MADDOX

I COULD THINK of several activities banned by the Geneva Convention that I would have preferred participating in more than spin the bottle. But the thought of Ren playing without me, for some reason, put an uncomfortable tension in my muscles. Kelani obviously didn’t have a problem with forcing him into lame shit like this, so who knew what would happen if I didn’t stick around?

The den was a wreck, full of people and half-empty pizza boxes. A cloyingly sweet scent hit my nose as I approached, wafting up from a large candle with a picture of a birthday cake on the label. It was on a rickety end table, surrounded by beer cans, next to a ratty couch that had stains and cigarette burn holes scattered around on it. This was the image I’d had in my head for a house of college students. To my immense relief, my housemates were reasonably clean. We didn’t live in a spotless museum, but it was nowhere near this level of dumpster fire.

There had to be at least 25 or 30 people playing, all squeezed together in a big circle on the floor. When we entered, a girl waved Kelani over. She reached back behind me for Ren, and dragged him with her over to the far side of the circle. He sat, looking miserable.

I squeezed in between two girls right in front of me, unfortunately directly in front of the table with the candle on it. The ultra-sugary smell was nauseating. As I settled in, I saw the rickety end table was even more sus than I had originally realized. The legs were uneven, one in the front supported by a stack of cardboard coasters.

The girl to my right looked bored, scrolling on her phone, but the girl to my left was already drunk and evidently very excited about the prospect of sucking face with a relative stranger. She was moving around a lot, and talking with her hands, constantly bumping into my shoulder.

When I turned my attention from my immediate neighbors to survey the rest of the circle, my fight or flight reflex was nearly triggered. Garrison, the self-appointed king of the swim team, was seated diagonally from me. His height put him at a head taller than nearly everyone around. As soon as I noticed him, his eyes flicked up and locked with mine.

“Holmes! Didn’t know you were here,” he said. He hadn’t? I thought everyone in a 5-mile radius had heard Ren scream-declare our friendship in the living room. Then again, we all called each other by our last names, so maybe he didn’t even know I was Maddox.

“I’m here,” I answered neutrally. I wasn’t a fan of the guy, but no need to cause issues. If there was anything sports had taught me, it wasn’t dedication or leadership or whatever. It was how to work with people you didn’t necessarily like.

Before I could finish wondering whether his goons had accompanied him or not, O’Conner strolled in from the hallway on the other side of the room and settled down in the circle as well. His coppery hair and ghostly skin tone made him impossible to miss. I didn’t see Ahmet anywhere, so I supposed it wasn’t a full hat trick of stupidity that night. No complaints from me.

Some girl shushed everyone, and started reciting the rules of the game to be sure everyone understood. Like it wasn’t the simplest game ever created in the history of mankind. We had to be sure everyone understood the complex nuances of spinning a bottle and kissing whoever it pointed to.

“Well, I’m damn sure not going to kiss a dude!” O’Conner interrupted her explanation. Some of the other guys piped up in agreement.

A girl I recognized from some of my classes let out a loud sigh. “But if one of us spins and lands on another girl, you’ll definitely expect us to do it, right?”

“Well, yeah,” he answered, looking confused by the very nature of her question. “That’s hot?”

His assertion of the hotness of girls kissing sparked a storm of complaints and criticisms about the male gaze and homophobia.

“I’m not saying they shouldn’t get married, alright?” He answered, looking smug and completely unbothered. “I’m just saying I’m not into it.”

The girl who’d been explaining the rules of the game rolled her eyes, but conceded to him. “If the bottle lands on someone whose gender you don’t want to kiss, then you just kiss the person closest to them. Is that fine?”

Once everyone had agreed, then the game started. The explanation girl went first. Her eyes flickered around the circle briefly before spinning, and I could see appreciation in her eyes when they hovered around me and some of the other jocks. She was definitely cute, with blonde hair piled up into a messy bun on top of her head and a crop top with the greek letters of her sorority printed on it. Definitely the kind of girl I’d normally go for, but as the bottle swirled around the circle, I realized I didn’t want it to land on me. But why not? Wasn’t that part of the reason I’d been excited about going off to college?

My eyes flickered to Ren, who was also watching the bottle with apprehension. He didn’t want it to land on him either. Honestly, he seemed like the kind of guy who’d jump at the chance to kiss any girl. He was weird and a little too… excitable, so most of them probably wouldn’t appreciate him. They’d probably go for guys like me, and then complain about their boyfriends not treating them well or not having enough time for them.

But he was actually pretty good looking, when you got past the fact that he could barely get through a sentence without stuttering or rambling. His skin had this nice golden sheen to it, and he had great bone structure. His cheekbones were really prominent.

Suddenly, Ren’s gaze snapped to mine. I realized instantly that I’d been staring at him without meaning to. My immediate instinct was too look away and pretend like it hadn’t happened, but neither of us did that. He gave me a small sheepish smile that I took to mean something like I can’t believe we’re playing this stupid game. Please kill me. Agreeing with his sentiment entirely, I felt the corner of my mouth perk up into a sympathetic smile, and I nodded slightly.

While we were staring at each other, the bottle landed on some guy with an eyebrow piercing and a dangle earring. They kissed, lingering on it long enough for several people in the circle to let out whoops and jeers.

It went on like that for a few rounds. Someone would spin, my stomach would clench in unpleasant anticipation of it landing on me or Ren, our eyes would lock momentarily, and then two people would kiss. But by the 5th go-round, I realized I’d made a crucial error in my perception of the game. It didn’t matter that the bottle was skipping over us in its spins. Who would be the spinner was determined by going clockwise from the first blonde girl. Which meant Ren’s turn would be round after next. He’d have to kiss whoever it landed on. Shit.

The drunk girl next to me giggled and cheered at the next kiss, a gothy chick with fishnets and a goober with a baseball cap on. She clapped widely, flailing around with absolutely no awareness of her limbs. If she didn’t stop wiggling around like a moron, she was going to knock that rickety ass table over.

If the table were to get knocked over, it would spill that obnoxious candle and all those cans. That would be totally disruptive to the game. In fact, it would be so disruptive that people probably wouldn’t even be able to keep playing. Everyone would scramble up to try and solve the issue of warm beer and hardening wax on carpet. It could even potentially be a fire hazard.

Wednesday Addams and the guy who looked like the dorky cousin we all had were done kissing, which meant it was Ren’s turn. I watched Kelani give him an encouraging nudge before he reached down and gave the bottle a spin. It went around and around. When it started to slow, my heart slammed up into my ribs as it crept toward me.

To my abject horror, it came to a stop right in front of me. Like a big, neon sign pointing right at my crotch. It wasn’t the first time in the game it had landed on the wrong kind of person for the spinner. In one round, a guy had gotten a guy and switched to the girl beside him. In one of the rounds, a girl had spun and landed on a girl, and they actually had kissed. The whooping and sex noises from O’Conner and the other idiots had been incredibly annoying, but the point was that it wasn’t a big deal that Ren’s spin had landed on me. But if that was true, why did I feel so fucking embarrassed?

“Oh.” Ren’s response was quiet and meek, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. “Um…”

“Hey, wait, does that mean it’s me !?” The drunk girl next to me exclaimed excitedly. “Finally!” She scrambled up onto her knees so she could make her way over to Ren, who regarded her with a slightly terrified look, like she was an escaped zoo animal who could possibly be rabid.

What I did next was completely instinctive, like my body was on autopilot with no input from my brain. While everyone’s eyes were on her, I swiftly reached behind us and flicked the coasters out from under the short leg. The table floated for a moment, tauntingly, before lurching forward, splashing beer up and out of cans. The candle hit the carpet with a thud, and sugary-scented wax poured out like an erupting volcano.

As I’d expected, complete chaos. There were actual shrieks, like a bomb had been dropped in the center of the room. Everyone scurried up and around a bit, like cockroaches, which alerted one of the actual residents in the house. He barreled in, looking horrified by the confusion.

“What the fuck happened?” He asked no one in particular. Luckily, I was standing right there to enlighten him.

“She got a little too excited when it was her turn in spin the bottle,” I muttered, jerking my chin towards the inebriated girl. She was practically in tears now, incredibly grateful that the candle hadn’t lit her hair on fire. “It was just an accident,” I said, granting her some grace. He groaned, rubbing his palms over his face.

After all, that was the reasonable and logical explanation for what had happened. It’s not like I’d had some kind of issue with the idea of Ren Suzuki kissing a girl or anything. Why would I care about that? But anyone could tell he wasn’t into it. I’d done him a favor, really. If anything, he owed me. But because I was a nice guy, I didn’t need his thanks or recognition. I’d just keep my good deed to myself. After all, real character was doing the right thing when no one was watching. Some old colonial guy had said that. Probably.

A handful of people, mainly the guy who lived in the house and the ones who seemed to be his actual friends who knew him, got to work on trying to get up the hot wax. Other people in the room, the ones who weren’t totally traumatized by the experience, started brainstorming on where to move the game to. When Ren and Kelani approached me, I feigned a huge yawn.

“The vibe is kind of ruined now,” I said, noting Ren’s still apparent look of slight misery. “I’ve been up since 5:00, so I’m going to head out.”

“You’re leaving?” He asked, his eyes widening a bit. “I’m going to leave too!” He was like a puppy that liked to follow me so closely behind me that I had to be careful not to step on him.

Kelani heaved a deep sigh, but waved him off. “Fine, whatever. You came out, at least,” she said to Ren, giving him his dues. Still, he looked slightly apologetic.

“Sorry. I’ll do better next time, maybe.”

“We’ll keep working on it,” she said, laughing a little. He was too innocent to be mad at. Like a fluffy marshmallow that would melt if exposed to any amount of criticism. But when she glanced over to me, her affectionate look faded. She didn’t even tell me bye before walking off. Whatever.

We didn’t talk much at first on the walk back. It was starting to get cooler at night, and the ocean-scented breeze whipped our hair around as we made our way down the lamp-lit streets. The neighborhoods around campus were nice and quiet.

“Um, so that was really kind of lucky, that table falling thing,” Ren eventually piped up. “Honestly, I wasn’t that happy about the whole kissing deal, anyway.”

“Yeah,” I grunted. “Lucky timing.”

“It was a good thing that table was so… Unpredictable,” he decided on the word. But his tone of voice was weird, almost teasing. When I glanced sideways over to him, his lips were squeezed closed like he was trying not to laugh. Did he know I was the one who’d tipped it over?

“… Yeah,” I agreed again. “Definitely an accident waiting to happen.”

“An accident,” he repeated. When I looked over again, he started laughing. He definitely knew it was me. But I wasn’t admitting anything.

“A tragic, tragic accident which couldn’t have been prevented,” I said, which only made him laugh harder. It was a really nice laugh. He didn’t hold back or try to sound cool, he just gave it all his energy and let it come rolling out.

We just made small talk the rest of the way, about the nice weather and how the leaves were starting to turn colors. But when we got to my door and he told me bye and kept walking toward campus where his dorm was, I felt a vague sense of loss, like when you’re a little kid playing with your friends at the park and it’s time to go.

And then about twenty minutes later, when my phone lit up with a text from him that just said made it back in one piece , with a lame smiling emoji next to it, I stared at it for a really, really long time.