needed validation that her mom wasn’t the only crazy one. Unfortunately, my mom wasn’t as overbearing and smothering as hers, but I’d embellish what I could if it made Bekka feel better.
“Oh yeah.” I caught Lauren’s eye. “Let’s see if I remember… No sketchy drugs, no getting arrested, no streaking…”
At that last one, Lauren burst out laughing—no doubt wanting to launch into the story of the time I did it, but I barreled on before she could change the course of the conversation again.
“No getting married, and then she threw in a no getting pregnant in there too.”
“That’s it,” Katy said, hanging up the phone and turning fully to us. The three of us shifted to look at her. “That’s your dare.”
We were silent for a minute. “What? I’m not getting pregnant. That’s crazy, even for me.” I didn’t think purposefully bringing a human into the world was great dare material myself, but Katy wasn’t exactly the most level-headed thinker of the group of us. Which wasn’t saying much, considering my list of shenanigans.
“Not that one, duh. We only have one night left. But you could get married. Oh my god, think of how funny that would be.”
Given the mess I’d left behind to come to Vegas, all I could think about was how exceptionally unfunny that was.
When I didn’t say anything, Katy plowed on. “Come on. We need to up the ante on these dares. You’re the only one doing them, and they’ve all been pretty boring.” She looked meaningfully at her sister and Lauren, like it was all their fault for giving me lame dares. “And you’re the only one of us who could get away with it.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” I said. “Get away with it?”
“You’re the one who has the guts to do it,” Lauren said, and I felt a twinge of betrayal from her. Lauren was going along with Katy’s asinine dare? “Bekka is already getting married. I’ve got a boyfriend, so I can’t do it…”
“And no one would want to marry Katy,” Bekka said, shocking all of us. Mentally, I gave Bekka a high five for that not-so-subtle dig at her sister. But that high five fell flat when Bekka continued. “And I agree. It’s our last night. Let’s go out with a bang.”
I couldn’t believe the three of them agreed on this crazy plan. On the scale of crazy dares I’d done, streaking ranked up pretty fucking high. But marriage? That wasn’t a dare. That was a legal obligation.
“I can’t just marry someone. Don’t you need paperwork for that shit? I didn’t come with anything like that. Besides, I don’t want to blow money on an annulment afterwards.”
“What happened to, ‘I never turn down a dare’? Now you’re saying no?” Katy asked, triumph gleaming in her eyes.
“This isn’t a dare,” I said flatly, standing up. “And just because you’re too fucking lame to take a dare doesn’t mean I have to take them all—especially the insane ones.” I left the room, slamming the door behind me in the bathroom for a moment’s peace.
Our trip to Vegas had been hijacked by all of Katy’s terrible and, frankly, boring ideas. I was fully Vegased out. I just wanted to crawl into my big fucking bed and stretch my legs out before falling into a blissful sleep that kept me asleep until checkout the next morning. I was dreading the drive home—not because of the distance but because of what awaited me when I got back to Idaho, to my parents’. I’d successfully dodged all my dad’s calls since I’d left, but soon I’d have to face him. And my mom. And witness her heartbreak again. And figure out how to navigate those waters.
I was shaking. What a rollercoaster the last fifteen minutes had been. I’d been on the verge of a very luxurious nap, and now I was raging with unspent anger at Katy’s suggestion. What the fuck. Get married to someone? That was more than wild—that was crazy.
Needing a distraction, I pulled out my phone for the first time since that morning. There were texts from my friends back in Idaho, but a text from my brother stood out. Tapping on it, I felt my blood go cold again.
James: When do you come home?
My brother never texted me. And he never asked me questions like when I was coming home. If anything, he often pretended he didn’t even have my phone number—the same number we’d had since we were teenagers.