“We need to celebrate.”
“What are we celebrating?” I wondered.
Baker rolled her eyes at me and took a sip of her coffee. “You and Kenton finally got together and we have to celebrate,” She informed me.
“You’re just looking for an excuse to throw some party and get drunk again, aren’t you?” I laughed, drinking from my hot chocolate. Because the guys wanted to go to that basketball game, going to the art gallery was postponed for a day, and that was where we were then, at the art gallery that Rosa wanted to go to. Well, I couldn’t tell if it was a museum or a gallery, but either way it was pretty cool. We were there all day though, so Baker and I were taking a small break of exploring to go to the small café that was inside of the building.
“Maybe,” She conceded with an innocent shrug. “But this really is super exciting news, don’t you think so?”
“I mean, I’m super excited about it obviously, but I don’t think everybody will think of it as a reason to celebrate,” I informed her giddily.
“Are you kidding?” Baker laughed. “It is a relief to everybody that you’re finally not just awkwardly flirting with each other, I can assure you that. Does anybody else know that you two kissed?”
“All of the guys do, considering they were there when it happened and then I told all of the girls this morning so yeah, everybody knows.”
“Wait, why were the guys there?”
“Because Kenton was trying to be romantic on the top of the bus, so it was just us two up there and it was really super cute and he was like ‘let’s just be insane’ and then he let it slip about what supposedly happened when we played truth or dare a little bit ago and he said that we kissed, Kenton and I, and so I just had to ruin the moment by freaking out and so I went to attack Ross but Kenton stopped me and just kissed me there on the bus. Technically, you guys were there, you were all just asleep.”
“He told you what happened?” She asked me with a giggle.
“Not everything, just what I could assume. Why? Is there more to it than us kissing?” I asked her with raised eyebrows.
She shrugged and stood up from the table. “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask your new boyfriend about that.”
“Baker,” I whined, following her out of the café and dropping our cups off in the trash as we left to go find everyone else.
“What?” She laughed innocently. “I’m not going to be the one to tell you. Obviously, you didn’t have sex or anything, so I’m not getting involved.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “Be that way.”
We found Rosa, Erin and Sydney looking at some photography pieces set up in one of the well lit room of the gallery. “Hey, there’s the lover girl,” Rosa sang when we approached them.
“You guys are dumb,” I giggled softly. “Are we allowed to touch that?”
“It’s a museum,” Erin reminded me. “You can’t touch anything.”
“But that kind of looks like it’s supposed to be touched,” I defended, pointing to the sculpture that was sitting in the middle of the elegant room. “It’s all big and smooth.”
“You have a boyfriend for that,” Sydney grinned.
“Yeah, there is no way that that sentence can’t be taken in a dirty way,” Baker snickered.
“Okay, that sounded very wrong,” I agreed with a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean that the statue isn’t just screaming ‘touch me!’ Doesn’t it look like fun?”
“Yeah, that didn’t sound any better,” Erin piped.
“Okay, you’re all perverts,” I teased with a playful eye roll. “Where are the guys?”
Everyone gave a one shouldered shrug at the question, looking around the small room as if they’d be hiding in one of the corners or something. “I think they went back to the bus,” Sydney guessed after a minute.
“Or that fancy sports bar across the parking lot,” Grace suggested. “That’s probably where they are.”
And sure enough, that’s where they were. Since Rosa was done examining every single piece of art in that fancy museum, we decided to make the journey across the parking lot, which wasn’t very far at all, to that sports bar. It was pretty empty because it was four o’clock on the afternoon on a Thursday and according to the big poster on the window, Tuesday is karaoke night, so we clearly missed the party.
“Aw man, how’d you guys find us?” Turner whined with a mouth full of wings when he noticed us walking into the nearly empty restaurant. They were all sitting at the bar, but they were only drinking pop, which looked really funny because they reminded me of little boys who were trying to grow up too fast or something and it was adorable.
“It’s a sports bar,” Sydney reminded him. “The only other place you could be was that JC Penny’s over there, so we just gambled on which one you’d be at.”
Kenton was sitting on the end, to the left of Ross, so I joined him, sitting in the empty stool beside his. After kissing last night, we decided to try the whole insane boyfriend/girlfriend thing because last night, when he surprise kissed me, I realized that crying during this trip really would suck, but for some reason, I think Kenton could be worth it. So yeah, we were seriously official and we spent most of last night sitting up and talking about random stuff even after all of the guys were asleep, we stayed up talking and then eventually, we were just making out until like, three in the morning when we finally fell asleep together.
“Are you hungry?” Kenton wondered as I stole one of his barbeque wings.
“I’m starving,” I admitted sheepishly. The bar was pretty long, so I guess the place was probably really popular during busy hours, so we were all able to fit around it as the bar tender moved around getting everyone’s drinks. He was kind of cute, the bar tender was, and it was obvious that all of the girls thought so, because they were all blatantly flirting with the guy. Except for Grace, obviously.
“Okay, so I’m thinking that tonight is the perfect night to get out the second bottle of tequila,” Baker chirped from my right hand side after the bartender got all of our drink orders.
“What for?” Gaige asked. “Not that I’m complaining, because I’m not, but what for?”
“Are you stupid?” She wondered with raised eyebrows. “Kenton and Lanie, you idiot.”
“Rude much?” He wondered.
“They’re celebrating us?” Kenton wondered, zoning out Gaige and Baker’s friendly bicker.
“Yep,” I shrugged. “We’re adorable.”
He nodded in agreement, leaning over and pressing his lips to mine. “Yeah, we are.”
“I’m not drinking this time though,” I decided as the cute bar tender brought out our drinks and took our food order. The guys already had their food, but since we were just getting there, we had to order ours which meant that the guys were going to have to wait for us to finish because they’d finish before us.
“Why not?” He wondered with a small grin. “Are you afraid that you’re going to make out with me again?”
“No,” I giggled. “I’m just not going to drink because I’m sure that I’ll still get way too drunk and do something way too embarrassing and then I won’t remember it but everyone else will and I’ll find out way later and I’ll be embarrassed about it then.”
“That’s very paranoid of you,” Kenton teased.
“It already happened,” I reminded him with a giggle. “So I have a good reason to believe that that would happen if I drank too much.”
“Okay, I can see how you’d think that,” He appeased me just before my food came out and I began to devour it all.
After everyone finished eating and the four single girls nearly got us kicked out of the sports bar for sexually harassing the bar tender (who made it clear that he was way too old for an 18 year old), we got back on the bus and I took a turn driving. I drove for about two hours and I think we passed a state border but in all honesty, I don’t think any of us knew what state we were in anymore because we just stopped paying attention to that a while ago.
Anyway, we drove until we found a country-ish area where there weren’t a lot of people around and it would be easy to park a bus without anybody questioning why there was a bus randomly parked on the side of the road. We were between a cornfield and a horse pasture without any horses on it when we decided to stop for the night at around eight at night.
“Tequila!” Erin squealed excitedly. “Are we going to play spin the bottle again?”
There were four no’s and five yes’s and they were all at the same exact time with the same exact urgency.
“We’ll figure that out later,” She laughed, grabbing one of the tall glass bottles before somebody grabbed a radio powered stereo and we all got off of the bus and stopped right beside the corn field. I think it’d be really fun to run through that corn, but I would never do that in the dark because everybody knows that aliens live in the corn fields and I don’t want to get abducted by aliens. Especially now that I have a lovely new boyfriend.
“To Lanie and Kent!” Grace cheered, taking the bottle of tequila from Erin and opening the top of it before guzzling down one big gulp.
I giggled and then felt Kenton’s strong arm wrap around my midsection as he pressed a kiss to my cheek. “We’re kind of famous.”
“Sure, if that’s how you want to look at it,” I chirped optimistically. “I promise you that it’s going to get weird though.”
“Yeah, I figured,” He agreed with a nod before kissing me again, only this time on my lips and it felt really amazing. “Let’s enjoy it as much as we can before they make it weird.”
Laughing, I nodded and leaned into his arms. “I agree completely.”
“Oh, but before we do that, I have to tell you something,” He piped.
“And what is this thing that you have to tell me?” I wondered giddily.
“I have to take you out on a date,” Kenton informed me. “I mean, I know it’s old fashion but I’m going to do it anyway. Obviously, it won’t be all too special and you’ll have to give me a redo date when we get home and I can actually take you out.”
“You want to go on a date?” I repeated in awe. I’ve had a few boyfriends, but none of them have ever suggested taking me on a serious first date and that was the most adorable thing I’d ever heard. Even with Mike, my last boyfriend, when we went out to like, movies or going to dinner or something, most of the time I’d have to pay for myself. Call me old fashioned, but I always thought that the guy was supposed to pay for dinner and stuff like that.
“Yeah,” He nodded in confirmation. “Is that too cheesy?”
“No,” I giggled. “I mean, it’s totally cheesy, but I’m pretty sure that there is no such thing as too cheesy.”
Kenton gave me a challenging grin. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll rethink that statement eventually.”
“I’m sure I won’t,” I sang as Legendary Lovers by Katy Perry began belting out of the old wireless stereo and Grace and Erin, who had already had a few drinks of the tequila, started dancing around crazily in the grass while Cory and the rest of the guys were standing around them laughing. I mean, they weren’t laughing at the girls, they were laughing with them, but it was really funny, the way that they were dancing and then falling over into the grass before getting up and starting to dance again.
“Lanie, stop being a dumb girl and come dance with us!” Baker insisted, handing the now half empty bottle of tequila to Kenton so that she could grab me and steal me away from my boyfriend (yes, I really loved saying that word as much as I possibly could because it felt like such a magical word to me).
“But isn’t this a celebration of me and Kenton being together?” I wondered with raised eyebrows as she took me over to Grace and Erin who were still idiotically dancing- or at least trying to dance.
“You still have to dance, missy,” She drunkenly giggled before letting out a long burp and then another bubble of giggles as she started shaking her blonde hair around crazily.
“But-“
“I’m drunk and you’re wrong,” She interrupted me. “Now dance!”
I rolled my eyes at my drunk best friend and decided to just go along with it and dance with her because they seemed to be having fun with it so I might as well. I started swaying my hips and throwing my hands into the air with the beat of the song, jumping up and down stupidly with Baker, Erin, and Grace. Rosa was sitting in the grass talking to Turner about something and Sydney was standing with Cory and Logan while they observed us and laughed for a while at how stupid we looked dancing like nobody was watching.
“Are you drunk yet?” Baker yelled at me, even though the music wasn’t that loud and there was no reason to yell, I guess she was just that drunk already.
“I haven’t even had a drink yet, Bake,” I laughed.
“Take a drink!” She insisted, searching around our group of friends, probably looking for the tequila bottle.
“I’m not going to drink,” I told her. “But I’m dancing with you, so it doesn’t matter if I drink or not, right?”
“Party pooper,” She sang, but then quickly forgot the subject when one of her favorite songs came on the stereo so she completely lost herself and started dancing again. I laughed, suddenly thinking about the rats nest that she’d have glued to her hair tomorrow morning with the way that she was shaking her head around in angles that her head probably shouldn’t be shaken.
“You look like you’re having fun,” I heard Kenton mutter in my ear as he approached from behind me and wrapped his arms around my midsection, effectively pressing his front into my back.
“I think she’s having more fun than me,” I laughed, motioning towards Baker, who was now falling down with almost every sway of her hips, but she was relentlessly getting back up and starting to dance again.
“True,” He agreed with a laugh. “Do you want to dance?”
“I’m all danced out,” I admitted with a sigh.
“The bottle’s empty,” Erin pointed out loudly as she watched Logan chug the last of the tequila. “Spin the bottle!”
“Erin, no,” Sydney laughed. “We’re not just going to keep playing that middle school game every time the bottle is empty.”
“Oh, come on, Syd, don’t be a party pooper,” Ross complained. I was pretty sure that the only reason he wanted to play spin the bottle again was to see two of the girls make out again though, because he’s a pervert, like most of the guys on that trip, so they were all pretty enthusiastic about playing the idiotic game again, but none of the girls save for Erin wanted to play.
“I’m not doing that tonight,” Rosa sighed with a shake of her head. “I definitely didn’t have enough to drink to start that crap again.”
“Well, we have to do something exciting,” Baker insisted with a slur in her voice. “Like, strip poker!”
“None of us know how to play poker, Bake,” I reminded her with a small laugh. Even if we did, though, I would never play strip poker- especially not completely sober and only twenty-four hours into a relationship with an amazing human being.
“Let’s just get naked then,” She shrugged, causing Ross and Gaige to start laughing and then agreeing profusely.
“That’s the best idea you’ve ever had, Bakes,” Ross informed her. “You should go ahead and do that.”
“Strip go fish!” Baker squealed instead of listening to Ross, which was a good thing because if she started taking her clothes off, I probably would have been the one to play mom and stop her because if I didn’t, she’d definitely slap me the day after for letting her do something so embarrassing.
“We all know how to play go fish, right?” Erin wondered with raised eyebrows. “That’s a perfect idea!”
“I’ll go get the cards,” Turner piped, hurrying back into the bus for a deck of cards so that all of my idiotic friends could play “strip go fish”.
“Are you going to play?” I asked my lovely boyfriend (there’s that wonderful word again) as he still had his arms linked around my belly.
“I’m good,” He laughed. “You go ahead and play if you want to though.”
“I’m not going to do that,” I denied with a shake of my head. “Maybe next time.”
“We could just go inside and play just us two,” Kenton joked with a soft kiss on my cheek.
I giggled and crinkled my nose in distaste- although seeing him without clothes on was the most appealing idea ever, sober or not, but I wasn’t going to tell him that because then I’d sound like a seriously creepy pervert, which might be a possibility when it came to Kenton, but I wasn’t going to tell him that either, obviously. “Maybe some other time.”
So Turner returned from the bus a few minutes later with the old deck of cards that Ross and Kenton were playing with a while back. Everyone sat around in a big circle in the grass and because it was so dark, we had this really bright lantern sitting in the center of the “pond”. Kenton and I sat in the circle with everyone else, but when they passed out the hands of cards, we didn’t get any because we decided not to play. However, I figured that this would be interesting and I didn’t want to miss anything, so I refused to go back into the bus and be a buzz kill. Especially when this silly celebration was for me in the first place.
“Wait, before we start, I have a question,” Grace piped, raising her hand as if she was in school or something. “When do we have to take off a piece of clothing?”
“When you go fish,” Erin clarified.
“And jewelry doesn’t count,” Logan added.
“Well then neither do your sunglasses,” Sydney fired at him.
“I’ll be the judge!” I cheered, since I wasn’t playing, I could be at least involved by judging what counted as clothes or not.
“Yeah, Kenton and Lanie will be the judges, because they’re sober party poopers,” Erin chirped.
I rolled my eyes at her and then shuffled the deck because it was now my job to deal out the cards. I handed all ten players their decks and then placed the rest of the cards in the center of the circle with the super bright lantern, even though there weren’t that many cards left over since there were so many people playing.
“Who goes first, Lanie?” Cory asked, looking up at me as everyone analyzed their cards.
“Um, Baker,” I decided, since she was sitting to my right. “And it’ll go clockwise.”
I felt Kenton snake his fingers through mine so that we were holding hands in the grass and it was such a simple gesture, but it felt so amazing to be holding his hand. He had an amazing hand, no matter how ridiculous that sounded, it was true. His hand was warm and strong and safe and just so amazing. Grace took her turn, but I wasn’t paying attention because I was so caught up in reveling in the warmth of Kenton’s amazingly wonderful hand holding skills.
“Shoes don’t count!” Ross whined as Baker slipped off her Old Navy flip flops.
“Yes they do,” I argued, finally snapping out of my weird daze. “But they only count as one, so you have to take them both off.”
“Obviously,” Baker agreed, grabbing a card from the tiny pond of cards before Gaige took his turn.
“Erin, do you have any 8s?” He asked, looking down at his deck. It looked like he was trying to think of some strategy, but they were all so drunk that I wasn’t sure if he was actually trying to strategize or thinking of something really ridiculous just with a very concentrated face.
“Yes,” She groaned, handing him a card across the circle. Gaige didn’t get to go again, because that was the rule in strip go fish, I’d decided, but because he didn’t have to go fish, he just didn’t have to take off any clothes- which I think Baker was super disappointed about, because I noticed that she was eyeing him like a hungry wolf right before Erin shot him down with a yes. She was really weird when she was drunk, Baker was.
“Cory, do you have any kings?” Erin wondered.
“Nope,” He grinned sloppily.
After a few turns, the pond was gone, so if somebody had to go fish, they didn’t get an extra card, they just had to take off an article of clothing. The trick of the game turned into trying to figure out who in the group had the cards that you wanted. Everyone lost their shoes first, and then Ross and Logan lost their shirts along with Grace and Sydney. Rosa had it the worst out of them all, I think, because she had already lost her shoes, shirt, and shorts, so she was just sitting there in her underwear. Luckily for her, she was too drunk to care that all four of the single guys were ogling over her as if they’d never seen a girl in underwear before (which they all have because I happen to know that none of them were virgins).
“Go fish!” Baker sang in Logan’s face when he asked her for a seven.
He sighed loudly and then stood up, proudly dropping his pants into the grass and then kicking them into Baker’s face, which only caused her to giggle.
“You wish I was in your pants,” She teased him, tossing the jeans to the side.
“You wish that I wish you were in my pants, babe,” He drunkenly grinned.
“You’re both idiots,” I laughed, resting my head on Kenton’s shoulder as I began to grow a bit tired.
At the end of the game, Turner was the winner and he still had his pants, which was more than what anybody else could say. Gaige and Baker turned out to be the worst losers ever with the worst luck of the bunch, because they had lost all of their clothes. Kenton and I, being the judges of the game, had told them that it would be okay for them to just admit defeat and keep their dignity with their last article of clothing, but neither one of them accepted the offer. Basically, what I’m saying is that they both ended up completely naked by the end of the game and they were so drunk that they didn’t care at all.
Both Kenton and I were laughing so hard at the fact that they were just sitting there so nonchalant about being so butt naked outside in front of eleven other people. Obviously, I made it a point not to look at Gaige at all. You see, I’ve been friends with these guys for a really long time and I’d always tried to make it a priority to never see their man parts ever. They wouldn’t care though, because they’d always get dressed in front of me and stuff but I’d look away as fast as I could. I’m proud to say that I’d only seen one of their man parts and that was because Baker and I were teasing Ross one night about having a small… you know. We only did it because we knew that it irked him, and it was so hard to irk that boy, so we prodded and made up a little song about it and then when he had enough, he just stood up and pulled down his pants without giving us a chance to look away. I have never teased him about his size ever again- because it’s actually not small at all and I hate myself for knowing that.
Anyway, I did not want to see Gaige’s man parts because I would never be able to look at him the same way again no matter what. It was different with Baker though, because we’d been best friends since we were babies, so I’d seen her girly parts multiple times. We used to take baths together when we were little so it wasn’t a big deal. Of course, I still tried to keep her out of my plane of vision because just because I’ve seen it before, doesn’t mean that I want to see my best friend naked.
“I feel like I should get a reward for winning,” Turner decided as we all got up to go back into the bus.
“Dude, you’re surrounded by half naked and naked chicks,” Ross pointed out as he started to get dressed again. “That’s a reward enough.”
Turner grinned widely and then looked around the group, watching as all of the girls started getting dressed again. I knew that he was going to start some trouble with that drunk trouble making grin, so I grabbed Kenton’s hand and started dragging him towards the bus. “It’s time for us to go, goodnight you guys,” I called just as I heard a few girly screeches.
“Give me back my bra!” I heard Rosa squeal and then a few guys erupted in laughter.
“You’re not going to go help her?” Kenton laughed without looking back.
I hopped into the bus and then Kenton followed. “Nah,” I shrugged. “They’ll figure it out.”
“That’s so nice of you,” He replied teasingly.
“They don’t care, they’re all drunk and it’s not like they’re going to get sexually harassed or anything,” I defended softly, glancing out the window as the girls were still shirtless as they chased around a bunch of laughing jerks who had handfuls of bras and shirts. I would have gone and helped the girls if they weren’t also laughing, but they were having fun out there too, so I left it alone. “Besides, they’ll be out there for at least ten more minutes.”
“So we get ten minutes alone?” Kenton wondered with a boyish smile as we walked towards the back of the bus and then we chose one of the beds to call ours for the night.
“That’s the plan,” I giggled just as he rolled over on top of me unexpectedly and pressed his lips to mine.
“Good, because I have been waiting all day to seriously kiss you,” He admitted under his breath.
I gasped a little bit before returning his immediate kiss. “Ditto,” I breathed.
He grinned against my lips just as we fell into a heated make out session and again, Kenton Gerald became my box of White Cheddar Cheese-Its.