A Girlfriend's Dare: Ch. 01

There is a particular flavor to a June evening in the city, especially when the sun has slunk down and the lights inside start to war with the lingering blue of dusk. Andrew's apartment, two stories above an arterial cross-street, has a way of trapping that moment and holding it hostage: the walls painted the color of cigarettes and snow, a single amber lamp illuminating the living room in warm, indistinct pools. Out on the balcony, the city's hum is less traffic than weather, a white noise that smooths the edges of his thoughts.

He's reading, or pretending to. The book--a collection of essays with a title that implies wry humor--rests open on his lap, but Andrew's eyes are fixed instead on the geometric print hanging above the TV. He's been replaying a conversation from work for the last forty-five minutes, sorting the petty slights and offhand insults into neat little piles, a compulsion as useless as it is involuntary. He's not dressed for visitors--pale joggers, an undershirt, bare feet curled on the charcoal sofa--but the thought that someone might knock, might require him to perform, is both improbable and, in a thin-skinned way, thrilling.

The front door explodes inward, not with violence but the air of someone who expects the world to be unlocked for her. He jerks up, spine arching from the couch, the essays flopping to the rug.

Steph's arrival is always an event. Tonight she's glossy, cinematic: patent-leather heels that telegraph her approach with staccato clicks, legs bare and athletic beneath a trench that isn't so much beige as the color of old money. The lapels are sharp, the belt cinched tight above her hips. Her hair, deep brown and poker-straight, falls almost to her waist, the kind of shine that says conditioner and time. She's carrying a tote--something expensive, Andrew assumes, though he can never remember the brands--and her eyes, dark and half-lidded, flick from him to the coffee table to the balcony and back.

She doesn't acknowledge his startle. Instead, she slips free of the heels in a practiced, balletic move, then glides across the oak floor with the momentum of a missile in silk. "Jesus, you keep it cave-dark in here. Is this your way of conserving electricity or cultivating serial-killer vibes?"

He finds his voice, throat dry. "You could have knocked."

"Your HOA would've called in a noise complaint before you even reached the peephole." She dumps the tote onto the sofa, grazing his thigh with intent or indifference--impossible to tell with Steph--and shrugs out of the trench. It slides down her arms and puddles on the floor in a way that feels rehearsed, deliberate.

Beneath: a blouse of some whispery, synthetic material in robin's-egg blue, the buttons fighting a losing battle against her chest. She's not large in the way of Instagram exaggerations, but on Steph, everything is exaggerated--curves, color, the width of her smile when she wants to weaponize it. She kicks the trench aside, settles onto the couch's far end, then stretches her arms over the back like she owns the lease and the block and the city beyond.

Andrew closes the book, thumb marking his place. "I thought you were going out tonight."

Steph's mouth twists in a half-smirk. "I was. I am. But first, we need to address a very serious breach of etiquette." She tilts her head, surveying him over invisible spectacles. "Are you aware that your Instagram story has caused a minor scandal in our group chat?"

He blinks. "I posted a picture of my lunch."

"Your *lunch*," she says, voice soft as a scalpel, "was a single banana and a coffee. At 3pm. Do you have a death wish, or are you just trying to make us all look like gluttons by comparison?"

He makes a noise, somewhere between a cough and a laugh. "I didn't realize I was under surveillance."

"You're friends with me," Steph says, as if reciting a natural law. "You're always under surveillance."

He looks away, down to the coffee table--clean, but for a glass of water and a stray coaster. The TV is on, muted: late news, talking heads scrolling under a chyron that could be about war, climate, or some new flu. He turns his eyes back to Steph, who is examining her nails with rapt attention.

There's a long pause, the kind that only Steph can drag out to the breaking point. She flicks her gaze up, pupils swallowing the irises in the low light.

"I brought you something," she says, and pulls a flash of neon from her tote.

It's a bikini. Not just any bikini, but a horror in electric pink, the kind of color that doesn't exist outside of sex shops or novelty rave gear. The top is triangle-shaped and criminally small; the bottom is little more than a string.

Andrew blinks once, twice. "That's... flattering."

"It's a gift," Steph says. She folds it neatly, places it on the coffee table between them like a chess move. "But there's a catch."

He waits. Steph leans in, elbows on her knees, chin cradled in her hand. The move draws her neckline lower, the blouse's top button holding on for dear life.

"Put it on," she says, voice low, almost gentle, "and I'll blow you."

It lands with the force of a brick through a window. Andrew's mind, always two steps ahead and four steps back, seizes up.

He tries to laugh it off. "Is this one of your social experiments?"

Steph grins, feline. "Not everything's a test. Sometimes I just like to see what you'll do when properly motivated."

He weighs his options, finds them wanting. The absurdity of it all--the pink, the dare, Steph's unwavering stare--has the effect of short-circuiting his higher reasoning. His palms go clammy. His knees, curled under him, refuse to uncurl.

Steph, sensing the hesitation, licks her lips. "Andrew," she says, dragging out the syllables, "don't pretend you're above it. You owe me at least one act of public humiliation for the time I had to pick you up from that party dressed as the world's saddest magician."

He's losing the thread, and she knows it. He tries for bravado. "I don't recall ever being a magician."

"Oh, you don't *recall*?" Steph leans even closer, now fully in his space. "Because I have the photos, and also the hat. Somewhere."

She picks up the bikini and tosses it, underhand, into his lap. The top lands soft; the string bottom drapes over his forearm like a live thing. He studies it as if it might solve itself.

She sits back, victorious already. "There's no time limit. But if you make me wait too long, I reserve the right to up the stakes."

Andrew stares at the fabric, then at her, then back again. The room feels impossibly warm. His brain flickers with a thousand objections, none of them strong enough to dislodge the logic of Steph's challenge. The longer he waits, the more obvious it becomes that resistance is both futile and, in some crucial way, exactly what Steph wants. He wonders if anyone has ever said no to her, and what, if anything, that person looks like now.

He stands. There's an odd dignity to it, even as the bikini dangles from his hand like evidence. "Do I get to do this in private, or do you plan to supervise?"

Steph arches a brow. "What do you think?"

He thinks: if he lets her, she'll pick him apart piece by piece, until he's nothing but nerves and skin and the vague hope of approval. He also thinks: he's never been more alive, or more exposed.

He opts for the narrow corridor of control. "I'll be right back," he says, and makes for the bedroom.

The last thing he sees, before the door swings shut, is Steph sprawled across his sofa, arms wide and grin even wider, bathed in the honeyed glow of the lamp.