1
“What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done?” My flatmate, Steph, leans across the sticky table in our local bar, one eyebrow arched as we consider her words.
The question is simple enough, and my first response is to grin wickedly, as if I have something juicy to share. But the longer I sit there, scanning the depths of my mind for crazy, wild stories, the more I realize I’ve done nothing outrageous in my life at all.
Nothing.
Not one, tiny, outrageous thing.
You’d think, in my twenty-eight years on this planet, I could have donesomethingshocking. I’ve never even had a one night stand for Christ’s sake.
I shrink into my chair and pretend to busy myself with the drink menu. These aren’t even my friends, anyway. They won’t expect me to answer.
“Ooh, I know!” Cassidy, a redhead with big teeth, exclaims. Everyone looks at her eagerly and she pauses for effect, drinking in the attention. “I once had sex with a guy in the middle of a rugby field.”
Bloody hell.
“It was midnight and there was no one around,” she clarifies. As if we’d all been picturing her straddling some guy during the second half of the World Cup Final while a ball whizzed past her head.
But still. It doesn’t exactly sound fun.
“Okay, I’ve got one,” Steph says, running a hand through her short, brunette bob.
I’ve always loved Steph. We met about ten years ago, at the cafe where I work in Baxterton, New Zealand. She worked there part-time while studying, and even though she left after graduation, we kept in touch and became flatmates a few years later. She puts up with me better than anyone and, God love her, she’s always trying to push me out of my comfort zone. If it weren’t for her I’d spend all my time at home surrounded by mountains of books. I’d be perfectly happy with that, but she insists I “need to get out sometimes.” That’s why I’m here with her workmates, drinking on a Tuesday night. She’s trying to turn me to the dark side.
Steph giggles. “I gave a guy a handjob in the alley behind this bar.”
I try not to groan. This is such a typical Steph story. She’s a lot more, shall we say, sexually adventurous than me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I haven’t had the occasional fantasy of doing something like that. It’s just that the opportunity has never presented itself, and I’ve yet to meet a guy so irresistible that I feel compelled to tear his clothes off on the spot.
“Alright, your turn,” Cassidy says, gesturing beside me to Heather. It seems we’re going around the circle, and there’s a pinch in my belly at the realization that I’m next.
I push my glasses up my nose and fix my gaze back on the drink menu, trying to extricate myself from this whole thing. I’m never coming out with Steph again.
Heather grins and flicks a wave of blond hair over her shoulder. “I once had sex with a married guy.”
A married man? I bury my face in the menu to hide the frown tugging at my brow. I’m all for sexual freedom, or whatever, but something about sleeping with a married guy seems over the line.
What even was the question again? Why is everything sex-related? Is that the only thing that qualifies for outrageous? Has nobody, I don’t know, gone skinny-dipping, or dyed their hair a wacky color, or sunk every cent of their savings into some crazy dream? Not that I’ve done any of those things, of course. I can’t even send back food at a restaurant. Well, I hardly ever go to restaurants, so that example is more hypothetical than literal, but you get what I’m saying.
“Your turn, Harriet.”
My pulse quickens and I pretend I haven’t heard them, directing my attention towards selecting another drink. Mm, the cocktails sound nice, or maybe a bunch of tequila shots—
“Harriet?”
Heat creeps up my neck as I meet Cassidy’s gaze. I glance at Steph with a silent plea for help, but she’s engrossed in something on her phone. The other two watch expectantly and I swallow, my tongue feeling like sandpaper. I mentally search for something to get them off my back, but my mind is blank.
“C’mon,” Heather presses. “What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done?”
Steph looks up from her phone and her face breaks into a grin. “You’re asking the wrong person,” she says, with a good-natured chuckle. My cheeks grow warm, despite the fact that she’s speaking the absolute truth.
“What?” Cassidy laughs in my direction. “Surely you’ve donesomething?”
Steph shakes her head and speaks again before I can answer. “Harriet? Are you kidding? She spends all of her time with her nose in a book. Her hero is Hermione Granger.”
She flicks me an affectionate smile and I roll my eyes. After I was taunted mercilessly in high school she’s the only one I let tease me like this, because I know it comes from a place of love.
“Harriet prefers to read about adventures, not have them.”
