Zade barked out a laugh, Aaron gave me a look bordering on pride and confusion and Tanner lifted his mouth from the chick’s neck and searched until he found me. When he did, my knees got a little weak and I leaned into the table for a second.
His eyes were on fire and he raised one eyebrow, pulling the girl with him to the table and making a show of patting her ass and gently pushing her away before he spoke. He looked directly at me and I swore I felt his words hit my exposed skin. “Our little freshman seems to be getting a bittoococky. What do we do to the cocky players, Hilly?”
“Well, we tend to knock them on their ass.” My idiot brother held out a fist and they bumped theirs together. If they meant to intimidate, they did the exact opposite. I shared a look with Zade and we both burst out laughing. It threw Aaron off his game, that was for sure, because he looked pissed.
“What’s so goddamn funny?”
“You two.” Zade wiped under his eye and handed me one of the ping-pong balls. “God, have they always been that douche-y?”
“Yup.” I popped the p and flexed my muscles at them. “Say, Zade, what do we do to the douche-y players?”
“We beat them.”
“Game on, fuckers,” Tanner said, making the threat sound like it was just to me, and I had no idea why.
Twenty minutes later, we’d drawn a crowd. Greta pulled up a bar stool and sat right in the middle, claiming she had no sides, and that pissed Aaron off. She winked at me and looked all innocent. It was down to the final cup for both teams and it would be a lie if I said I wasn’t feeling the beer. They made no exception to the half-cup rule, where they filled each of the ten cups halfway with beer, and that meant Zade and I had two beers each within that time frame. It might not have been a big deal to him, but it was for me.
Aaron threw the ball, everyone holding their breath when he missed the cup by a hair. “Fuck!” he groaned, stomping away from the table. That meant Tanner had a chance to win the game. He cleaned the ball I had just thrown in a cup of water, crooked his finger at the girl he would most definitely bring back to his room later and dropped a very loud kiss on her. The crowd cheered, but I refrained from reacting.
“I’ve never wanted to win more than this moment, with everyone watching.” He kissed the ball and tossed it with a perfect angle. It landed into the cup, but no one cheered. It meant rebuttal. Zade and I each had one more throw to tie the game and if we both made it, we could steal the game from them.
Zade put his arm around my shoulder, turned me from the game and spoke low enough for just me to hear. “You know the rules, right?”
“Yes, this is it. Do or die.”
“How are you under pressure?”
“Apparently better than my brother.”
He laughed real hard at that, lifted his head over my shoulder and spoke to Aaron. “I love her. Can we trade you for her?”
“Fuck off, Willows.”
Zade brought his attention back to me. “Want me to go first or second?”
“First,” I said. The nerves dancing up my throat made me want to puke. I’d talked the talk all day, but if I didn’t make this cup, my life would be hell. I would be known as that girl, the one who lost, and I wanted to be known as someone else.The girl who kicked ass.Yeah, I liked that title.
We faced our opponents and if Tanner thought his continuous flirting with the busty brunette would fluster me, it had the opposite effect. Zade tossed the ball into the air, sinking the shot with nothing more than a drop of a splash. The crowd cheered and the adrenaline in my body reached a new level.
It’s just one shot.
Arch it, not too hard, not too soft.
Don’t overthink it.
I got into position with my arm at a ninety-degree angle, and I released it. The ball soared. I froze. It landed in the cup.
Zade and I screamed.
Holy fucking shit.
“Kenzie! Oh my god!” Zade picked me up and spun me around in a victory hug, his expression wild. “You did it.”
“Well, we told them. It’s what happens to douche-y players. They lose.”
The crowd of fifteen people roared with laughter and I was smart enough to admit that I was terrified of what I would see glancing at our opponents. Greta hugged me after Zade and I snuck a peek at Aaron and TJ. My mouth fell open at their reaction. I expected to see murder, embarrassment or even revenge on their faces, but instead, they raised their hands into the air and bowed.
I almost cried. It was stupid, just a game of beer pong, but I couldn’t recall a memory in recent years where I had felt like this.Weightless. Carefree. Happy.I ran to my brother and threw my arms around him. “Thank you for not being an asshole. This is my favorite moment.”
