Vanilla

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dedicated to OzBritxx for the lovely banner on the side of the chapter.

As promised, a new chapter. Warning: this one's about to get crazy.

Oh, by the way -- I left Freya out of this chapter entirely. I'm going to cut her out of the rest of the story in editing, but it makes my life a lot easier if I didn't include her in this in the first place. That's why she's missing.

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            There was a reason I didn’t drink.

            Maybe it was because the burning taste of alcohol always made me mildly nauseous. Maybe it was the loss of dignity associated with staggering around, drunk out of your head. Maybe it was that I didn’t like the thought of lending part of my conscious brain to the drink, succumbing to only partial control of my actions.

            There was definitely a reason. But on that particular night, I couldn’t remember what it was no matter how hard I tried.

            I hadn’t intended to go overboard. When the first can of beer had been passed over, I’d already consciously decided to limit myself to just a couple. But somewhere over the course of the evening, Jay had presented the bottles of vodka he’d stashed away in the cooler, and my previous resolve had been washed down with the shots.

            It was a bad choice, but I wasn’t thinking about that. All I was aware of was that each dose of alcohol made the situation with Daniel just that little bit easier to bear, and for that reason, I found myself continuing.

            However, drinking only formed part of the mistake. Getting involved with the game of Truth or Dare Jay was adamant we had to play made up the rest of it.

            “Collette!” he declared, as the empty vodka bottle came to a halt with its lid facing the brunette. Sitting with her legs pulled beneath her, she held a plastic cup in one hand. The other five of us made up the rest of the circle, the bonfire still blazing healthily somewhere behind us. “Pick your victim.”

            Now, we were getting into the swing of the game; the questions had begun to progress from the tame – “What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done?” – toward more explicit varieties. I watched as Collette’s dainty fingers flicked the bottle into its second spin, it later coming to a stop in front of the game’s most eager participant.

            “Oh, look at that,” she drawled, shooting a smirk in Jay’s direction. “Come on then, big boy: truth or dare?”

            “Truth.”

            She groaned. “Come on, man up. I thought you were a shoe-in for a dare.”

            “All in good time,” he shot back, confidence reaching new heights with its alcohol fuel. “This is just a warm-up.”

            “Okay, okay. Fine.” I looked on as she paused, evidently wishing to take time over concocting a suitable question. It was a difficult decision; it had to be something that’d induce just the right amount of embarrassment and squirming. “Tell us, then, Jay. If you’re such a big ladies’ man, how many girls have you slept with?”

            This, for some reason, shut him up. Unnerved by the bluntness of Collette’s question, he seemed to be struggling to settle upon any response from his usual stockpile of witty comebacks. Instead, his mouth began opening and closing in what could only be described as pure goldfish fashion. “Well, I mean… there was just… you know—”