Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,80

kids went back home, it was time for the drinking contest. Hollowed-out watermelon halves were loaded with several shots’ worth of liquor. The game was simple. Whoever drank the contents first won.

Nick and I were waiting nearby to watch when we spotted Max Frost standing with Robbie near the tables that were being set up for the event.

“I have a really childish idea,” I said, nudging Nick as we watched the two of them.

“If it involves pissing those two off, I don’t care how childish it is. I’m in.”

“Then we need to convince them to participate in the contest, because I need them to be sloppy drunk for this to have a chance.”

A few minutes later, Nick watched from a distance while I approached Robbie, who had split off from Max. I wasn’t sure how long I’d have him alone, so I knew I needed to be fast. I put on a little show of stumbling and slurring slightly once he saw me coming.

“Hey,” I said.

Robbie was clearly confused—and sober, from the looks of it. “Did you reconsider my offer?”

“Maybe. But I’ll make you a deal. Win the drinking contest, and I’ll do that thing you always wanted me to do.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Wait. You’re serious?”

I nodded. “Super serious.” It took everything in me not to burst out laughing on the spot. I’d just told Nick about Robbie’s deepest, darkest secret fetish, which I’d never even come close to agreeing to. He had this weird fixation with food being eaten off his dick. When I’d told Nick, it had taken him a long minute to stop laughing, and just thinking of how amused he’d been was making it almost impossible to keep up my act right now. “And there’s plenty of watermelon here. All you’ve got to do is win. We could meet in the town hall building. They never lock the back door.”

As I hoped, Robbie’s horniness seemed to override his good sense. He left to go enter the competition. I looked to Nick, who was still red in the face and covering a wide smile with his hand. He pointed at something behind me and nodded. I turned to see Max Frost coming back with a big soft pretzel in his hands.

I kept up my drunken act and stumbled toward him. “Hey,” I said.

Max sized me up, and once he seemed convinced I was drunk, there was a predatory glint in his eyes. “Hey, Miranda. It’s been a while.”

“I need a favor.”

“I don’t do favors for free,” he said.

I wiggled my eyebrows in what I hoped was a convincing sloppy-drunk-seductress look. “I need you to enter the drinking contest and come in second place. Robbie needs to win. Do that for me, and I’ll let you have what you wanted at Julian Ridge.”

Max drew his eyebrows together. “Why do you care about who wins the drinking contest?”

“Does it matter? Oh, and if you do what I ask, then meet me in the town hall building. They leave the front door unlocked. And I want you to show up wearing nothing but a watermelon,” I added. I nearly lost my composure at that, but through a heroic effort, I held my cool.

“Wearing nothing but—you’re serious?”

I walked off and waved. “Second place. Don’t forget,” I said over my shoulder.

I met Nick once I was done planting the seeds of chaos, and I finally burst out in laughter. Nick was smiling wide. “You really think they’ll do it?”

“The good thing is we don’t need to wait long to find out. The drinking contest starts in ten minutes.”

As much as I wanted to watch the drinking contest, Nick and I spent the next few minutes spreading word that a secret, hilarious show was going to be taking place in the town hall building immediately after the drinking contest. With Cade’s help, we convinced a relatively large group of people to follow us there.

After that, all we could do was wait.

We had to wait for only about twenty minutes in a darkened town hall meeting room before we heard somebody struggling at the back door. We had convinced everyone that no matter what, they had to stay absolutely silent and that nobody could move. I wasn’t sure it would work, but the meeting room was big enough and dark enough that I thought we at least had a chance.

Nick and I motioned for everyone to be quiet.

A moment later, the back door opened. It was so dark that we couldn’t see anything