“You didn’t actually draw?”
“I did.” He stiffens his finger into a pointer. “Right here. I wrote out ‘wanker’ in script to mesh with the branches. It’s only visible to the drunk eye.” He slaps the oil painting. “So go ahead, put your eye on it, you’ll see.”
Don’t mind if I do.
“Give me a hoist.”
Rupert bends down, hands clasped together so I can step on his joined palms, and then lifts me up so my eye presses against the painted bushes.
“Oh, yup, ‘wanker,’ right there. Plain as day.”
My eyeball is kissing the canvas, and I can’t see shit, but who really fucking cares.
“Lower me down, dear sir,” I say just as he releases his hands and I fall right to the ground, flat on my arse, with a thud. “Fucking Christ.” I roll to the side and rub my hand over my backside. “You broke my hip.”
Rupert plops down in my dad’s office chair and lifts the lid of his cigar box. He pulls one out and then replaces it with one that he brought with him, a cheap knockoff. He’s done it so often that now my dad is convinced that in every box he buys, there’s always a dud in the batch.
“You’re fine, but if you don’t put pants on soon, I’m going to kick you in the cock. Can’t stand seeing your giblets, mate. Your dick is way too big to be walking around without pants.”
I glance down at my lap, noticing nothing wrong with my lack of pants. If anything, it’s a dignified dick and he should be honored to be in its presence. “Grow up,” I reply as I spread my legs apart and start stretching side to side for the hell of it.
“Ahh, fuck off,” Rupert says, shooting his hand up to cover his view of me. “Christ…truth or dare? And you can’t say truth.”
“Then why did you ask?” I lie back on the floor, staring at the plaid wallpapered ceiling, a touch my mum found to be classy but I saw as a waste of money. But that’s wealthy arseholes for you, wasting money on meaningless things like wallpaper on a ceiling.
“Out of courtesy to my lord.”
I lift my middle finger to my best friend and say, “Don’t fucking call me that.”
“It’s your God-given title. You’re going to have to get used to it.”
“Not yet.”
“‘Yet’ being the key word.”
“Just get on with it.”
“Fine. You chose dare, or I chose it for you. Either way, are you ready for this?”
“Yes,” I say, exasperated.
When he doesn’t say anything for a solid ten seconds, I look up to find my best friend grinning like he has the best, most maniacal idea he’s ever come up with.
“What?” I ask, sitting up on my elbows.
“How do you feel about finding a fiancée?”
A fiancée? Has he lost his mind?
“Uh, not great.”
Rupert laughs. “Too bad, because I created a profile for you on a find-a-fiancée website. So, I dare you to press the activate button.”
Oh fuck.
I think truth or dare just became a whole lot more serious.
Chapter Two
