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Chapter 10

"How about spin the bottle?" Tyler proposes, trying to hide a huge grin from his face.

Caroline rolls her eyes, moving her lips into an unnatural position, before giving him a condemning look. "You just want to shove your tongue down as many throats as possible," she says, disgusted by the very idea.

He looks at her, confused by her statement, as if wanting to do that is such a bad thing. "Well," he starts seriously, but then his eyes start glimmering with excitement, "Yeah!" he turns his head towards the rest of the group and pretty much all the guys burst into laughter, with Tyler in charge.

Her lips part a little, as if she really expected him to deny it, and she gives me I-can't-believe-you-dated-this-jerkface look. I just shrug, downing the small amount of vodka left on the bottom of my cup. It's not like I want to kiss my ex-boyfriend half drunk in a corn maze, but there's nothing I can do about it - it's the end of the school party and people are so drunk already that some mistakes are bound to be made.

"What about truth or dare?" Caroline proposes, desperately trying to avoid having to make out with someone she wouldn't ever make out with under any other circumstances.

"Everyone always dare someone to kiss someone else," Tyler points out, and he has a point, since there's not much to do here, in the middle of a maze, in our middle of nowhere town. "So it's basically spin the bottle, just with us having to hear Sean confess he had sex with his cousin."

"Third knee cousin!" Sean yells from the crowd, and everyone burst into laughter again.

"That doesn't make it better, man!" Tyler retorts grudgingly, angry that all of the attention has been stripped away from him.

I guess everyone accept that we will be playing spin the bottle after all because they start forming a circle, and some guy chugs down almost half liter of beer in one breath to free a plastic bottle for us to play with. Caroline grabs my wrist and pulls me down next to her. The guy who drank all that beer is the first one to spin the bottle, and it points towards some girl whose name I would probably know if I weren't buzzed. His buddies start cheering, but the girl frowns before smiling politely and giving him a quick peck on the lips.

Stefan appears behind me and replaces my empty cup with a full one.

"Spin the bottle, eh?" he says softly. Stefan's voice always turns extra soft when he gets slightly buzzed, like he's trying to put you to sleep.

Before I'm able to say anything in return, even though I have no idea what I would say, a bunch of guys start shouting in our direction.

"Yo, Stefan, over here!" he drags his look lazily from me, to them, before giving me an apologetic look, like he's asking for my permission to go play with the other boys.

I shrug. "Go," not that I care. But I do care. I like that we're friends. I like when he chooses me over them. I like when he decides to spend his time with me rather than with them, lately more than ever.

He gives me a light smile before standing on his feet and taking a running step towards the rest of the football team.

It's hard to keep track who gets to kiss who. All I get to hear are cheers and shock and laughter.

At least until Rebekah shouts, with her squeaky voice and over the top accent - "Stefan, baby, come 'ere, I get to kiss you!"

Her little possy starts clapping and shouting cheers of support, while I can see Caroline looking at me from the corner of her eyes. I monitor Stefan's reaction through my lashes, pretending to play with my cup.