Page 39 of Follow Your Bliss

“You’ve never played truth or dare?”

“Not really.”

“Alright—you can pick it up as we go. You first. Pick one: truth, or dare?”

“I have to come up with a dare?”

“No, you’re picking if you’re gonna tell a truth or do a dare. And then…” He tossed me a smile. “I’ll either ask you an intrusive question or dare you to do something ridiculous.”

No way was I picking truth. “Okay, dare.”

“Ha-haa!” he crowed. “Okay let me think of a good one.” He looked all around the car, at the summer afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees. “I’ve never played it in a car before. Ooh! I know. Moon the cars in the other lane.”

“No way!” I squealed. “I’mnotmooninganybody.Believe me, those days are long over.”

He did a double take. “What days? You had mooning days?”

I laughed. “No, I used to be…” How could I say this? “A lot more open to public nudity.”

He blinked and shook his head like he was dizzy. “Wow, okay. So since you didn’t want to do the dare, you have to tell a truth, or you lose the game.”

“Did you give me a dare you knew I wouldn’t do, on purpose, to get me to tell you a truth?”

“While strategy is an important part of any game, it’s even more important after your public nudity statement.”

His dimples should be outlawed. I sighed loudly so he knew how I felt about it. “Okay, but don’t forget you’re next. What do you want to know?”

“Um, about the public nudity, obviously.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “In college, I made extra money…posing as a nude model for art classes.”

He looked at me one too many times. In my brain, I reclined naked on a chaise, and his brown eyes traced the peaks of my breasts, licking his lips as he imagined how it would feel to trace them with his tongue.

I bit my lip and resisted squirming in my seat because he kept looking at me. “Eyes on the road, Deck Daddy.”

“So wait. That shy teenager I took to prom, just a few years later, was dropping robe to pose naked in front of a bunch of strangers?” His voice was all honest curiosity, gentle surprise. No judgment.

“Maybe…yeah. It started as foreplay with my boyfriend at the time, who was in the class. And then, after we broke up—well it was decent money for sitting there doing nothing.” I put my face in my hands. “You cannot tell a soul. I’ve never even told Lily.”

“I’m speechless.”

Because he was imagining me naked, or because he couldn’t imagine me naked? My face heated. “It’s not much different from what you do.”

“I think you’ll find my shorts are always on, but yeah. You have a point.”

“Okay, smart ass, it’s my turn. Truth or dare?”

“Dare!” he said immediately.

“Well shit. I don’t have a dare picked out.” Not that I had a truth, either. The only thing I wanted to know was if he was experiencing the overwhelming sexual attraction to me that I had for him, but I couldn’t very well ask my landlord that.

I wracked my brain, looking around the car. “Damnit, I can’t think of anything you can do safely while driving that isn’t lame. It’s so not fair. We’ll have to play another round when we get there. Um…I dare you to…oh, I know! Compose a haiku for me.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Compose a haiku? Like right now?”

“Yeah. Compose a haiku about me.”

He laughed. “Aboutyou. Okay. That’s clever, I’ll give you that. Give me a minute to think.”

---