Page 66 of The Romantic Agenda
“Oh my god,” Summer yells. “Why does he get to hug you and I don’t? I give way better hugs than he does.”
Fox answers without taking his eyes off Joy. “Probably because I asked first.”
Joy laughs, planning to tell Summer she can have a hug too—she’s feeling generous—but her gaze finds Malcolm instead. He’s staring at them like he isn’t sure what he’s seeing, blinking rapidly in disbelief. His brow furrows into a deep frown. He snaps out of it, shaking his head, and takes the food tray the rest of the way to the fire pit.
“Iris,” Joy says quickly.
Fox drops his hands immediately and takes a half-step away from her. “Sunflower.”
“Sunflower?” Summer asks, taking another pull from her beer.
He nods. “Sunflower.”
“Whatever. I don’t care.” Summer has hit that stage where she drunkenly wobbles when she walks, but it looks purposeful when she does it, like she’s dancing to music only she can hear. “I’m starving,” she says to Malcolm. “Are there veggie dogs?”
“I didn’t forget.” He says it like it’s an inside joke and she responds the same, “Remember, that was all your fault.”
They position the chairs around the fire in a circle, and Malcolm passes out roasting skewers. Hot dogs and links are the primary attraction, but at some point, Malcolm also cooks hamburgers and a slab of ribs. The dessert station has ingredients for s’mores neatly laid out. Two more pints of Joy’s favorite ice cream are chilling in ice buckets next to more beer.
“We should play a game,” Summer says, turning her veggie dog over the fire like it’s on a manual spitfire.
“What kind?” Malcolm asks.
“Something fun but easy.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll win,” Joy says. “I get really competitive. It’s one of my worst traits.”
Fox asks, “Worse than your pervasive honesty? That’s still number one for me.”
“Not quite that bad,” she says, playing along.Pervasive, she thinks, trying not to smile.That’s a new one. She figures he’s thought up his own new game where he gives her creatively strange compliments. “But it’s up there. Malcolm, remember the Great Beer Pong Disaster, when I flipped the table?”
Malcolm is sitting back in his chair, arms crossed, and very much not looking at her. “Yeah.”
Summer asks, “On purpose?”
“Oh yeah. I’m a very sore loser.”
Summerhmmms for a few seconds. “Have you two ever played Chain Story?”
Fox explains, “You start with a random prompt and whoever goes first has sixty seconds to tell a true story from their life. They then pick one element from their story, usually a single word, and the person who goes next. That person then has to do the same thing. Whoever tells the best story wins.”
“But there’s less time each turn,” Summer says. “There’s four of us so the first person gets sixty seconds. Second will get forty-eight seconds, then thirty-six, then twenty-four.”
“Drunk math. I’m impressed,” Joy says kindly.
“Really?” Summer grins.
“It’s true. You should go first. How do we pick the prompt?”
Summer ends up telling a story about the first concert she ever tried to go to alone but got the dates mixed up for. She went to the venue on the wrong day, but the doorman let her in, and instead of seeing the Jonas Brothers she watched a metal concert. It turned out to be quite the formative experience for her—her nose got broken in a mosh pit.
“Is that true?” Joy asks Fox.
“Could be. It was before my time.”
“That’s why I have a lump here.” She points to her nose—and accidentally leaves a smear of mustard behind. “The doctor set it weird so it healed crooked. Anyway, I choose you, Joy. Your word is”—she mimes a drumroll—“crush.”
“Ooh, okay. Crush.” Joy tries to think quickly and snaps her fingers when it comes to her. “Crush. Celebrity crush. This is the story of my brief but incredibly intense crush on Naomi Campbell, and how it ended with my dad fighting the pastor in the sanctuarybecause he told me I was going to hell. Forty-eight seconds on the clock, please?”
