The Darings

One of the things Ash liked most about Finn was that she didn’t feel the need to talk all the time.

She sat on her bed, procrastinating on her homework in the form of watching that series of Skins for the third time while Finn absently painted her nails a khaki shade, occasionally pursing her lips, lost in those cavernous thoughts of hers. And Ash didn’t feel the need to say anything. Finn didn’t want to talk about her ambling thoughts – if she did, she would say so.

“What’s going on with you and Harry?” Finn suddenly asked, disrupting the silence in a wave. Ash’s heart stopped.

“What do you mean?” she questioned a little too quickly, nearly stumbling over her tongue.

Finn sat and simply blinked in Ash’s direction, spinning the nail polish bottle shut with a simple flick of her fingers. “You like him,” she stated, not even a hint of suggestion in her voice. It was a flat fact in her mouth, simple as a stone.

“N-no,” Ash stuttered, unable to form anything more eloquent. It was a very convincing argument. She thought they had put this to bed the day of the water gun dare, when Finn had asked and let it go. But apparently not. Instead, Finn eyed her without any sense of suspicion, just mild annoyance that Ash even tried to avoid the question – especially with such a feeble attempt.

Ash could feel her resolve crumble almost instantly under her friend’s gaze. Perhaps she should just tell Finn that she’d liked Harry since before they even became friends by some strange stroke of luck. Maybe she should tell Finn that’d she’d liked him since the first time he when he walked into Biology lecture, that stupid American Football snapback twisted backwards on that mop of curly hair, smirk perched on his lips. Maybe Finn deserved to know these things after making it possible for her to like Harry now, not from afar but from by his side, even if there wasn’t a chance of it ever happening.

“Maybe a little,” she mumbled. Finn grinned, but said nothing more. Just stared at Ash expectantly with those bright eyes peering out from her long, fluttering eyelashes.

Ash sighed. “Since before we started doing the dares. Since he and Niall sat in front of me in Biology. And I mean, just a little… it’s nothing serious or anything, Like we talk sometimes just the two of us and it’s just different… I don’t know. Nothing is ever going to come of it.”

Finn simply watched as her friend stumbled over her words, trying to eek out an explanation that would make her feel less dumb under that gaze. “Why would nothing ever come of it?” Finn asked curiously, leaning back in her chair. Ash simply shook her head.

“He’s out of my league,” she explained. “You see the girls he talks to at parties. Everyone on campus knows who he is. Why would he waste his time pursuing someone like me? If it weren’t for you, he would even know I exist.”

Finn pursed her lips. “Stop right there,” she murmured before reaching across her desk for her cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Ash questioned, a bit of a panic rising in her chest as Finn tapped her fingers across the screen and pressed the phone to her ear.

“Getting the ball rolling,” Finn replied nonchalantly, blowing on her nails. Ash began to protest profusely, going so far as to climb out of bed and attempt to rip the phone from Finn’s hand, but her grip was steadfast and assured, so finally Ash let her go. Instead, she crossed her arms across her chest and shook her head at Finn and waited to hear what her plan possibly could be.

“Niall?” Finn quipped into the receiver. “Hey. What are you doing for tonight? Good. Call Harry and tell him to cancel whatever plans he has as well. We’re coming over.”

Instead, Ash was left to stew. Her stomach flipped in her stomach as she watched Finn joke easily with Niall, that rare laugh falling from her lips. She wished she could be as easy around people as Finn, that she could “get the ball rolling” on her own terms. That she didn’t need other people’s help. And what would “getting the ball rolling” entail, exactly? Finally, Finn hung up and went to her fridge and grabbed a bottle of wine from the shelf.

“Finn,” Ash whined, pulling herself off the bed. Finn shook her head again, silently telling Ash to quit it.

“Just see where the night goes, okay? Don’t you trust me?”

Ash sighed again, pressing a hand to her forehead. She wished she could say no, she wished she could say that the only person she trusted was herself, just like she used to. But no – now, she trusted Finn too. And she did, she really did. So she followed her out the door and to Niall’s flat, entirely blind to what Finn’s plan could be.

“My two favorite birds,” Niall greeted lightly as he opened his flat door, his eyes flickering up and down Finn and Finn only – Ash couldn’t help but notice. “Wine, huh? It’s going to be one of those nights? What have you got planned, Wattz?”

Ash wondered the same thing.

“Oh, just sit down,” Finn hushed, crossing the threshold and entering the flat. “Harry’s not here yet?”

“Present,” a voice came from the kitchen, and they turned to see Harry leaning into the doorway from a countertop, taking a cheeky bite of a sandwich. Just the sight of him made Ash feel warm inside, like that sunshine that beat down on them that afternoon on Primrose Hill.

“Set that down Haz,” Finn sighed, walking into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle opener. “You’re not going to get drunk with a hunk of bread in your stomach.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “I don’t really get drunk off wine anyway, Finn,” he replied, taking another bite of his sandwich. “Why are you trying to get me drunk? Trying to get in my trousers?”

Finn rolled her eyes before snatching the sandwich out of Harry’s hand and tossing it in the bin, returning to the coffee table in Niall’s living room to uncork the bottle. “Make yourself a drink then!” she suggested. “And bring some wine glasses too. We’re way too deep into this whole dare thing to have not had a night where we get drunk and play truth or dare.”

Niall’s face lit up in a grin, nodding mischievously. “Brilliant,” he hummed excitedly, going to get the glasses himself as Harry pouted, pouring himself a rum and coke. Ash could almost feel her skin go white with the nerves that mounted in her stomach. She could only guess where Finn was going with this, and she could hardly keep the wild fear from her eyes. When her gaze locked with Finn’s, Finn tried to silently reassure her. Ash was already on the inside. She couldn’t run.

Finn and Niall busied themselves with finding the missing cards to Niall’s deck – they needed a good drinking game to get them drunk enough for truth or dare, after all – which left Ash to fidget nervously on the couch. She couldn’t keep herself from stealing glances into the kitchen, watching as Harry moved about. Finally, he glanced her way, catching her watch with his bright green eyes. And instead of looking creeped out to have caught her, he beamed.

“Hey, I have something for you,” he called to her, swirling his rum and coke around for good measure before leaving the kitchen. Ash’s lips parted with a combination of surprise and elation – he had thought of her and had brought something for her.

“For me?” she quipped in response, trying her hardest to be coy. “You shouldn’t have.”

Her sight followed him across the room as he went to his book bag, hardly leaving him for a second. There was something about that lazy confident walk that carried him, or perhaps that he carried, the way his half buttoned flannel just barely showed the outline of his biceps, how he grinned to himself at the thought of whatever he had in store for her. It all was too much for her to look away.

“It’s nothing, really, I just…” his voice trailed off as he finally found it after rummaging through the bag, tucked in the bottom beneath a football and a hoodie. “I don’t know. Just, here.”

Ash raised her eyebrows. It was rare that Harry found himself at a loss for words, and it amazed her even further that it was at her own hand. But that amazement quickly shifted as she set sights on what he passed her way – their hands grazing briefly during the exchange, sending an electric current up her arm.

A mixed CD. Ash couldn’t find anything to say – she just looked up at him with that same amazement in her eyes. He was grinning still – not sheepishly in any way, in that confident, Harry way she envied and adored. Her heart rushed with that warmth again, knowing that he had sat and put together a CD for her, something just from him to her, something that he made for her.

“The first track is Campus, just to give you a little preview,” he explained with a smirk, taking a seat next to her on the couch. Campus just happened to be one of Ash’s favorite Vampire Weekend songs. She reeled in the perfection, still unable to form the right words.

So instead, she weakly hummed, “Thank you. I can’t wait to listen to it.”

Harry just smiled. “I can’t wait to hear what you think about it.”

“Alright, we’ll just have to play without the jack of spades,” Finn finally announced, “because someone is incompetent at caring for a simple deck of cards.”

She shot Niall a sidelong glance, and he simply stuck his tongue out in retaliation. Ash envied how smoothly their conversation flowed together, how easily Finn teased Niall and how simply they interacted. She watched it still as they began to drink together and fall into drunkenness, Niall teasing Finn mercilessly and Finn taking it in all her haughty breeze. Though she had to admit, everything seemed magnified under the lens of a boozy haze, even the presence of Harry beside her raising the hairs on her arm.

They decided once they were sufficiently drunk that it would be one point for truths and two points for dares in an attempt to keep the score under control. Ash was drunk enough then that she couldn’t recall who was in the lead anymore – just that Harry was next to her and that he had made a mixed CD just for her. Finn’s plans seemed far and away, even as they played more and more.

“Finn,” Harry stated confidently, “I dare you to press your bare ass to the window for a solid minute.”

“Niall,” Ash garbled through her drunken daze, “what is the worst thing you’ve ever done to get with a girl?”

“Harry,” Niall started with his thick, lilting laugh. “What is the most illegal thing you’ve ever done?”

They went around the circle over and over, but Ash was beginning to hardly remember the answers or the dares dealt between them. She had been dared to see how much of a banana she could fit in her mouth (a decent amount) and what her most embarrassing moment was (it took her ages to pick one) among what felt like a thousand other things.

But then Finn locked eyes with Ash, a small smirk appearing on her lips before she opened them to speak.

“Harry,” she called effortlessly, letting his name roll off her tongue with ease. “I dare you to kiss one of us. Your choice.”

And before Ash could even register what was happening, Harry’s lips were on hers. It was like the world sped up and slowed down at the same time, that exhilarating fizz filling her head once more as she drunkenly swayed into him, his lips gliding across hers just twice – just enough to send her heart into an upward spiral.

Harry was kissing her. Harry was kissing her.

She later wouldn’t be able to recall how it came to be – how his lips, soft and urgent at the same time, came to close the gap between them in next to no time at all, how even two simple locks of their once foreign lips were just enough. She was so drunk, she wouldn’t be able to remember much of anything. Just how Harry’s kiss was one bright light in all the besotted darkness that night became in her memory.

And how just as soon as it started, it was over, and they were back to the game as if it had never happened. As if it were just a part of the game. Because, to them it was.