Adore You | ✔

Chapter 23

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Chapter 23

"Ladies and gentlemen," their personal chef announced. "Your dinner is ready."

"Finally, I am starving." I heard one of her cousins say.

Everyone took their seat, and the kitchen staff brought out our first course.

Robbie sat next to me at one end of the long table and his mother at the other end. Abigail sat on his right side in front of me.

"Do you know what spoon to use, Lia?" She asked me with a fake smile.

"Yes," I answered. "I've seen Pretty Woman and Titanic," I smiled back at her. I heard Maria stifle a laugh and shake her head next to me.

Abigail frowned and turned her attention to Maria. "So, Maria, any plans for school this year?"

"Aside from the first event? No. Why Abigail, you have any ideas?"

"No, just curious if you started planning the fall charity dance."

"Lana and I are working on it."

"What booths are there going to be this year?"

"If you are wondering if the blindfolded booth will be up, the answer is yes. It was a hit last year." Maria responded.

I turned to look at her "blindfolded booth?"

"Yeah, it's a dumb idea Lana's older sister thought of years ago. It's like 7 minutes in heaven, except you're both in a booth blindfolded. You then place bets on who kissed who. Most of the time, everyone is wrong, and we make a lot of money."

"Make a lot of money?"

"Yeah, we open it up for everyone to participate but then have a raffle for who will actually be entering the booths. Usually, we entice people by choosing the more popular kids as headliners who will be waiting in the booths and then open it up to everyone."

"Sound gross," I said at the thought of kissing a complete stranger.

"Don't worry, we open it to the public, but we don't really let random people participate. Like we automatically do not pick any freshman. You only get picked as a sophomore if you would make things —interesting." Abigail answered.

"What she means is we only open it to sophomores if they are extremely attractive," Abigail said.

I got a distinct impression that she had been a chosen sophomore the year before.

Maria nodded. "Even then, we hand select everyone else and then fill up the raffle box with the same 20 names. We memorize who we are actually choosing."

"So, it all pre-planned?" I asked

"Yes and no. The person who you paired up with is not pre-planned. It is out of the 20 hand-picked people, but after that, it is random."

"Oh. Sounds dishonest." I answered.

"It is," Robbie said, breaking his silence.

"Well, yeah, it is," said Abigail rolling her eyes at him. "If we let randos start kissing randos, it would turn into a herpes fest. Gross."

Maria nodded. "She's right. While the idea of having an open kissing booth seems fun, in practicality, it would be pretty nasty."

"You want a chance at a booth, Lia? Get matched with a cute sophomore. They'll kiss anyone if they are older." Abigail sneered.