Page 6 of Daring You

2

Astor

This one?Or….this one?

I hold both questionable items up against the light, wondering if purple is more Ben’s color, or black.

Isn’t black too common? All the girls in movies wear black lingerie. It seems the go-to for seduction.

What if I want to be different?

What if…

What if all Ben sees is black lace? He might be bored. Could be less inclined to consider me, or, dear God, he could laugh. Cackle right in my face and then go running to my brother that his cute twin sister just tried to fuck him with department store underwear.

Ugh, shake yourself out of it, Hayes.

Ben isn’t like that. I wouldn’t be standing here butt-naked in my dorm room, ensuring my roommate was gone for an all-night study session, figuring out brand new lingerie options, if he were. He’s not mean, or cruel. He wouldn’t make me feel like less of a woman or like a moron for thinking he wants this as much as I do.

Because I know he does. I’ve sensed it. For so long, I’ve known about it, but haven’t figured out what to do until now. He’s my brother’s best friend. They’re practically brothers at this point, which…wouldn’t that make me…

No. Stop ruining this for yourself.

My brother has his group, and it’s not just Ben. There’s Asher, and a guy named Easton, also that weird Dodge dude that keeps trying to hang out with them. All of whom I have zero attraction to, so it can’t be simply because Ben’s forbidden fruit that I like him. He makes me laugh, is capable of enticing conversation despite his jock status, and focuses, really centers in, when I’m speaking. I don’t know any other guy who does that. Who actually cares what I say and how I say it, and then asks follow-up questions like I’ve piqued his interest.

Ben gets me. Hangs out with me without Locke being present. None of Locke’s other friends do that. He even bought me a birthday present this year, a cute football-themed rubber duck, because during a weak moment I told him about my predilection for collecting rubber duckies. They’re all lined up on a shelf at my childhood home in New York, faithfully dusted by my mom and dutifully ignored by my dad.

Ben acted like it was nothing, just a stupid, cheap birthday token for turning twenty, because it’s not like it’s twenty-one where you’d deserve a duck covered in glitter and LED lights, he’d said, making me laugh again. But I didn’t take that duck home to New York that Thanksgiving to add to my collection. Instead, I kept it here, near my bedside lamp, so every time I turned off the light to sleep, I could be reminded of Ben.

Oh, fuck, I’d better get rid of that before he comes here.

I grab the duck off the nightstand. I can’t question myself. Not anymore. I’ve already sent the text, Ben’s on his way, freshly showered because I timed it to be after his game (which I made sure he won, texting Locke about it first), and I can’t back out now. This is a now or never kind of moment, because finals are coming up, and then Christmas break. If this goes sour, we could easily go our separate ways, and I’d have a good few weeks to recover before having to face him again, and that, to me, seems like the perfect amount of time to squander any remaining mortification.

Ben’s a nice guy. I have to remember that. He’s been nothing but kind, and there’s no reason to believe he’d flip a coin and turn into a monster.

He sleeps around. A lot. The last thing he wants to deal with is some amateur who’s only done like, three blow jobs and one quickie in high school her entire life. This could be the worst decision I’ve ever made—

Damn it, me, stop trying to ruin everything.

A light tap at my dorm room door sends a squeak up my throat, exactly like that freaking duck I got caught in the desk drawer as I fumbled it shut.

I know the Hayes charm has to be in here somewhere. Everyone in my family has it, especially my brother, and I grapple for that hidden talent as I take a deep breath, settle on the purple, and say, “Just a minute!” as I make my naked self a little less naked.

Not by much, though.

Eesh.

I do a quick straighten and tuck in front of the floor-length mirror I somehow fit between my bed and the closet on my side of the room, frown at how my pelvis sticks out and how flat my boobs are despite this bra company’s promise to take you two cups up!

“Let’s do this,” I say to my reflection, and try not to cringe. I turn to the door. “Ben? That you?”

“Yeah,” comes the muffled reply.

I spend a few precious seconds smoothing down my hair and rallying all the self-worth I possess into opening this door with confidence. I decided that doing the subtle approach with Ben would be stupid. We’d been doing this dance for almost two years, and I figured it was time to up the ante. I just didn’t contemplate how this move would churn my stomach, turn my kneecaps into jelly, and generally light my body on fire. My heart pounds so hard I’m surprised it’s leaving room to breathe.

Okay. One, two…

Now or never.

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