Page 31 of All Our Nevers

“Okay, can I go next?” Nolan asks, not waiting for a response. “I dare Andy to tell us how many times he jacked off thinking about Sophie.”

Everyone screams “Yes!” and “Do it, Andy!” but he’s already reaching for the vodka on the coffee table for the second time.

“It’s not happening,” Andy says.

“That many, huh?” I joke.

“Are we talking every week?” Amelia pushes. “Every day?”

“It was every day wasn’t it,” I say.

“Twice a day?” Amelia volleys. “Andy, that’s a lot…”

“Where’d I put that shot glass?” Andy looks frantically around the room, trying to put an end to his misery.

“Stop you guys,” Sophie giggles. “I’ll make him tell me later and report back.”

Amelia’s gaze finds mine again and—finally—I’m offered the full force of her smile. I get the sense we really could be good co-conspirators. If everything were different.

“Okay, Soph,” Amelia says, breaking our eye contact. “I dare you to… go skinny dipping.”

“Just me?” Sophie asks.

“Yep,” Amelia says. “Are you saying you want us to do it with you?”

“If the options are me alone or me with my friends then yes, I’m asking you to come with me.”

But again, there are some lines I won’t cross. I say, “No way. There are way too many siblings here for skinny dipping. I’ll do a penalty shot if I have to.”

“Ugh, fine,” Amelia says. “Fair point. I’ll come up with something else.” She thinks for all of one second before a new idea flashes in her mind and she says, “I dare you to give Andy a lap dance in front of everyone.”

Sophie replies with a chipper “Okay!” just as Andy says “Absolutely not. I will do the shot for her.”

“What is wrong with you?” Amelia scolds. “You don’t want a lap dance from your hot fiancée?”

“In front of you guys? I would rather die.” Then he turns towards Sophie. “Sorry, baby.”

But Sophie isn’t looking at him. She’s looking down at her phone as “Toxic” by Britney Spears starts blaring from its speakers at full volume.

“Too late for sorry.” She grins, standing up in front of him as everyone else cheers.

Her “lap dance” is deliberately more silly than sexy, but that doesn’t stop Andy from blushing beet red. He seems tortured by the decision of where to put his hands. At his sides? On her hips? Covering his own eyes? And when Sophie’s finally done, he pulls her onto his lap and buries his face into the side of her neck, hiding from the public spectacle they just became.

“Who’s left?” Nolan asks. “Just Lia?”

“Oh, we have to make this good,” Sophie says from her perch on top of Andy.

“I’ve got it,” I say. “I dare you to hand over control of your phone and let us text anyone we choose.”

“Caveat,” Amelia says, leaning forward to place her glass on the table. “After you write the text, can I have a second to decide to take the shot before you hit send?”

I shrug. “Fine.”

Nolan is the one to snatch her phone up first. “Do you still have Professor Zinka’s phone number? We could text him.”

“No, don’t,” Sophie says. “She’ll just take the shot. It has to be someone right on the borderline so it’s embarrassing for her but she’ll still send it.”

But Nolan doesn’t reply. Instead, a bold wrinkle appears on his brow. He looks up from the phone screen to ask, “That asshole is texting you again? Why didn’t you tell me?”