Falling Into Love with You (The Hate-Love Duet 2)

“You think we don’t know the rules by now?” Ruby mumbles, but when Kai nonverbally chastises her, she mimes zipping her lips.

“Rule number one,” Kai says. “Your dare can’t be something that would maim, kill, or send any of us to prison.”

“Shoot,” Ruby says, snorting, while I think to myself, “You’re assuming I won’t pick Truth?”

“Two,” Kai says, counting off on his fingers. “The dare has to be something the person can do, right here and now. You can’t demand we perform some complicated prank that would take hours or days to perform. We have to be able to do it, spur of the moment.”

“Dang it!” Ruby says. “There goes my idea of making all of you bitches get a Brazilian wax.”

Rolling his eyes, Kai addresses me again. “As long as you follow those two rules, Laila, then the third rule of the game is that your minions have no choice but to do whatever you say. We’re your loyal subjects, Birthday Queen. Powerless to say no.”

Ruby raises her arms to the ceiling. “My prayers have been answered!”

“Dude,” Titus says to his sister. “Why are you so excited? Only Laila is doling out dares this time.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Ruby replies to her brother. “I’m vicariously excited for Laila. For what this means for womankind.” She turns and massages my shoulders, like she’s my cornerman in a prizefight, about to send me into the ring in a title bout. “Okay, Laila. You gotta represent, girl. Make womankind proud.”

“I’ll give it my all, coach!” I say, dancing from foot to foot like a boxer. And when Aloha happens to walk by, an idea pops into my head. Kai Cook is a “too cool for school” type. The last person in the world who’d ever “fanboy” over anyone, least of all a Disney-star-turned-pop-princess. I remember Kendrick once telling me about the time he made his big brother “fanboy” over Keane Morgan, the actor from Alessandra’s video shoot, during a game of “Birthday Truth or Dare,” so, I decide to follow Kendrick’s expert lead for my first foray into the game.

“Kai, you’re up first,” I say. “I dare you to fanboy over Aloha, until you get her to sing the theme song to ‘It’s Aloha!’ for the entire party. If you can’t convince her to sing it, then you have to do it.”

Our entire group, other than Kai, breaks into raucous laughter. As we all know, Kai doesn’t sing. At all. He’s a fantastic bass player. One of the best in the business. But God did not bless him with dulcet vocal cords. Which is why, fun fact, Kai is the only member of Fugitive Summer who never supplies background vocals on any of their songs. Not even the singalong “la la’s” in “Hate Sex High.”

Predictably, Kai looks tortured as the rest of us laugh with glee. Scowling, he says, “You’re girlfriend’s a savage, Savage.”

Savage smiles at me. “She sure is. It’s my favorite thing about her.”

In the end, though, as torturous as the dare sounds, it turns out to be a softball. Not surprisingly, Aloha wound up refusing to sing the theme song to her long-running Disney show—after ten years of hearing it everywhere the poor girl went, she now hates that song with the passion of a thousand suns. But when Kai finally dragged himself to standing on a chair, poised to sing the hideous song for the entire party, and Ruby turned off the blaring music and got everyone’s attention while I sat at the piano to accompany Kai, my victim didn’t get two words into the first verse before the entire party started singing loudly along with him. In fact, thanks to the iconic theme song being burned into our generation’s gray matter, everyone at the party couldn’t help singing along with Kai, the same way a knee can’t help kicking forward when batted by a doctor’s rubber hammer. In fact, by the song’s end, even Aloha had started singing along with Kai and the crowd, despite herself. Which tells me she’s drunk as hell or an awfully good sport.

When the singalong led by Kai finishes, the entire party applauds and whoops and asks for another singalong. And so, seeing as how I’m sitting at the piano, and 22 Goats is here at the party, I play one of my all-time favorite singalongs—“Fireflies”—the same one we performed at Reed’s party. The song I performed for Savage this morning, before he gave me some mighty fine birthday oral sex. And, immediately, it’s clear I’ve picked well. On the iconic line, “Girl, you made butterflies your bitch!” the crowd sings at the tops of their lungs. And in each easy, singalong chorus, the party practically blows the roof off our reality TV mansion.

When our collective performance ends, the crowd demands another song. But this time, I stand on the piano bench and tell everyone to put a cork in it because I’m playing my first ever game of “Birthday Truth or Dare” and won’t be distracted from it a moment longer.