ix. devil with a smirk

Waking up is disorienting because I don’t remember going to sleep.

Something heavy on top of me makes it difficult to breathe and my head feels like it’s going to explode from the ache pulsing between my eyes.

I try breathing through my mouth but that makes my head hurt more. I shift to get comfortable, only the weight on top of me follows the movement and a sharp discomfort in my shoulder immobilizes me.

There’s a low whine and a gurgled, “Stop,” before I feel arms circling my torso and something rubbing against my boobs.

Blinking away drowsiness, the severity of the position I’m in doesn’t hit me until after I look down and see blue-tipped hair.

Letting out a slow breath, I force myself not to think about an alternative where it hadn’t been Gina on top of me.

A low snore has me turning my head to the right, coming face-to-face with Von’s closed eyes and slightly open mouth.

Gina starts rubbing her face against my chest again, almost purring, and I let out a hoarse laugh, groaning when my head hurt so bad it feels like my entire body is vibrating with pain.

There’s a nudge to my foot, then movement at the bottom of the bed grabs my attention.

Jodene stumbles off the bed, her eyes still half-closed and her arms outstretched. “Guys, get up,” she says.

My head moves to the other side. Light curtains are drawn in front of open balcony doors across the room but the French doors are wide open, making them sway in the breeze. Beyond that, I can see it’s still dark out, but the small hint of light behind the mountains in the distance tells me it’s the crack of dawn. Birds are chirping insistently outside and I want more than anything to tell them to shut up.

My head can’t even take *that* right now.

Gina slides down my body and I look up to see Jodene holding her ankles, pulling her. Whining, Gina tries to kick her feet out of Jodene’s hold, tightening her arms around me.

“Get up, get up, get up,” Jodene chants then switches to Von.

Von sits up almost instantly, swaying with sleep and holding her arms out in front of her. “What? What is it?”

“It’s dawn.”

Von drops back down on the bed with a low sound in her throat and flips onto her stomach. “So?”

I bring my hands up to hold my head and will myself to melt off the bed. “Guys stop talking, please,” I say gruffly, my face twisting in pain.

“*So*, we’re going dipping in the pool,” Jodene says.

I shiver just thinking about it. Even though it’s not cold anymore, I know that pool water begs to differ.

None of us make a move to get up.

“Listen, I’ll be damned if I don’t get my dares,” she says but her voice is like background noise to me at this point. “I’ll drag all of you down there one by one if I have to.” There’s a thud and the bed jerks.

I stuff my head under a pillow, internally begging whatever high power to have mercy on me for once.

There’s shifting next to me and I here Von say, “Guys, come on.”

“I already got my dare,” I groan out, reminding them of the reason why I feel like Death is standing over me right now.

“Okay fine, you can stay,” Jodene says. “But you-”

My body starts moving down the bed because Gina’s clutching me so tightly there’s no way I can get away. Jodene keeps pulling Gina, who doesn’t let go of me until we’re both almost falling off the bed.

Have to say, I’m more impressed at how long it takes for me to get to the bottom of the bed. It must be huge.

When Gina finally gives in, I’m up too, all of us stumbling—still a little drunk and hungover—around the room.

We’re snatching pieces of clothing we hadn’t realize were gone until Jodene says, “How about you leave those off. We’re skinnydipping.”

We all gape at her. She’s got to be drunk still.

“We’re keeping our lady parts covered!” she adds, grabbing Von’s hand, who grabs Gina’s, who grabs mine.

Each step has me cringing. Especially when we get to the stairs.

There are plastic cups and empty food wrappers everywhere and a few kids are passed out on furniture. The lights are off, and the quiet is such a nice contrast from the chaos a few hours ago but it makes the pounding in my head louder and somehow worse.

We stumble out the back door in the kitchen soundlessly except for when Gina trips over a Vodka bottle and we both fall and roll around in a fit of snickering and groans. Von and Jodene don’t hold back their cackles but try to keep it down.

“Let’s get naked,” Von says when we’re standing at the edge of the pool.

“That’s what he said,” I muttered, lifting my top off.

We agree to dive right in because tiptoeing down the steps in the shallow end won’t cut it,

Surprisingly, Gina’s the first one to be in the pool, but it isn’t with much enthusiasm. She simply lets herself fall lazily into the water and when she comes back up, she’s cursing and breathing heavily—looking just as awake as all the singing birds and the sun rising.

The rest of us look at each other, smile widely, and cannonball into the body of water.

It’s freezing. My entire body feels like one huge goosebump when I resurface, sputtering and treading the water lightly. It’s a sudden jolt to my system that instantly has me awake, and while it doesn’t get rid of the headache, it does take a front seat in my mind.

I push my soaking hair out of my face and push myself back toward the edge of the pool, facing the sunrise.

With every second, the sky gets brighter, painting a perfect portrait of orange, yellow and light blue and I’m enthralled and incredibly grateful to be alive to see it. The stillness, the coming of morning, and beauty of nature make me feel something tight in my gut; content. Suddenly I don’t want this moment to end. I want everything to freeze and I want to have this with my best friends splashing around in the water and giggling like it’s the best thing they’ve ever done.

I want to live this flicker of time a hundred times. Live in a single memory where it’s just us and nothing—*no one*—else. To keep the complications of life from tainting what’s happening now.

Not long after, the girls are joining me. We’re all about a foot apart, quiet, and watching the colors in the sky become more vivid with the sunrise.

Then Gina says lowly, “It’s been rad.”

I smile, internally agreeing because I don’t want to talk. I want to prolong the feeling of being alive and knowing what that feeling is. I don’t get to experience it often.

“Yes, it has,” Von replies.

**† † †**

“He said *what*?”

Shaking my head, I take up my cup, sipping on my usual coffee order while Jodene goes over the events of Friday night, mostly about what had happened between me and Reese. For the thousandth time now.

It’s Monday morning, almost an hour before school starts, and here we are having our breakfast routine outside of our own homes.

Like any group of best friends, they need to analyze the situation from different sides. So far I’ve had to endure Gina and Von asking Jodene unnecessary questions, and her responding them.

“What did *you* do?”

Genuinely surprised when I see them looking at me, I sit up straighter. For the past fifteen minutes, I’ve been ignored, probably because I tried getting them to drop it.

I start off hesitantly, letting my gaze move from one girl to the other. “I… agreed? What was I supposed to do?”

I think Von is cursing with the string of French that leaves her, then she leans across the narrow table and says so I can understand, “Crush his soul. Verbally of course.”

Shaking my head, I reach for my cup again. “Can we be logical? I kissed the guy. Me. A total stranger, and someone he’s never liked. He didn’t like that and that’s a normal response. There’s nothing wrong with what he said.”

“You’re leaving out an important detail actually,” Gina says, clasping her hands in front of her on the table. “He kissed you back.”

Von agrees by throwing her hands up dramatically.

I glance at them. “So?” They all groan but I’m done with it. “Listen! It doesn’t matter, because he said what he said and I plan on staying out of his way like I’ve been doing. The guy obviously has a problem with me.”

“And you don’t even want to try and find out what that is?” Jodene asks.

“No,” I reply, dragging out the word. I’m not getting through to them. “Guys, I understand that you want to see me happy and all but I don’t need closure from Reese. We don’t know each other- we never did, and we’re not going to. I’m okay with that. I just want to forget it even happened.” As hard as that will be.

They stare at me, an unsettling silence stifling our little bubble. Altogether, they look away, grumbling their agreements, clearly unhappy.

I don’t understand it. Reese is one of the worse guys I’ve ever encountered in our school and instead of urging me to get over the guy, they’ve been pushing me toward him all these years. I can’t figure out why.

I know he only catches an attitude for me because I see he’s friends with everybody else. He’d probably let a venomous snake into his house for shelter than me if he had to choose.

I laugh quietly in astonishment. I should ask them why, but not today. Today, I officially flush everything Reese from my system.

It’ll be a huge lie if I say I’m over the crush I have on him. It’s something I feed my brothers to get me off my back, but I could never hide anything from my girls.

Now, it’s time for an intervention. The last of my feelings for him has to go *now*. With the kiss still fresh in my mind and on my lips, it’ll take a while, but it will happen.

For the next few minutes, we talk about the other fun events of Friday night. Namely, me getting shitfaced and Jodene and Von turning an hour of the party into a concert—most of which I missed because I went MIA.

But like I thought, there are uncountable numbers of videos online and Jodene is a blushing mess when she watches them. I love every minute of it.

This has always been the meaning behind our holiday—challenging each other to go against our norms. We dare each other to do things we’ve always wanted to but were too scared or had no motivation to go through with. It’s what makes the day such an anticipation. Deep down, subconsciously, we all know what’s coming and we brace ourselves for it. All our actions are subjects of all our desires.

“Good morning,” a smooth, familiar voice comes from behind me.

My eyes go into panic mode as I look around at the girls. My head says Lorenxo, and while he doesn’t scare me, I’m not comfortable with him standing behind me like a creeper.

Gina shrinks in her seat and I feel my expression turn to curiosity. *That’s new…*

“Just as beautiful with the clothes on, I see,” he says.

Saturday morning, the girls and I had stayed in the pool for a while, watching the sun come up and doing a few laps. We’d forgotten that people were still in the house and Lorenxo and a few of his friends had coming out, probably after hearing us splashing around in the water.

They’d taken one look at us and started stripping then started hollering like idiots and plunged into the pool.

It was a fun time—a great story—until now.

“I’d just like to personally invite you all to all future parties thrown by me,” he says in that smug tone of his. I just know he’s smirking. He always is.

“Go away, Diez,” Von says, smiling drily. But knowing her, she’s stashing that invite in the back of her head. Not like we miss many of his parties anyway.

“I’ll do anything for you if you keep saying my name like that.”

I press my palm to my forehead, shaking my head. I do it a lot.

Then he says, “Gina.” It sounds suggestive. Too suggestive.

That paired with her reaction by him earlier and the way she’s been avoiding looking at him since he came up has my eyes snapping to her.

When I hear his footsteps fading away, I’m already demanding, “What happened?”

The rest of the girls are equally eager, making Gina covers her face when her cheeks tinge pink.

“Spill it, now,” Jodene says, almost bouncing in her seat.

Gina drops her hands, letting out a loud exhale and not meeting our gaze when she says, “We kissed.”

We all gasp, loudly and dramatically, while pushing ourselves back in our chairs and staring at her with wide eyes.

“No,” Von says in a low tone. “You got close to that devil? I don’t even do that.”

Flustered, Gina stutters over her next words, her hands moving around wildly as she explains. “We both had a lot to drink and we bumped into each other. Then we started talking and drunken me couldn’t walk away because he was being so nice and I noticed how hot he was and the next thing I know, we’re kissing.”

“Oh, Gina,” Jodene says, her voice laced with pity. Then she perks up, bracing herself on her arms on the edge of the table and readily asks, “Then what?”

My head falls back as I laugh loudly. “Oh my skies, this is actual gold! I can die happy.”

“No!” Gina counters in distress, holding her head between her hands.

“What happened next?” Von urges, reaching out to hold onto Gina’s arm.

Our friend lets out what sounds like a gurgle, and drops her head as she says, “We went to his room.”

All three of us go into different states of shock.

I gape at her. I mean, my mouth is hanging open and my eyes feel like they could fall out of my head if I don’t blink soon.

Von let’s out a high-pitch, disbelieving laugh and clasps her hand over her mouth but her shoulders still shake in silent laughter.

Jodene on the other hand is on the verge of falling off her seat as she alternates between different pitches of “Oh crap” and moving around restlessly as if she’s trying to find a comfortable spot on her high chair.

I’m the one who asks the obvious question. “Did you guys…”

Gina’s eyes widen and she shakes her head so vigorously that *my* head starts to spin. “No! Ew, no. Of course not!” Taking a deep breath, she calms down then repeats, “Nothing like that happened. We just… talked a little and- y’know.” She shrugs, resting her elbow on the table and place her hand against her still pink cheek.

“Made out,” Von finishes.

Gina cringes but nods.

“Wow.” Jodene’s eyes are wide with wonder as she stares at Gina across from her. “This is so bizarre.”

Gina, seemingly having enough of it, huffs and sits up straighter. “Is it so hard to believe?”

We all look around at each other quietly before looking back at her and saying, “Yeah.”

She deflates almost right away, dropping her chin in her hand. “I know. And I thought he’d just… forget about it- act like it didn’t happen. I should’ve known better. He’s gonna make my life a living hell until we graduate.”

“As if we’d let that happen,” Von says, fixing Gina’s blue braids over her shoulder endearingly. “Don’t worry about it. If he does too much, you know where to find me.”

Gina smiles. “I don’t think I’m comfortable with you threatening people for me.”

Von returns a cheesy grin the same time there’s a knock on the table, drawing our attention to my brother who just came up.

“School starts in fifteen,” he reminds us even though we had no clue he was even in here to begin with. Kellan drops his hand and walks away without another word.

I shake my head. Sometimes I think he has deep, unsolved issues that just aren’t… solvable.

Holding back an amused smile, I watch Von watch my brother leave the shop, stars in her eyes. “He’s so hot when he’s broody.”

Jodene giggles and Gina snorts. “When is he not?” She turns to me and adds, “Broody, that is.” She smiles mockingly when I give her a playful grimace.

“Okay drama queens,” I say, hopping down from my chair and gathering my things. “Let’s go.”