Truth or Dare (2 page)

Ava squinted, her mouth turning down in distaste. “That.”

Maggie followed her friend’s gaze to the red-checked cliché-in-action nestled into a shady corner of Wicker Park. And blinked. Twice.

“The couple?” she wheezed. “You aren’t serious?”

Then after a thought, let out a laugh, because, no way.

Ava didn’t date any more than Maggie did—which meant only under the most dire of circumstances. And unless Maggie had missed significantly more than she’d realized this morning, these were not them.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I am. I think maybe it’s time I stopped shutting down every guy who asks me out and start, I don’t know, opening myself up to the possibilities.”

Eyes cranking around a beat before her head, Maggie gasped. “Wha—?”

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. Except that sour look of disgusted resignation on Ava’s face as she frowned across at the picnic set for two told Maggie…it
was happening.

“What’s going on? I mean, where’s this coming from?”

Picking at the crumbs on a half-eaten cookie, Ava slumped deeper into the park bench, looking in that moment more like a sullen teen than the coolly confident, ball-busting lawyer she played in real life. She shook her head. “Everything’s so perfect now, you know?”

Yeah, Maggie did know. Hence the confusion.

“But what’s it going to be like in ten or fifteen years?” She let out another heavy sigh. “The guys, Sam and Ford—they’re idiots.”

“Of course.” The best kind. Ford was Ava’s older brother, their landlord and the odd nut behind the number-one phone and tablet app on the market, Hibachi Catapult. And Sam Farrow, general man-whore and walking resource for all things fix-it, was their oldest friend. Maggie loved them like family. Together Sam, Ford, and Ava were her core group of go-to friends. All romantically impaired with their own individual brands of relationship dysfunction.

And it
worked.
Only apparently, Ava didn’t think so.

“Some morning in the not-too-distant future, one of them is going to notice a few hairs on his pillow and an extra quarter-inch of forehead where it hadn’t been before—and he’ll decide it’s time to stop sleeping his way through Chicagoland and set up house with some nice girl. And because neither of them are trolls and both have next-to-zero standards, whichever one it is will be married in less than a year. Six months max before the other goes lemming and follows suit. They’ll have kids and dogs and hockey practice at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings and clay models of the solar system due for the science fair to finish on Tuesday nights. And,” Ava swallowed and took a breath, shaking her head, “they’ll take their
wives
to weddings instead of us.”

Maggie coughed, choking on the thought of the last wedding she hit without Ford. The stilted small talk and smarmy expectation gleaming in her date’s eyes. God help her, she never wanted to go there again.

But seriously…“Ava, the guys are
not
getting married.”

“Not today, but you know the girl Sam’s been seeing—Bethanne? She told me she thought they were getting serious.”

Not likely. “Bethanne’s delusional.”

“Yeah, I agree. But one of these days…one of these girls…” Two breaths passed before she went on. “Look, Maggie, I’m not talking about anything drastic. Just taking a chance once in a while.
Giving someone else a chance
for a change. Who knows, maybe finding out what it feels like to have a guy look at me the way those two look at each other. I mean, they seem happy,” Ava offered, sounding less enthused than resigned. “In love.”

“Blindly so,” Maggie agreed. And that was the crux of it. Maggie already knew what it was to have a guy look at her like he’d do anything to stay with her forever. And yeah, it was a heady thing. But there were risks inherent to that kind of ardor. Once people experienced it, there wasn’t a lot they wouldn’t do to protect it. Like lie. To their partner. To themselves.

Arms crossed at her chest, Maggie gave the picnic guy a thorough once-over.

Sure, he seemed sort of harmless with the whole goofy smile and I’m-so-putting-my
self-out-there eyes. But he could be anyone. He could be an embezzler or top chef at the Meth Emporium. Oh yeah, he probably
planned
to reform. Turn over a new leaf. Be the man his girl deserved. But would he ever tell her what he was into? Not if it meant there was a chance he’d lose—

Stop.

Ugh.
She didn’t want to be that person. The glass-half-empty girl who wouldn’t let anyone else believe it was half-full.

She
wouldn’t
be that person.

Angling closer on the bench, she leaned in shoulder to shoulder with Ava. “I think it’s great you’re opening yourself up to the possibilities and I’ll support you one-hundred percent. But I’m just wondering—and I don’t want this to sound like I think it’s going to be a problem or anything, but—you don’t actually
like anyone.
Ever. At least not in a more-than-friends way.”

“Right.”

“So, umm, how are you planning to get around that?”

Ava outlined the rough plan she’d come up with: a single, mandatory date each month, where she gave the guys who met her criteria a chance—regardless of whether they floated her boat or not. And if she missed a month, she suffered a consequence. Some penalty stiff enough to ensure she didn’t blow it off.

“Nice. You’ve got to make it something that’ll really hurt, though, so you can’t slack. And tie up all the little loopholes you’ll be trying to wiggle through, too.” Hey, this was kind of fun. “Make rules about what constitutes a legitimate date and not going out with the same guy over and over when you know it isn’t going anywhere. Tough love and all.” Maggie snickered, maybe enjoying the idea of Ava not making her monthly quota a skosh too much.

Ava finished her cookie and then wiped her hands together, brushing off the crumbs. “Agreed. So you think this is a solid plan?”

Blehh,
but whatever. If Ava wanted to get her date on, who was Maggie to stop her? So working up some captain-of-the-
cheer-squad enthusiasm, she beamed. “Totally. It’s a fantastic idea!”

Honestly, there was no excuse for not seeing what came next. But reading the writing on the wall had never been Maggie’s strong suit. Especially as it applied to the people closest to her.

“I’m glad you think so.” Ava grinned back, the glint of steel in her eyes unmistakable. “Because we’re making a pact and you’re doing this with me.”

Oh hell.

O
CTOBER

“Seriously, Maggie, we could just say we did it and no one would be the wiser.”

Maggie stared up into her date’s pleading face, silently cursing Ava and her stupid pact, too.

Five months in, she was still scrounging up eleventh-hour bailouts. She’d tried to be proactive. Flirt. Drop hints. And flat-out do the asking herself—but with a pool of potentials limited to guys who came with “references,” less than two degrees of separation, and proof of current employment, who weren’t sketchy, were allergen approved, knew how to laugh,
and
were honest—the pickins were slim.

Which was how she’d ended up going out with Ford Meyers. Again.

Gah.

“It’s the honor system, Ford.
Honor.
And you’re talking about lying to your sister.”

“Uh-huh.” Ford rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, squinting into the brisk October night. “Yeah, thing is, I’ve been lying to Ava for most of my life. So I’m good with it, actually. And believe me, she wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“From you, maybe!” Maggie laughed, well acquainted already with her friends’ fractious sibling dynamic. “But not from me. We have an agreement. A pact—”

“I know about the pact. Obviously,” he snapped, underscoring a discomfort over the coming lip-lock potentially surpassing even her own.

“Look, I’m no happier about it than you are. But we’ve come this far, and if this date is going to count, it’s got to close on a kiss.” She took a deep breath and laced her fingers with his, swallowing past the revulsion pushing at her throat. “A real one.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Then, closing his eyes, he warned, “And so we’re clear, this is the last time I bail you out. If the ‘raised stakes’ of a second date equate to open mouth, with tongue…I don’t even want to contemplate what’s involved for a third.”

Maggie gave the stiff fingers intertwined with hers a light squeeze.

“Ouch, hey!”

“You knew what you signed on for, so enough bitching. Just…I don’t know, take it like a man. You guys are supposed to be like dogs, trying to get on anything.” Then, because she really did know what a hugely monumental favor Ford was doing for her, she gently added, “Besides, it probably won’t be half as bad as we’re imagining.”

How could it?

“Fine. Let’s get this over with. You want to lean against the wall or something?”

Maggie glanced over her shoulder at the gray stone entry and thought about the cats that sometimes prowled the neighborhood. “I’m good.”

“Okay, then.” Taking a step back, he cracked his neck on both sides, rolled his shoulders, and started bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Yep.” Maggie nodded, her own adrenaline beginning to ramp. “Let’s do this.”

Shaking out her fingers, she tried to force an open mind. Ford was a good-looking guy. Tall and lean, with dark, straight hair like his sister’s, only kept in a neatly conservative cut. He was undeniably easy on the eyes…

But he was
Ford.

A friend as close as family. Which meant kissing Ava’s brother was going to feel a lot like kissing her own.
Gross.

Don’t think about it.

“Wait.” Ford’s brows pulled down. “Do I have to touch you or can I lean in?”

She should have taken the consequence of missing her quota and popped for Ava’s two-day spa treatment. How important was it really to have tires with actual tread before winter?

Or money for the gallery, though with her boss’s recent state of fluster and bluster, that wasn’t a conversation she expected to take place anytime soon. At least not until after Hedda’s next retreat. Still, they’d come this far and Ford was standing there with his hands stalled halfway between them, waiting to find out if he had to put them on her.

“Whatever you normally do.”

Then they were mere inches apart. His left hand resting awkwardly on her hip in a way that left her unsure whether it was to hold her in place or push her away. His right hand slid beneath the fall of her hair and a shudder chock-full of creepy undertones ran through her.

She was open to the possibilities.

Like the rules of this godforsaken pact dictated she had to be.

And there it was, contact.

The cold press of their reluctant kiss, the parting of stiff, unwelcoming lips, and the slimy, wet stab of Ford’s tongue into her mouth, twice. Because he was that kind of a good friend. She’d barely had a chance to ponder if it was over when she wrenched back, gaping in horror.

“Did you
gag
? In my
mouth,
Ford?”

The guilt in his eyes said it all and, wow, her only consolation was knowing this had to be rock bottom. The night couldn’t get any worse.

Except the low rumble of laughter, mocking and undeniably at her expense, quickly relieved her of that misconception.

Witnesses were definitely worse. And judging by the telltale grate happening with her last nerve, she knew exactly who it was standing at the end of the walk.

Apartment Three.

By Tyler Wells’s standards it didn’t get better than this. The landlord, Ford, had kissed Maggie…and it was bad. As in, barf-in-the-mouth bad. Which meant Ty had just busted his favorite little blond harpy in what had to be a top fiver for most humiliating moments. Ever.

And to think he’d almost stayed in tonight.

“Peeping, huh?” Her fist balled on one-shot hip, Maggie scowled at him. “New hobby or favorite pastime?”

Ignoring the taunt—mostly because it would torque her off even more than she already was—he swung the iron gate closed behind him and started up the stairs to the covered entry.