over mine, stopping me from any other threats. His lips moved over mine in the way I knew they always would, though denial always pushed away really how good they would feel. They worked steadily, and I, completely lost in the moment, groaned into Tristan's mouth at one point. He smiled against the kiss, and then removed his lips from mine, hovering in a way that told me he was reluctant to leave my mouth so soon. He sat up as he did before our, mutual meeting of lips, as if nothing happened. No, not completely stoic in the sense you might imagine, just putting it off as something as mundane and trivial as the weather
"Dare complete. Go to bed, Anna," Tristan said, as he began running his fingers back through my hair. "It's not like you're going to remember any of this in the morning, anyway."
He was wrong.
I remembered all of that evening, that moment in time where everything felt so right when his lips were against mine. I remembered the kiss that came from nowhere and led us nowhere. But still, the fact that it existed made my heart bungee jump into my throat and reduced me to a blubbering fool. And those reactions were only to the thoughts of it. God forbid Tristan and I actually speak about it.
It hurt. No, not the moments in time when a certain vital organ was stuck in my throat as I sat in my room and contemplated my love life. No, the moments that hurt the worst were when I was sitting beside him and had to pretend that nothing happened between us. It hurt that we were able to talk about anything and everything in the past, yet when it came to physical relations (not even drastic ones, mind you; it was just a kiss, for crying out loud!) we couldn't even utter a word, much less talk about it.
And really, that's all I wanted to do. But like everything else we did, it was a game. If he wanted to come around and talk about it, I surely would have. If he wanted to recognize that something happened between us, I'd be the first to prove it in a heartbeat.
But, just like the game, no one wanted to admit to losing - to admit that something happened and it was more than a dare.
And I know I wasn't going to until he did.