For Rylie

Chapter 8

A/N: Okay so here I am, at 4:48am, wondering what life I have if I can afford to stay up this late and write? Oh that's right, I don't have one!! I know this is a short one but I'm really happy with where it ended, and you really can't say that I'm not putting it an effort. It's freaking quarter to five. IN THE MORNING. And I am not a morning person! Anyway pleaaaase enjoy this :) 

*********************************

We were all sitting around the bonfire roasting marshmallows after dinner. 

It was cold tonight, but not unbearable like last night so I hadn't felt the need to change into sweats. 

After every marshmallow I toasted, I gave the stick to someone else to eat. 

Toasting marshmallows was my one of my favourite things to do. It was relaxing when you were waiting patiently for it to cook all the way through, but it got exciting when it had roasted and you nearly catch it on fire or it nearly falls off the stick and you scoop it up just in time to save it from falling to the coals. 

"Ooh! Let's play truth or dare!" Seth exclaimed excitedly, sitting back down on the log after one last marshmallow. 

He had eaten nearly all of the ones I had cooked, along with a bunch of his own. 

No one seemed to disagree with his idea so we all ended up sitting on the logs or standing closer to the fire - to stay warm - and playing truth or dare. 

"I'll go first!!!" Seth exclaimed after everyone stopped talking. "Hmm," he seemed to think about this for a moment until his face brightened with the lightbulb of an idea. "Leah, truth or dare!" 

"Dare," Leah responded almost immediately, shifting her gaze to the fire distractedly. 

"I dare you," Seth started dramatically, his dirty blonde hair falling in his eyes. "To cook me another roasted marshmallow!"

Leah rolled her eyes but did so anyway, Seth grinning like a little kid on Christmas morning before he thanked her and ate it. 

"Okay. Um, Riley," she looked at me, smiling. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth," I said immediately. Usually I would pick dare but I didn't really want to move away from the warmth that the fire was providing my hands. 

"What do you think perfection is?" She asked me, taking me off guard. 

I had thought she was going to ask me another question about Max.

The response immediately slipped off my tongue without my allowing it to do so. "Nonexistent."

Someone scoffed and I looked over to see Max, sitting on the log, with that smirk on his face. "What?" I asked him.

"You're wrong," he told me, very confident of this. After I gave him a questioning look - as did almost everyone else actually - he sighed, exasparated, and elaborated. "Perfection exists, it's just not what everyone thinks it is. It is just a matter of loving something so much that you overlook the flaws they hold, therefore becoming perfect."

To say I was a little taken aback by this would be the understatement of the freaking century. 

Max smirked, knowing he had surprised all of us, but the smirk was directed mainly at me. 

"What do you think is perfect, then?" I asked out of curiousity. 

He didn't miss a beat. "You, of course," he said with a wink. 

I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to end up flipping strangling you."

"Ooh okay here's a tip guys. Apparently girls don't like it when you say they're perfect," Max said, looking at each of the guys around the fire with that cocky smirk of his. That mask.