Playing Around
For Georgie,
She was so close.
Bella was reaching the edge of the horizon. It was the final push. She had almost crested the hill. Only a few more moments and dawn would flood over her. Her breathing was fast, her body tense, her mouth agape, her hand working overtime as her toes began to curl. And then...
Ring, ring. Ring, ring.
It caught Bella off guard. She stumbled. Her hand slowing as her mind flushed back to reality. She tried to push on, for a few more moments, but the momentum was gone. The bell kept ringing. The horizon faded away, as did the hill, and the faceless man she had pictured in her mind. Her body ached. She was left unsatisfied and annoyed. But she had no one else to blame but herself. She was beaten.
I'll get him back for this
, Bella thought.
Her doorbell continued to ring for a few more moments. She lay in bed, naked and sweaty, her breath slowly steadying. This was her fault; she had asked Charlie to come over when he was back from the gym. She didn't expect him to take so long, so she lay in bed and let her mind, and her fingers, wander. Now, Bella wished he had taken even longer. After a polite amount of time, he rang the doorbell again, and she threw off her covers and threw on a sports bra, a hoodie, some boxers, sweatpants, and mismatched socks. She was sweaty, but he'd be sweaty too, so she didn't care much.
She ran down the stairs, called out to tell her family she's leaving, and leapt through the door into his arms. When they were kids, she used to knock him over with that, but now they were older, he not only expected it, but could handle it. Charlie's arms were wide, catching her midair and swinging her around as they hugged. It had been nearly three years since they last saw each other in person, but their friendship had never died.
Charlie was back home for the summer and Bella had come home for the weekend. For the first time in forever their visits lined up and they were back in their hometown at the same time. Bella had arrived only this morning, but he had been doing odd jobs around town all day, and then wanted to go to the gym, so she had been waiting all day to see him.
After their hug, the lifelong friends made the long journey to his house, right across the street from hers. They had grownup as the only kids on their suburban street, their windows facing each other across the wide road. Their friendship was natural. They weren't the most interesting of people. She was a generic girl, him a typical guy, and that was really it. Sometimes all you need to get close to someone is to just be close by. They also didn't bother making many other friends, since they always had each other. They spent their childhoods watching videos on the internet, playing the old first-person shooter games, and chatting shit. There was nothing more to it.
As they grew older, they didn't necessarily grow apart, the world just took them to different locations. Charlie's parents divorced and he chose to go with his mother, only visiting his father and sisters occasionally, while Bella dropped out of school and went to college early, taking her away from home for most of the year. They kept up with one another on social media, sometimes talking every other day, sometimes every other month, but never falling out of contact. But now, they were back together again, and they were going to make this week last.
They hastily ran up the stairs to the sound of Charlie's dad telling him to take out the bins before sunset. They raced each other into his room. Bella got there first and leapt onto his bed. It was only as she bounced on it that she realised how small it was. Everything in the room seemed smaller, except them. They were adults now, though back together again, they didn't feel like it.
She inspected her old friend for the first time in years as he fell into his old and tattered, yet comfy, swivel chair. Charlie had short curly hair, black as night, and olive skin, freshly tanned from working out in the heat. His sweat gave him a nice sheen. He was much taller than he once was, and far more muscled. Even under his two shirts, she could see his chest heaving underneath it. It was funny to think of her scrawny little best friend as a hunk now.
He'd be my type
, she thought,
if I met him now and not when we were snotty little kids
. All her new friends at college fawned over him when she showed them pictured, but she had never seen him that way, she will never see him that way. He was like a kind of brother.
"Let's go for a classic one. And a classic map. You remember this one?" Charlie asked her, before putting on a voice and saying "Window!" Bella chuckled. To explain the half-a-decade old inside joke would take too long.
He turned on the console and brought out the controllers, sliding right back into the muscle memory of their youths. Bella pulled herself to the edge of the bed to face the huge monitor. It was then that she felt the humidity in the room, the sweat still on her face getting moist. She pulled the bottom of her hoodie up and began to wipe it away. It was then that Charlie held the slightly crappier white controller, keeping the main black one to himself. She wiped the last of the sweat off with one hand while she reached out with the other. Her eyes came up to his, and for a moment she thought he was looking at the controller, but then he blinked and turned away as she dropped the bottom of her hoodie.
Oh, right.
She held back an annoyed scoff. He had grown into a typical man. All she had done was accidentally give him a good look as her toned midriff, but it was enough to throw him off his balance. In a way, it was disappointing, but not surprising. Bella had changed in the years since they last met. She still had her long pristine blonde hair, her clear tawny skin, and her passion for good nails, good lashes, and good makeup, but she had also become a woman. Time had been kind to her. Before, she was a little wider and a lot flatter, now she had curves in all the right places. She had started working out when he did, and they shared their journeys together, though online she could never see where his eyes looked. Bella had become lean; her waist was tight while her glutes were thick, and her breasts were large. She had grown into the very stereotypical blonde that they had made fun of in school.
Charlie booted up the game and they began to play. She quickly realised that her pretty long nails were making it harder to play than when she was a kid, but luckily it seemed Charlie was entirely out of practice, leading to her winning game after game.
"I have an idea," she said after her fourth win in a row, "let's do a dare game."
Charlie groaned. He had always hated them. His ego had gotten the better of him whenever she asked and he agreed to it, only to lose set of games and have to do something embarrassing, like letting her send his crush a text from his phone, or spend an hour in a dog cage, or wear girl's clothes for the whole weekend. Each time, he'd swear off dare games, only to cave the next time she asked. She usually planned her questions to coincide with him winning a game or two, to lull him into a false sense of security. Today, it seems he finally matured, and he rejected the idea outright.
Moments later he won a game by a single kill and lit up like the stupid goofball he is, and asked if they could play the dare game.
"Since you're on a grand winning streak of one," she told him, "I guess I accept. Whoever wins best out of five games gets to dare the other to do anything they want for the rest of the evening."
"And if they fail to complete the task?" he asked her, no doubt thinking of the screaming match they had years ago when he stopped her from sending a text to his crush asking for nudes.
"Then the victor gets to issue an even harsher dare." Bella smiled, certain of her victory, as always, and wondering what humiliating dare she would inflict upon her best friend.
"May I add another rule?" he asked. She raised an eyebrow. "The length of five games is a long time," he continued, "it may get boring. We're adults, let's take this up a notch."
"I'm listening."
"Every single game won," he started, a cute smile crossing his face, "the loser must remove an item of clothing and keep it off for the rest of the evening."
This time Bella did scoff, followed by an incredulous laugh. Charlie only sat back and smiled.
He is like all the other men
, she realised,
and he is thirsty
. It was then that a revelation hit her. When they were kids, nudity was strictly off limits when it came to a dare game, due to Charlie's own rules. Her ideas of humiliating him were sorely reduced after that, but she respected it. Now, he had undone that rule in his horny idiocy. This was not an opportunity she was going to pass up.
The idea came to her head immediately. He had kept her from finishing earlier, albeit accidentally. That was annoying enough to make her want some kind of revenge. Her dare had to make him feel as annoyed and frustrated and embarrassed as she felt in the moment that doorbell rang. She was going to make him take off all his clothes and force him to take the bins out as his father had asked. While everyone else on the street was doing the same at sunset, he would be doing it entirely in the nude. The best thing about this was that this didn't even have to be the dare itself. All she had to do was win enough games to get him to take off enough clothes, and whatever state of undress he was in, he would have to take the bins out like that, because he had to take them out this evening. Bella considered that worth risking him seeking her midriff again. She accepted his rules. Charlie's giddiness was clear in his eyes. She couldn't help but laugh.
But that may have thrown her off balance. She kept giggling to herself and trying to think of more dare ideas that she didn't focus on the game, and his giddiness had turned to a drive she had never seen in him before. He won the next game, by a lot.
Bella sighed, "a deal's a deal." She pulled off one sock.
"Hold on a second. Both socks are one item of clothing."
"Clearly not, they are separate," she told him.
"Shirts, trousers, pairs of socks, accessories. Those are the categories."
Bella was about to argue back when she noticed something. Although he was barefoot, Charlie was wearing several necklaces, a few wristbands, two rings, and he had sunglasses in his pocket. She could win a dozen games and he'd be no more nude than he was now. She thought for a moment.
"Socks are a pair," she agreed, "but so are all accessories."
Charlie mulled it over, then nodded.
