Stumbling Through

Being Juvenile

“Shut up, Rick.” Diana slapped his arm to make him be quiet. He just guffawed loudly.

“I’ve got it.” Diana clicked her fingers, before getting up and running to the kitchen. She returned holding a bowl full of cherries. “I dare you,” she said picking up a cherry and biting it away from its stem. “To tie this cherry stem into a knot.”

A few people booed, but Diana raised her hand to silence them. “I’m not finished yet.” She said her eyes scanned the group before landing on someone. She slowly crawled her way towards a startled looking Noah. “Open up.” She ordered taking hold of his chin.

He obliged, opening his mouth, and Diana popped the stem in, before gently shutting his jaw.

Some people started laughing, and Kate chewed her lip slowly, assessing the situation. Then she shrugged and said, “what the hell”, before closing in the distance between herself and Noah, and kissing him full on the lips to retrieve the stem.

People around the circle started cheering loudly, a few taking out their phones to snap pictures.

She spent longer than necessary lip-locked with Noah before pulling back a couple of minutes later, from a dazed looking Noah, and spat out a fully knotted cherry stem, and brandished it the air.

I didn’t know how she managed to do that whilst kissing him, but Noah evidently liked it. He was smiling widely, like he had just won the lottery, which made Kate giggle before crawling away to take back her original seat.

I grinned before raising my fingers to my lips and wolf whistling loudly. I wriggled my eyebrow suggestively at Kate who blushed and looked away again, a smile pulling at her lips.

She quickly distracted herself by leaning over to spin the bottle. It landed on Millie, making the boys cheer extra loudly because almost everyone knew she was pretty much up for any dare. With any boy or girl.

So of course there were yelled suggestions of making her kiss another girl.

After a couple of spins everyone was intently focused on the spinning bottle, waiting to see where it landed. I turned to Derek ready to ask him if he wanted to ditch, when I heard people cheering loudly and Noah hollered out Derek’s name. Derek’s eyes became fixated on the bottle on the floor, and he tensed looking nervous.

Looking down I saw the neck pointing directly towards him. “Uh…” Derek licked his lips and rubbed the palms of his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Truth?” He tried.

Jenifer, who was the one who span the bottle grinned widely shaking her head. “Nuh-uh. This isn’t truth or dare, this is just dares.”  She told him.

Derek winced looking uncomfortable as he brought up his hand to scratch the back of his head. I shot a look to Jenifer to try and tell her to give him an easy one, but she must have misread it because an excited gleam took over her eyes.

“Okay you have a choice.” She told him with a predatory smile. “You can either a) strip naked and go ask the neighbours to use their bathroom, and I assure you there will be people recording-”

She didn’t even need to get all the way to telling Derek his second option before he immediately shot down the first. “No way.” He shook his head, looking sick.

That only made Jenifer’s smile widen. “Or you can b) make out with Willow.” She finished, with a triumphant smirk.

Derek’s eyes widened in horror, and I gave Jenifer a sour look for putting him in this spot. She just winked at me, and moved her eyebrows up and down miming ‘get in there’.