The Dare (Briar U Book 4)

It’s Friday night, and I’m watching the greatest minds of my generation get destroyed by Jell-O shots and blue concoctions served from ten-gallon paint buckets. Sweat-beaded bodies writhing half-naked, frenzied, hypnotized with subliminal waves of electronic arousal. The house is wall-to-wall psych majors acting out their parental resentment on unsuspecting future MBAs. Poli-sci students planting the seeds of the blackmail checks they’ll be writing in ten years.

AKA your typical Greek Row party.

“Have you ever noticed how dance music kind of sounds like listening to drunk people having sex?” Sasha Lennox remarks. She’s standing beside me in the corner, where we’ve wedged ourselves between the grandfather clock and a standing lamp to best blend in with the furniture.

She gets it.

It’s the first weekend back from spring break, and that means the annual Spring Break Hangover party at our Kappa Chi sorority house. One of the many events Sasha and I refer to as mandatory fun. As Kappas, we’re required to attend, even if that means our presence is more decorative than functional.

“Like it wouldn’t be so offensive if there was a melody, at least. This…” Sasha crinkles her nose, and her head twitches to a siren wail that blares through the surround sound system before another shattering bass line thunders in. “This is some shit the CIA used on doped-out MKUltra test subjects.”

I cough out a strangled laugh, almost choking on the cup of whatever YouTube party punch recipe I’ve been nursing for the last hour. Sasha, a music major, has an almost religious aversion to anything not performed by live instruments. She’d rather be front row at a concert in some dive bar, the reverb of a Gibson Les Paul ringing in her ears, than be caught dead under the flashing techno kaleidoscope of a dance club.

Don’t get me wrong, Sasha and I certainly aren’t fun-averse. We hang out at the campus bars, we do karaoke in town (well, she does, while I cheer her on from the safety of the shadows). Hell, we once got lost in Boston Common at three in the morning while stone-cold sober. It was so dark that Sasha accidentally fell into the pond and almost got molested by a swan. Trust me, we know how to hang.

But the ritualistic practice of college kids plying each other with mind-altering substances until they mistake inebriation for attraction and inhibition for personality isn’t our fondest idea of a good time.

“Look out.” Sasha nudges me with her elbow at the sound of shouts and whistles from the foyer. “Here comes trouble.”

A wall of unabashed maleness crashes through the front door to chants of “Briar! Briar!”

Like Wildlings storming Castle Black, the towering goliaths of the Briar University hockey team trample through the house, all thick shoulders and broad chests.

“All hail the conquering heroes,” I say sarcastically, while Sasha smothers a snide smirk with the side of her thumb.

The hockey team won their game tonight, putting them into the first round of the national championship. I know this because our Kappa sister Linley is dating a benchwarmer, so she was at the game snapchatting rather than here with us cleaning toilets, vacuuming, and mixing drinks for the party. The privileges of dating royalty. Although a fourth-stringer ain’t exactly Prince Harry, but maybe somewhere closer to the coke-addict son of someone prince-adjacent.

Sasha pulls her phone from the waistband of her skin-tight faux leather leggings and checks the time.

I peer at the screen and groan. Oh man, it’s only eleven p.m.? I already feel a migraine coming on.

“No, this is good,” she says. “Twenty minutes flat and those goons will have the keg killed. Then they’ll blow through whatever’s left of the liquor. I’d say that’s quitting time for me. Half-hour, tops.”

Charlotte Cagney, our sorority president, didn’t explicitly mandate how long we had to stay to fulfill our attendance requirement. Usually, once the drinks run dry, people go looking for the afterparty, at which point it’s easy to sneak out unnoticed. With any luck, I’ll be back in my apartment in Hastings and in my pajamas by midnight. Knowing Sasha, she’ll drive into Boston and find a live show.

Together, she and I are the outcast stepsisters of Kappa Chi. We each came to be among their ranks for our own ill-conceived reasons. For Sasha, it was family. Her mother, and her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother, and so on, were all Kappas, so it was never a question that Sasha’s academic career would include carrying on the legacy. It was either that or kiss something as “frivolous and self-indulgent” as a music major goodbye. She comes from a family of doctors, so her decisions are already heavily contested.

For me, well, I suppose I had grand designs of a college glow up. From high school loser to college It Crowd. A reinvention. Total life makeover. Thing is, joining their clubs and wearing their letters and enduring their weeks of sacramental indoctrination didn’t have the desired effects. I didn’t come out the other side all shiny and new. It’s like everyone else drank the Kool-Aid and saw the pretty colors, but I was just left standing there in the dark with a cup of water and red food coloring.

“Hey!” a bleary-eyed guy greets us, staggering to sidle up next to Sasha while openly talking to my tits. We tend to make one perfectly desirable female when standing side-by-side. Her exquisite facial symmetry and slender figure, and my enormous rack. “You wanna drink?”

“We’re good,” Sasha shouts back over the pounding music. We both hold up our mostly full cups. A strategic device to keep the horny frat bros at bay.

“Wanna dance?” he then asks, leaning toward my chest like he’s speaking into the box at a fast food drive-thru.

“Sorry,” I retort, “they don’t dance.”

I don’t know if he hears me or understands my contempt, but he nods and strolls away just the same.

“Your boobs have a gravitational force that only attracts douchebags,” Sasha says with a snort.

“You have no idea.”

One day I woke up and it was like two massive tumors just erupted on my chest. Ever since middle school I’ve had to walk around with these things that arrive everywhere ten minutes before I do. I’m not sure which of us is the greater hazard to each other, me or Sasha. My boobs or her face. She causes a stir just walking into the library. Dudes stumbling over themselves to stand in her presence and forget their own names.

A loud pop bursts through the house, causing everyone to cringe and cover their ears. Silence ensues in the confusion while our eardrums drown in the lingering echoes of tinnitus.

“Speaker’s blown!” one of our sisters yells from the next room.

Boos fill the house.

A mad scramble ensues as Kappas scurry to find a quick fix to save the party before our restless guests revolt. Sasha doesn’t even try to hide her excitement. She eyes me with a look that says we may get to escape this party early after all.

Then Abigail Hobbes happens.

We see her sashay through the tightly packed crowd in a skimpy little black dress, platinum hair curled into perfect tendrils. She claps her hands, and in a voice that could cut glass, demands all attention fall on her bright red lips.

“Listen up, everybody! It’s time to play Dare or Dare.”

Cheers erupt in response as the living room swells with more bodies. The game is a popular Kappa tradition, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Someone dares you to do something and you do it—no truth option. Occasionally amusing and often brutal, it’s resulted in more than a few arrests, at least one expulsion, and rumor has it, even a couple babies.

“Now let’s see…” Our house vice president puts one manicured finger to her chin and turns in a slow circle to survey the room, deciding on her first victim. “Who shall it be?”

Of course her evil green eyes land squarely on where Sasha and I are plastered against the wall. Abigail strides up to us with pure sugary malice.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says to me, with the glassy stare of a girl who’s had a few too many. “Loosen up, it’s a party. You look like you just found another stretch mark.”

Abigail’s a mean drunk, and I’m her favorite target. I’m used to it from her, but the laughs she elicits every time she uses my body as a punchline never fail to leave a scar. My curves have been the bane of my existence since I was twelve years old.

“Oh, sweetie,” Sasha mimics, making a show of flashing her the bird. “How about you eff right off?”

“Aww, come on,” Abigail whimpers in a mocking baby voice. “Tay-Tay knows I’m just kidding.” She punctuates her statement by poking my stomach like I’m a goddamn Pillsbury Doughgirl.

“We’re keeping your thinning hairline in our thoughts, Abs.”

I have to chomp down on my bottom lip to stop from laughing at Sasha’s retort. She knows I disintegrate amid conflict and never shies away from a chance to trade barbs in my defense.

Abigail answers with a sarcastic laugh.

“Are we playing or not?” demands Jules Munn, Abigail’s sidekick. The tall brunette saunters over to us, donning a bored look. “What’s the matter? Sasha trying to back out from doing a dare again like she did at the Harvest Bash?”

“Fuck off,” Sasha shoots back. “You dared me to throw a brick through the dean’s window. I wasn’t about to get expelled over some juvenile sorority game.”

Jules arches a brow. “Did she just insult an age-old tradition, Abs? Because I think she did.”

“Oh, she did. But no worries, here’s your chance for redemption, Sasha,” Abigail offers sweetly, then pauses. “Hmm. I dare you to…” She turns toward her spectators while contemplating the dare. She’s nothing if not in it for the attention. Then she snaps back around to face Sasha. “Do the Double Double then sing the chapter symphony.”

My best friend snorts and shrugs, as if to say, Is that all?

“Upside down and backwards,” Abigail adds.

Sasha curls her lips and sort of snarls at her, which gets the guys in the room hooting in amusement. Dudes love catfights.

“Whatever.” Rolling her eyes, Sasha steps forward and shakes out her arms like a boxer warming up for a fight.

The Double Double is another Kappa party tradition, which entails downing two double shots of whatever’s lying around, then a ten-second beer bong followed by a ten-second keg stand. Even the sturdiest drinkers among us rarely make it through the gauntlet. Throwing a handstand on top of it while singing the house song backwards is just Abigail being a spiteful bitch.

But as long as it won’t get her expelled, Sasha is never one to back down from a challenge. She ties her thick black hair in a ponytail and accepts the shot glass that materializes out of nowhere, dutifully tossing back one shot, then the next. She powers through the beer bong while a couple Theta guys hold up the funnel for her, the crowd around her screaming their encouragement. To a cacophony of cheers, she muscles her way past the keg stand with a six-three hockey player keeping her legs in the air. When she’s right-side up again, everyone’s impressed to see her even able to stand, much less looking mean and holding steady. That girl’s a warrior.

“Stand back!” Sasha declares, clearing people from the far wall.

With a gymnast’s flourish, she thrusts her arms in the air and then sort of half-cartwheels so that her backside is flush against the wall in a handstand. Loud and confident, she belts out the words to our house song in reverse while the rest of us stupidly try to keep up in our heads to make sure she’s getting it right.

Then, when she’s done, Sasha completes an elegant dismount back to her feet and gives the crowd a bow to resounding applause.

“You’re a fucking robot,” I say, laughing when she prances over to resume her spot slouching in our losers’ corner. “Beautiful dismount.”

“Never met a landing I couldn’t stick.” Freshman year Sasha was on her way to Olympic qualifiers as one of the best vaulters in the world before she busted her knee slipping on some ice, and that was it for her gymnastics career.

Not to be outshined, Abigail sets her gaze on me. “Your turn, Taylor.”

I take a deep breath. My heart races. Already I feel my cheeks burning red. Abigail smiles at my discomfort like a shark alerting to the vibrations of a wriggling seal in distress. I brace myself for whatever evil endeavor she’s concocting for me.

“I dare you to…” She drags her teeth across her bottom lip. I see my impending humiliation in her eyes before she even opens her mouth. “Get a guy of my choice to take you upstairs.”

Bitch.

Debauched hoots and catcalls burst from the men still watching this display of female aggression play out.

“Come on, Abs. Getting date-raped isn’t a party game.” Sasha steps forward, shielding me with her body.

Abigail rolls her eyes. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. I’ll pick someone good. Someone anybody would want to get sweaty with. Even Taylor.”

God, please don’t make me have to do this.

To my sheer relief, help comes in the form of Taylor Swift.

“Fixed it!” a sorority sister yells, just as music once again fills the house.

T-Swift’s “Blank Space” elicits a wave of excited cheers, drawing attention away from Abigail’s stupid game. The crowd promptly disperses to refill their drinks and get back to the rhythmic foreplay of dancing.

Thank you, hotter and skinnier Taylor.

To my dismay, Abigail is undeterred. “Hmm, who will the lucky boy be…”

I swallow a groan. I was naïve to think she’d drop it. Once a dare has been issued, any sister who fails to complete the task to the best of her ability is punished mercilessly until some poor sap is unlucky enough to take her place. And if Abigail were to get her way, that’d be three weeks after forever. I already have a hard time fitting in with the rest of the sisters. This would make me a pariah.

She scans the room, standing on her tiptoes to peer over people’s heads and get a thorough look at available options. A wide grin spreads out across her face when she turns to me again.

“I dare you to seduce Conor Edwards.”

Fuck.

Fucking fuck.

Yeah, I know who Conor is. Everyone does. He’s on the hockey team and a regular face at the parties on Greek Row. A regular face in the sorority beds on Greek Row, too. But his real claim to fame is being arguably the hottest new guy in the junior class. Which puts him way out of my league. A perfect choice if the goal of this dare is my utter humiliation at being resoundingly rejected by a guy laughing in my face.

“Rachel is still in Daytona,” Abigail adds. “You can use her bedroom.”

“Abigail, please,” I say, begging she let this go. But my plea only emboldens her.

“What’s wrong, Tay-Tay? I don’t recall you having a problem kissing other guys on a dare. Or is your kink just hooking up with girls’ boyfriends?”

Because that’s what it always comes back to with Abigail: revenge, and the mistake she’s been making me pay for every single day since sophomore year. No matter how many times I apologize, or how sincerely I regret hurting her, my life is but to amuse Abigail with my suffering.

“You should see a doctor about your raging bitchitis,” Sasha snaps back.

“Oh, poor Taylor, such a prude. Don’t turn your back or she’ll steal your dude,” Abigail sings. Her mockery becomes a chorus when Jules jumps in to sing along.

Their taunting stabs at the nerves behind my eyes and makes my fingers go numb. I want to shrink into the floor. Disappear into the wall. Burst in spontaneous flames and become ash that settles in the party bowl. Anything but me, here, now. I hate unwanted attention, and their mocking has recaptured the eyes of several drunken faces around us. A few more seconds and the whole house will bust out in song about how I’m a prude, like a horrible scene out of my worst nightmare.

“Fine!” I burst out. Just to make it stop. Anything to shut them up. “Whatever. I’ll do the dare.”

Abigail smiles in triumph. She couldn’t be more obvious if she were drooling. “Go get your man, then,” she says, extending a gracious hand behind her.

I bite my lip and follow the line of her thin arm, finally spotting Conor by the beer pong table in the dining room.

Fuck, he’s tall. And his shoulders are impossibly broad. I can’t see his eyes, but I do have a clear view of his chiseled profile and longish blond hair slicked away from his forehead. It should be illegal for someone to be that good-looking.

Big-girl pants, Taylor.

On a deep breath, I steel my nerves and make my way toward an unsuspecting Conor Edwards.