Page 76 of Blush Crush

We divide up loosely around the sectional, the wet bar already getting well used, music playing somewhere underneath all the noise. Cole drops onto the couch and pulls me down beside him so our thighs run the length of each other, his arm stretching along the back of the cushions behind me.

Not around me. Just behind me. Close enough to feel the warmth of him.

I pick up my sparkling wine and swallow down the bundle of nerves knotting in my throat.

Ethan and Marisa go first, playing as a team even though it’s against the rules. She’s settled against him, her back resting on his chest as she places the phone on her forehead, the screen facing us.

“Okay, go,” Scottie says, starting the timer.

“It’s a sport,” Dominic offers.

“You play it outside,” says Gavin.

“You need a racket,” Owen adds.

“Tennis,” Ethan says immediately.

The room cheers and Marisa resets, Ethan looking at her proudly as if she was the one who guessed correctly while she holds the phone up again.

This one takes longer. The clues start piling up—something tall, something famous, something in Europe—and Shane, who has apparently decided that words are insufficient, stands up and begins physically acting it out. He points aggressively at the ceiling. He stretches his arms wide. He makes a shape with his hands I cannot identify.

“Are you trying to be a chandelier?” Layla guesses, messing with him.

“Or someone drowning?” Elyse tries.

“A sad horse,” Shelby, Shane’s date, says pleasantly from behind me.

Shane spins around and points. “Come on, Shelbs, don’t join them in their bullshit.”

The answer is Eiffel Tower but no one cares that Marisa didn’t guess it correctly because it was way more fun teasing Shane.

There are a few more rounds, mostly tame, until Scottie switches the category to something more adult right before it gets to me.

I place the phone against my forehead and Cole’s face lights up, his smile barely contained, so I know it’s got to be something inappropriate.

My brothers collectively groan.

“It’s something you do while talking,” Marisa says, giving Ethan a playful side-eye.

“You have to use a device,” Elyse adds, making a talking-on-the-phone motion.

“A phone?” I guess.

“Close!” Scottie giggles.

Cole clears his throat, drawing my attention to him. “It’s what we did last night,” he says, cocky grin firmly in place.

Scrunching my forehead, the words fly out when I realize what he means before I remember who our audience is. “Phone sex?”

He nods slowly, silently chuckling.

Meanwhile Shane makes a gagging noise, Ethan mutters a curse under his breath and pinches the bridge of his nose, and Gavin releases a long, defeated sigh.

The timer goes off and Scottie stands. “Let’s all take a little break before the next round, yeah?”

The room shuffles around us, people standing and stretching, Layla already talking at full volume about what category to do next. For a moment it’s just me and Cole on the sectional, slightly apart from everyone else.

I’m laughing and cover my face with my hands, partly because I’m a little buzzed and partly because I cannot believe I let that slip out in front of my siblings.