“Everyone well fed?” he asks, arm propped up on the edge of his truck. The small crowd nods and holds up their drinks. “Good. It’s time for Truth or Dare.”
Okay, so maybe this is where the “party” kicks in. A hush of anxious whispering and giggles ripples through the group and people shimmy their chairs forward to form a closer circle. I follow suit with Savannah and Tori, edging in to the point where the proximity to everyone becomes a little uncomfortable.
To the surprise of no one, Blake leads the game. He steps into the middle of the circle and sets down an empty Pepsi bottle, holding it steady under his foot. The music is still playing, perhaps a little too loud. He summarizes the rules of the game as though there would ever be a possibility that any teenager in the world doesn’t know how Truth or Dare works, then spins the bottle and leans against his truck. The white polo he’s wearing stretches tight across his broad chest.
The bottle points at Savannah.
“Truth,” she says anxiously, pursing her lips and giving her cousin her best puppy-dog eyes. Maybe she’s hoping Blake will go easy on her, but I doubt it.
“Is it true you dip fries into your milkshakes?”
Okay, point not proven.
“Laaaame,” someone drawls.
Savannah sighs audibly beside me, her face lighting up with a relieved grin. A lucky escape thanks to blood connections.
No one else is as lucky.
Poor Barney opts for a dare and Savannah orders him to streak across the baseball field. He laps it up, entertaining the troops with a faux striptease, then sprints around the field butt-naked. He returns, hands shielding his crotch, and bows to a round of applause that even I participate in. I get the feeling that this is something of a party trick. He seems like the kind of guy who’s destined to become the joker of any friendship circle.
The game continues and there’s a mixture of both dares and truths being chosen. The truths are the usual, obvious kind of questions, like who was the last person you hooked up with? And the dares are relatively tame in comparison to the one Savannah delivered – kiss someone in the group, post an embarrassing photo to your Instagram feed, chug the last remaining bottle of Bud Light that someone has found in the bottom of a cooler. Every time someone spins the bottle again, I stare at the dark sky and pray it points to anyone but me. So far, luck has been on my side.
Until . . .
“Ah Mila,” Blake says as the bottle slows to a stop in my direction. “Truth or dare?”
My heart beats faster and everyone’s gaze is on me, waiting to see if the new girl is brave enough to go for the dare. But even a truth is a scary choice when I’m with strangers who know nothing about me. They could ask anything since there is so much to find out. But I can lie, right? How will they know any different?
“Truth,” I say, swallowing hard. Of course the bottle has to land on me when it was Blake’s turn to spin it.
He sits on a chair now, across the circle from me, a fresh can of soda in his hand. He runs his finger around the metallic rim, pretending to think hard. Then he glances up and smiles. “Who’s your father?”
Now my heart stops. What?
I stare at him with an icy look, wishing I could smack that smirk off his smug face. He knows exactly who my father is, but he obviously wants everyone else to know too since his introduction earlier clearly didn’t cause the stir he was hoping for.
Confusion passes through the group, eyebrows furrowing and murmurs tainting the stilted silence. Expressions perk up with curiosity, but the small handful of people who already seemed to connect the dots earlier are now lighting up in an “I knew it!” sense of joy.
“C’mon . . . it doesn’t matter,” I whisper, groveling pathetically, appealing to Blake’s better nature. That’s if he even has one. Can’t he tell I don’t want to talk about this? That if I wanted everyone to know who my father is, I would have found a way to work that into conversations already?
Blake glances around the quiet circle, purposely drawing out the tension. “Did you guys know we have a celebrity in our midst? Sorry – the daughter of a celebrity.”
My lips part, shocked that he’s throwing me under the bus like this. We only just met – what could I have possibly done for him to act this way toward me?
I’m not oblivious to the power of celebrity – the truth was bound to come out eventually, but Blake is making every effort to shine the spotlight on me and, right now, it is burning far too bright.
Barney is the first to say it out loud. He hunches forward in his chair, the buttons on his shirt still waiting to be done up. “Wait. Mila . . . Harding? Everett Harding is your dad?”
I close my eyes, inhaling deeply. Here it comes. Everyone bursts into a clatter of noise, questions flying through the air, both to me and to each other.
“Who?” someone asks.
“The guy who plays Jacob Knight in Flash Point!” someone else tells them.
“Is he here in Fairview right now?” an animated voice questions at the same time as someone else remarks, “I knew it was her!”
I open my eyes and search through the jostling group to find Blake. He relaxes back in his chair, swigging his soda as though he hasn’t just created total chaos in my life. I shake my head slowly, angrily, and mouth, Why?
People have stood up from their chairs to shuffle closer to me, gathering around in hopes that I’ll answer their random questions or spill some gossip. The entire night, no one has batted an eye at me other than to say friendly hellos. But now that Dad’s name is out there? Suddenly everyone thinks I’m so cool and interesting.
“Should we act as bodyguards?” Tori jokes with Savannah as they remain on either side of me. To be fair, even Savannah freaked out a little over Dad earlier today. Tori is the only one who remembered who I am but doesn’t seem to care all that much about Dad – and if she does, she certainly doesn’t show it.
The girl who’s spent most of her night in Myles’s lap pulls a chair up in front of me, eyes wide. “Is it creepy to you if I say that your dad is hot? Do you think you could get me an autograph?”
“Do you have any pictures of you and him together?” Barney asks, towering over my shoulder from behind. “Can we see?”
“I guess,” I mumble. What’s the point of being secretive now that everyone knows?
I pull out my phone and swipe through my camera roll, painfully aware of everyone’s eyes latched onto my screen, all of them subtly edging in closer and closer so that they can get the prime viewing angle. There’s only six people cornering me, but it feels like a thousand. Everyone else at the tailgate is keeping their distance for now, though I can hear the hum of their voices.