Pie takes her place back on her pillow, holding the heavy cast-iron contraption in her lap and staring down at it fondly. Her eyes are bright with mischief when she looks at me. “They had these at every table at the Penny Arcade Brewery in York. Right after I turned eighteen, I was homeless. I was pretending to be a student at York College that year.” She pauses to smile. “That was fun. I lasted almost four months in the dorm before the RA finally figured out I was living in a top-floor attic everyone had forgotten about. And I sorta dated this guy.” She actually sighs. “For a night.” Then she and Tomas are laughing again.
“Anyway,” I say, annoyed by her college story. “The machine?”
She looks down it in surprise, like she forgot it was in her lap. “Right. Truth or dare! Best. Game. Ever. And that’s not the hookah speaking. It’s just as fun with shots.”
Tomas is still sideways on the ground clutching his stomach as he cackles.
I kick him with my hoof. “Dude. Nothing is that funny.”
But this is when I realize that both he and Pie are still in their chimera forms.
I should’ve been paying attention to this. Because Pie is still topless. Her long hair is pretty much covering all the good bits up top, but now that I watch her, I don’t think she understands she has no pants on. And no fur down there.
Suddenly I’m laughing too. Guffawing like an idiot. Because this is why Tomas thinks everything is so funny. He’s got a perfect view between her legs. And Pie is not being ladylike as she sits. Her gangly legs are all over the place.
“For fuck’s sake. You two are like children. Play the game with me!” Then she pulls her knees up and balances the iron machine on top of them so she can play with the knobs.
Tomas loses it again.
“Pie.”
She glances at me, annoyed. “What?”
I point down. “You do realize that you have no pants on.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “I’m wearing fur.”
“Yeah, but…” I grin at her, all teeth. “Not down there you’re not.”
She looks down, realizes she’s been giving Tomas pussy shots all day and that’s why he’s so happy, and then blushes so bright, it turns me on.
“Ooops!” She rearranges her legs so she’s sitting on her butt, knees together. Then she casually arranges her long hair over her breasts, and looks at me. “Truth or dare?”
“I don’t get it.”
She squints at me. “You’ve never played?”
“No. How’s it go?”
She rubs her hands together. “Oh, this is gonna be fun. You have to choose truth or dare. Do you want to answer a question that we ask? Truthfully.” She holds up a finger, like this is a sticking point. “Or do you want to do a dare?”
“A dare?”
“Yeah. Like… I dare you to… go over to the window and yell, ‘I have a small penis!’ to the people down below.”
Tomas loses it again.
I also chuckle. “Pie.” I point to my package. “It’s not small. You know this. It’s been inside you.”
Pie gasps, but Tomas sits up. “Fuck. I forgot about that!” He falls back onto his pillow. “Aww, man. I miss out on everything.”
I reach over and pat his dragon-scale leg. “Sorry, friend. You snooze, you lose.”
“The point is,” Pie seethes, “it’s a dare, you jerk. And if you choose dare, then you have to do it. Even if you don’t want to. And stop talking about our sex life. It’s rude.”
“I have to say things like that? Even if it’s a lie?”
She nods. Smugly. “Not just say things. I could make you…” She shrugs a little, blushes a little too. “Kiss my toes, for instance.”
Tomas is paying attention again. “Can I dare you to kiss my toes?”
We all look down at Tomas’s toes. Which are nothing close to toes, they are claws. “In my defense,” he says, “you two have hooves. So fuck you.”
Pie and I both laugh. “Forget the toe thing. Dare is just a dare. And new rule.” She side-eyes Tomas. “Since you’re gonna use the dare to please yourself.”
Now I laugh and take another smoke. This is getting fun. And that hazy high feeling has settled into something else. Happiness, I think. Though it’s been so long since I’ve had a day like this, I’m not sure I trust my recollection.
“New rule is… you cannot dare someone to do something to you or for you. Agreed?”
Tomas and I both agree.
“OK, here’s how it works. You pull this lever”—she demonstrates on the iron machine in her lap—“and then that dial thingy spins and lands on truth or dare. If it’s truth, the person who just went gets to ask you a question. If it’s dare, then the person who goes next gets to make up a dare. Who wants to go first?”