“I double dare you.”

2001

Age 15

“This is stupid,” Marybeth announced, trying not to cringe as Brian Fitzgerald sent her another wink.

“Come on, please!” Brenda begged with a huge smile as she practically bounced with excitement on the dingy old loveseat next to her, sending a fresh wave of old dust into the air to mix with the scents of heavy perfume, cheap cologne and mildew.

“No,” Marybeth said, wondering why she’d come here in the first place.

“Pretty please!” Brenda pleaded with a high-pitched giggle that drew the attention of every teenage boy in the room.

“Ladies, don’t forget to put your names in the jar,” Laurie, a girl that she’d seen around school a few times, said, shooting David Thompson a coy smile as she placed a large glass bowl on the coffee table among the empty root beer cans and discarded bags of chips.

“Come on!” Brenda said, gushing with excitement as she stood up, grabbed Marybeth’s arm, pulling her off the couch and attempted to drag her across the room so that they could put their names in a bowl so that one of the boys who’d bathed in cheap cologne could feel them up in the closet for five minutes.

Yeah…

She was good.

“I’m going home,” she said, pulling her arm free and headed for the glass patio door only to groan a few seconds later when Brenda latched onto her arm and made another desperate attempt to get her to stay.

“You can’t go yet!” Brenda whispered somewhat hysterically. “Come on, you promised!”

“No,” Marybeth said, placing her hand over Brenda’s and gently pried her hand off, “I really didn’t.”

“It’s just five minutes!”

“In a closet with a horny teenage boy who doesn’t even known my name,” she said dryly as she deftly freed her arm and headed for the glass patio doors that promised freedom and fresh air. “I’ll pass.”

“Please!” Brenda begged, making another mad grab for her arm, but before Brenda could reach her, Marybeth slid the double doors open and was outside, shutting the door behind her.

“Where are you going?” the only person in the world that could make her smile even as he pissed her off asked from where he stood, leaning back against the house where he’d apparently been waiting for her.

“Home,” she said, gesturing towards the woods and the path that would take her home where she could sit on her couch, eating cookie dough and watching old Saturday Night Live episodes while she pretended to study for her algebra test.

“I see,” Darrin murmured thoughtfully and as much as she’d love to ignore him and go home, something in his tone had her stopping and turning around to glare at him.

“You see what exactly?” she asked, narrowing her eyes on him.

“That you’re a chicken,” he said with that cocky smile of his, the same one that most of the men in his family seemed to have perfected by the age of ten.

She blinked up at him, sure that she’d misheard him. “I’m a chicken because I didn’t want to go in a closet and get felt up by some boy that I barely know?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head with a heavy sigh as he leaned back against the wall, “because you’re running away from your feelings for me.”

“My feelings for you?” she repeated back slowly, wondering if he’d managed to hit his head today.

“You’re madly in love with me,” he said solemnly, making her roll her eyes in exasperation.

“Puhlease,” she said, shaking her head as she turned around and headed for the path and the cookie dough that she’d hidden in the back of fridge.

“Everyone knows”

“Then everyone is delusional,” she said, not bothering to bite back her smile as she ducked beneath an overhanging branch and stepped onto the well-worn path.

“This just proves how badly you want me,” he explained as he joined her on the path.

“Because I’m walking away from you?” she asked dryly as she ducked beneath another branch.

“I think running would be a more fitting word,” he said, sounding thoughtful and earning an exasperated shake of her head and a roll of her eyes as she placed her hand on his arm to steady herself as she stepped over a fallen log blocking their path.

“Really?”

“Mmmmhmm.”

“You do realize that I was leaving the party before you showed up, right?” she asked with a resigned sigh as he hung that large arm of his over her shoulders.

“Because you sensed me.”

“You’re right. I did,” she admitted with a solemn nod.

“I knew it,” he said, sighing heavily as he gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze.

“Want to tell me why you bothered to show up at all?” she asked, shooting him a curious glance to find him looking down at her.

“Why wouldn’t I show up?” he asked, frowning.

“Because you weren’t invited?”

He shrugged it off. “That usually doesn’t stop me.”

Well, that was true…

“There’s also the fact that you said that you had no interest in going to that party,” she reminded him as they navigated their way around a large puddle blocking their path.

“I changed my mind,” he simply said as they stepped back on the path.

“About?”

“Waiting until later to give you your dare,” he said offhandedly and if she hadn’t been watching the cute little chipmunk sitting in the middle of the trail she probably would have realized what he’d said sooner.