Challenge. Accepted.
∞∞∞
I get Griffin drunk in record time. It’s an Olympic-level achievement.
“That tasted like juice,” he says, looking suspiciously at his empty glass after our third shot.
“That’s the problem, Griffin. That’s how they get you.”
It was a challenge just to get him to commit. He was white-knuckling a bottle of beer for the first thirty minutes, but then the music started bleeding through the trees, and the beer-tether snapped.
We stumble toward the massive glowing tent, weaving around clusters of people, fairy lights, and a bachelorette party wearing matching neon cowboy hats. My toxic trait is thinking I could pull off those hats. I immediately envy them.
Inside is total madness, but the quiet kind. It’s a sea of people dancing in near-total silence. It looks like a flash mob caught in a glitch in the Matrix.
Griffin squints at the crowd, genuinely concerned. “This feels wrong.”
“It’s a silent disco,” I say, grabbing a pair of headphones.
He picks up a headset cautiously like it might bite him. “This is how cults start, Piper. I’ve seen the documentaries.”
I roll my eyes before sliding the headphones on.
“Okay,” I explain, pointing to the switch on the side. “Three channels. Red is EDM. Blue is 90s bops. Green is disco.”
I hit red. I’m ready for bass. Griffin hits green.
I stare at him. “You’re choosing disco? Seriously?”
“Disco never lets you down.”
The music starts pumping into our ears, and instantly, we become two of the least coordinated humans on the planet. Griffin starts doing a little finger-point move, and I nearly get poked in the eye twice. I’m doing something that looks like interpretive whale choreography. It’s the best time I’ve had in years.
We’re just two drunk idiots.
But then it happens.
I forget that I’m wearing noise-canceling headphones.
Which means my internal volume control? Dead. Gone. RIP.
I’m watching the way he moves. He’s loose now, his hips swaying to a rhythm I can’t hear on my channel, and he looks—God, he looks good. It’s a realization that hits me with the force of a freight train.
I lean toward him, intending to whisper the smallest, quietest, most private drunken thought: “No wonder you’re great in bed. Look at those hips.”
Heads turn. Ten. Twenty. Fifty heads. Because apparently, I didn’t whisper. Apparently, I announced it like a town crier reporting a royal birth.
Oh no.
Griffin chokes so hard he bends at the waist.
A random girl nearby, sporting glitter freckles and a blue glowing headset, claps her hands. “Honestly, girl? We see it too!”
I want to die.
I want to melt into the grass and become part of the ecosystem.
I want a sinkhole to open up right now and swallow me whole.
