A Cold Night's Sweetness

Truth or Dare

"Lift your lazy bums, guys. We are having a day to ourselves." Jess excitedly talked with an I-have-never-been-so-much-happy smile on her face.
"What? Today?" I asked putting together the hints. She nodded confirming the latter part of the question. "Explain please," I stated. Jess clapped her hands together and spoke in a funny way, "Well you see our parents are heading down to Aunt Carol's house." Aunt carol is Jess' and my mom's younger sister. She is an outgoing, a gregarious person and a divorcee. The fact that she is a divorcee doesn't seem to be the problem since she gets proposal very fast.
"Aunt Carol will be joining us on our vacation and since she fractured her leg, our parents will be driving her here and on the way down they will be visiting monuments and won't be back till tomorrow. So they gave us the permission to do anything as long as it does not involve getting drunk. We will throw a small innocent party to commemorate our vacation. I and Fallon will be the supervisors and in charge of the decorations and Su and Al will buy soft drinks and snacks from the mart down the street."
I rolled my eyes at her for being childish and looked at Allen to disagree with her decision. "Okay, what do we need for the party?" Typical Allen. He does the opposite of what is required. He nodded as Jess gave him a long list junks to buy. "Let's go, Sugar." I reluctantly stood up from the heater and wore my Parka to escape cold. "You can ask some of your friends to come over," Jess shouted as we went outside the room. The way down the hallway was silent; neither of us talking or trying to break the ice. "Any friends out here?" he asked and I shook my head. I had few of them before but now I lost contact with them. "What about you?" I asked him and he nodded. "Two of them actually, we study in same high school and they live here."

"Lower the volume, Jess. The management will fine us if they find us," I yelled at her over the music. "Don't worry, Su. I talked with the manager and he was ever ready to agree with me." She flipped her hair back in unannounced pride. Terror crossed my mind and I asked her, "What did you do?" "Nothing special, darling I told him that my cousin, which is Fallon, have only two months to live and we, that's all of us, are going to make this day special for him." Poor Fallon, Jess made him the victim of her plan. The door creaked open and Allen came followed by two boys; one tall as Allen and other little shorter than him. Allen introduced the tall boy as Ryder and the shorter one as Tyron. Ryder was quiet and laughed rarely and when the situation demanded whereas Tyron was just the opposite, overactive and little too loud.
"Hey, Sugar?" loud one talked denoting a question when he said my name. "Yup, that's me," I smiled back. "Good to finally see you, I have heard about you from Allen so many times." Heard about me? From Allen? "Oh, is it?" I threw back a confused smile. Tyron talked openly and my impression of him changed from loud and cranky to fun and easygoing person. I could see Ryder opening up a little and talking more around Jess.

The long awaited Truth and Dare came and we sat down in a big circle, me between Allen on the right and Tyron on the left. The blue bottle spun and landed in the direction of Tyron. "Dare," he chose. "I dare you to kiss Sugar on the cheek." My eyes popped out on the ridiculous dare. Before I could utter 'what' Tyron came forward and kissed my cheek. I froze and from the corner of my eyes I could see Allen's surprised face and hear knuckles crack.