“Sahil, this is my friend Ethan. He’s fucking awesome. Ethan, this is my fucking awesome friend Sahil.”
“Hey, I know you. You’re Greg’s friend.”
Ethan’s face became engulfed in flames. He sneaked a peek at Lorna, and she bit her lip. “Well, we’re not friends. We just have a class together.”
“Cool.” Sahil shrugged, and that was that. “So is this your boyfriend, Lorna?”
“Why? Jealous?” Lorna hugged Ethan, and if it were possible, his face got redder.
“We’re in the same dorm,” Ethan said quietly. Compared to these two, anything he said came out as a whisper.
Sahil chugged his beer while swaying to the music. He gave a head nod to one of Lorna’s sisters. “Is Stacy still seeing that guy?”
“I don’t know. You should ask her.”
Sahil checked-out Lorna’s sorority sister as she strutted to the drinks table. Ethan had no right to call him a creep since he’d done the same thing to guys. Especially Greg. If Sahil were here, then perhaps Greg was, too. Sahil asked him a question, pulling him out of his thoughts.
“What?” Ethan asked.
“You got your eye on anyone here? Lorna has quite the hook-up.”
Ethan didn’t know how to answer. Greg had said that Sahil wasn’t the most open-minded, and a drunk Sahil could be even worse. Ethan was out at Browerton, but that didn’t mean he had to announce it to everyone. Sahil seemed to like this partygoing version of Ethan. If he picked up on context clues, then so be it.
“I’m keeping my options open,” Ethan said and breathed a sigh of relief. Sahil gave him a high-five that burned his palm.
“I like it!” Sahil said.
Kids began gathering at the drinks table. Lorna’s face lit up. “Are you guys up for playing some flip cup?”
Ethan frowned. “What’s that?”
Φ
Ethan’s heart pounded in his ears like a ticking clock. He looked to his right, then down at his cup of beer.
“It’s you and me, lover,” Lorna said, across the table, taunting him. “Are you ready?”
“Of course.”Of course not!
They were in the middle of Ethan’s first-ever game of flip cup. Two teams of six people lined up on opposite sides of the folding table, each person with a half-full cup of beer in front of them. You had to chug your beer, then flip your cup so that it landed perfectly upside-down and didn’t tip over. The next team member couldn’t go until the one before accomplished this seemingly simple, yet vitally important, task.
“Talk smack all you want. We got this,” Sahil said. He stood to Ethan’s left. He was the caboose, ready to bring home a victory. As long as Ethan didn’t mess everything up.
Ethan watched the people ahead of him with complete trepidation. He didn’t want to be the guy who couldn’t flip a cup. He didn’t want to let his team down and be excommunicated from the tailgate.
Uh-oh.His teammate on his right was a master at this. She downed her beer and flipped her cup before Ethan could curse to himself, and now it was his turn.
Crap crap crap.
He slammed the beer down his throat, willing it to go down, ignoring his gag reflex and the gross taste that coated his mouth. He may puke, but not before flipping this fucking cup. Lorna’s teammate flipped her cup, and now Lorna was chugging her beer like it was water in a desert. Ethan’s headstart vanished with each gulp.
He mimicked what the other kids did, positioning the cup on the edge of the table, placing his fingertips underneath, and flicking.
The cup bounced on its rim and fell over. Ethan went to flip it again. The cup somersaulted in the air and landed on its side. His hands shook. Panic spread throughout him.Focus. Concentrate.
“You got this, bro,” Sahil said.
Lorna swallowed the last bits of beer. Their teams cheered them on with fervor. The noise swirled around Ethan.
