Jeans of a Star

“Eleanor, I dare you to go up to Dave’s room and sit on his bed in only your panties.” There was a long pause while everyone looked at me, and I could feel their eyes burning holes through my head. “And Dave has to go with you.”

As if the alcohol in my system wasn’t nauseating enough, those words almost caused me to lose my dinner right there. How on earth could they expect me to do that? Dave and I had never even been naked in front of one another when we were friends, and now that we were hardly even that, taking my clothes off in front of him was the last thing I wanted.

“That hardly seems fair,” Dave said quickly, tightening his eyes at Blake, who had given me the dare. Next to him, I couldn’t tell if Anna was happy or upset about the dare. I imagined she was happy that I was about to get embarrassed into oblivion, but I couldn’t help but notice the twinge of anger in the back of her eyes.

“It’s a dare,” Blake said, shrugging his shoulders. “You don’t have to do anything but sit. An hour is all.”

If I had a chicken, I would have used it then, but none of us were given that luxury. If I was smart, I would’ve just walked out of the party and never looked back. After all, who was I there for? I’d gone with Charity, secretly hoping to get a glimpse of Dave, but now she was nowhere to be found and there was no one to come to rescue me.

“How will you know if I’ve taken my clothes off?”

“You can pass them through the door, and then I’ll give them back in an hour.”

I’m not sure if it was the questioning looks that everyone gave me, the alcohol coursing through my body, or the prospect of being alone with Dave that fueled me, but I stood up from my seat with my hands on my hips as if I had all the confidence in the world.

“Let’s go then.”

Dave looked just as shocked as I felt, with his head titled to one side and his eyebrows furrowed. I wasn’t sure whether or not he was allowed to veto the dare, but when he stood up and shrugged his shoulders, I was thankful that he hadn’t, because that would have been more embarrassing than any dare they could’ve given me.

Blake nodded his head and Dave and I followed slowly behind him into the house. Honestly, I thought the whole thing seemed like a lot of work for one simple dare, but who was I to say anything? Anna probably would’ve ripped my head off if I had said anything bad about her precious little game, and I rather liked my head right where it was.

When we turned the final corner of Dave’s seemingly endless house and landed ourselves in front of his room, my arms folded involuntarily across my chest out of nerves. Dave must’ve noticed because he gave me a soft, reassuring smile, and even though I was still trying and failing to be angry at him, it made me feel a tiny bit better.

“In you go,” Blake said, nodding his head in the direction of Dave’s room. I couldn’t help but notice the way Dave’s fists clenched and I thought that if Blake said one more stupid thing, Dave probably would have punched him in the face. He probably would have deserved it, too.

I took one last deep breath, giving Charity her final chance to come and rescue me, before stepping into the room which I had only been in a few times before. It still looked the same as I remembered it, decorated in a classic navy blue, and I thought it was cute that Dave’s mom hadn’t changed it, even though he’d moved to his own place in LA so long ago.

Blake tipped the door shut after Dave and I had entered, leaving just enough room for me to pass him my clothes. There was pretty much nothing about the situation that I liked or was looking forward to, and I was moving at an impossibly slow pace, as if moving slowly enough would make Blake change his mind about the soul crushing dare.

“You don’t have to do it, you know,” Dave said from across the room, nearly startling me. He was right about that; I could’ve just walked away, but for some reason I just wouldn’t. If he had asked me why, there was no way I would have been able to explain myself.

“It’s alright,” I said, attempting to act more confident than I felt. I moved my fingers to the button of my shorts and fidgeted with the metal before speaking again. “It’s just a little clothes and it’s not like you haven’t seen dozens of girls in their panties, anyway.”

I have no idea why I decided all of a sudden to make a jab at Dave, but luckily he ignored it.

“I can look the other way if you’d like.”

“For half an hour?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, finally getting the button of my shorts undone. I began shimmying them down my thighs, feeling my heart race more and more with every centimeter they moved. “It’s not a big deal.”

“I just don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable,” Dave said with his back turned away from me. I don’t know when he had turned around, but I was much more thankful for it than I should have been, especially with the way I was telling him it was no big deal.

Knowing that Dave was looking away helped me to pull my shorts the rest of the way off, followed by slipping my shirt over my head. I stood then in only my bra and panties, which unfortunately weren’t matching, which should have been the least of my worries, but it was suddenly a big deal to me.

I took a deep breath and stepped towards the door, inching my clothes through the small opening. When Blake grabbed onto them, he called to us and I could hear the smile in his voice. “See you in an hour!”

And what an hour it would be.