The Dare Board

So there I was, another Tuesday night in the dispatch office, watching the clock like it owed me money. My name is Meagan Griffin, I'm 55 years old, and I've been a police dispatcher in Dry Fork for five years now. My love life? Well. I've dated around town since my forties, nothing serious, and the last guy who saw me naked was a trucker passing through three years ago. Three years! Can you imagine?

I was scrolling my phone, thumb going up and down over the same four posts, when Stuart walked into the dispatch office.

Stuart owns the feed store on Main Street. The county rents the back room of it for the dispatch desk, so he's been my landlord, more or less, for five years, and we've been flirting like a pair of fools ever since. Two grown adults who never quite pull the trigger. He's 58, still built like the rancher he used to be, and he had that look on his face that night. The look that says he's up to something.

"Why do you look so glum?" he asked, leaning on the doorframe.

"I'm not glum, I'm bored. There's a difference." I put the phone down. "Nothing ever happens in this town, Stuart. I sit here, I answer the radio, I go home. Repeat."

"That's a shame." He came in and sat on the edge of my desk like he owned it, which, technically, he sort of did. "Because I've got something that might spice up your week."

"Oh yeah? What?"

"A game. You ever play dares before?"

I laughed at him. "Stuart, I'm 55 years old, not twenty-two."

"That's exactly why you should play. You're bored. You said it yourself. One dare, that's all I'm asking. Small one to start. If you hate it, we never speak of it again."

Now, I want to tell you I thought it over like a sensible woman. I did not. I was bored out of my skull and he knew it, the sneaky thing.

"Fine," I said. "What's the dare?"

He grinned so wide I could've counted his fillings. "Tomorrow morning the church ladies come in for their bird seed. Miss Ollie and that whole crowd. I dare you to flash them your bra strap while you're at the counter. Just slide your shirt down off one shoulder, real casual, like you don't notice."

"The church ladies! Stuart!"

"It's a bra strap, Meagan. Not a scandal. You've got that red bra you wear under the white shirts, I've seen it through the fabric a hundred times. Consider this my formal request to see it up close."

I should mention the flirting had gotten bolder over the summer. Nothing had ever happened, mind you, but the man had been working up to something for five years and we both knew it.

"Fine," I said again, and Lord, my face was already hot.

* * *

The next morning I showed up at the feed store at nine sharp, wearing the white shirt and the red bra, because obviously I was going to wear the red bra, what kind of amateur do you take me for?

The church ladies were lined up at the counter like it was a buffet. Miss Ollie, Doris, that tall one whose name I can never remember. Bird seed, mealworm cakes, the whole production. Cicadas were screaming through the open door and the whole place smelled like feed and dust.

Stuart caught my eye from behind the register and raised one eyebrow. The dare was on.

My heart was pounding, I'm not ashamed to say. I walked up to the counter, asked for a bag of scratch grain I did not need, and while Doris was counting out change, I hitched my shirt down off my left shoulder. Slow, you know? Casual, like Stuart said. The red strap just sat there on my bare shoulder like a little flag.

Miss Ollie looked right at it.

"Well!" she said. "Meagan Griffin."

"Oh my goodness, how embarrassing," I said, and tugged the shirt back up, all flustered and fake. "It's been coming loose all morning, I swear."

Doris giggled into her purse. The tall one just stared. I paid for grain I'll be scattering in my yard until Christmas, and I walked out of there feeling like I'd robbed a bank. That little rush! I'd forgotten what it feels like, doing something you shouldn't, even something that silly. My blood was actually moving for the first time in months.

Stuart walked me to my car. "So?" he said. "Verdict?"

"I hated it," I lied, grinning like a fool.

"You loved it. Look at you. You're practically glowing."

"Shut up. What's the next dare?"

He leaned down close, close enough I could smell his aftershave, and said, "Tonight. The Chatterbox. Bernadette's working. I'll explain there."

Bernadette runs the bar at The Chatterbox, the diner on the highway side of town. She's 48, sharp-tongued, and here's a fun fact, she and Stuart had a fling about ten years ago after a church fair, and somehow stayed friends after. She'd been dying to see me squirm for years. I could feel it.

* * *

I got to The Chatterbox at seven. Hot evening, dusty light coming sideways through the blinds, cicadas going nuts outside. Stuart was already in a booth in the back corner, and Bernadette was behind the bar pretending to wipe glasses and failing completely at pretending.

I slid into the booth across from him. "Okay, boss. What's the dare?"

"Simple." He set down his coffee. "You keep your hands on the table where I can see them. And I get to put my hand on your thigh. Under the table. For as long as I like. Right here, while Bernadette watches and pretends she isn't."

I nearly choked on my water. "Stuart. We're in public."

"It's a thigh, Meagan. Same as the bra strap. A little higher on the ladder, that's all." He looked at me over the rim of his cup. "You can say no. That's the rule. You say no, we're done, no hard feelings."

That's the thing about Stuart, he always gives you the out. It's what makes him hard to say no to, if that makes any sense.

Bernadette came over with the coffee pot I hadn't asked for, leaning on the table. "What's the dare tonight?" she asked, plain as day.

"I put my hand on her thigh under the table," Stuart said.

"Oh, I'm staying right here," Bernadette said, and she poured coffee into a mug that was already full, just so she'd have an excuse. "This is the best thing that's happened in this diner since the grease fire."

"Both of you are terrible," I told them, laughing. My face was burning and my stomach was doing flips and I hated how much I wanted to say yes. "Fine. Fine. But if I kick you under the table, that means stop. Those are my rules."

"Deal," Stuart said, and he meant it, I knew he did.

Bernadette scurried back to the bar where she had a perfect angle, the sneak.

We ordered, we ate, we talked about nothing, the truck routes and the heat and whether the fair committee would ever pick a date. And the whole time, Stuart's hand was resting on his own thigh like the most innocent hand in the world. Waiting.

Then, when the plates were cleared, he moved it. Slow, under the tablecloth, onto my knee. Just resting there. I kept my eyes on my coffee like nothing was happening, and my whole leg went warm.

"Okay?" he asked quietly.

"Okay," I whispered back.

His hand slid up, just a few inches, to mid-thigh, and stayed. Warm and heavy and absolutely scandalous in a diner full of farmers eating meatloaf. Bernadette was peeking over the bar every four seconds like a meerkat. I don't know how I kept a straight face. I don't know how I ate my pie.

And the worst part, the very worst part, is that when his thumb started tracing little circles near the hem of my skirt, I didn't move away. I spread my knees half an inch wider instead, and Stuart made a low sound into his coffee, and Bernadette mouthed oh my god at me from across the room.

The dare ladder, it turns out, goes higher than a bra strap.

I paid for my dinner and got out of that booth before I did something even more scandalous. Stuart headed toward his truck and I sat in my car in the parking lot for a good five minutes, fan on full blast, just breathing. Three years, you know? Three years since that trucker, and one dare in and I was already acting like a girl of thirty-five instead of fifty-five.

The next morning I came in through the feed store at nine sharp and Stuart was waiting with two coffees and a face like Christmas morning.

"Bernadette called me last night," he said.

"Oh, did she. Let me guess. She wants in on the game."

"She wants to run the game, is more like it." He handed me my cup. "She says I'm too soft on you. She says the dares are moving at a grandma's pace."

"Grandma's pace. That's slander. I showed a bra strap to three church ladies."

"And you liked it." He grinned over his coffee. "So. New rule. Dares can come from Bernadette now too. She's a player, not just an audience."

I should have said no right there, you know. I should have known what Bernadette would come up with, because that woman has never once in her life done anything small. But I just said, "Fine. When?"

"She's coming by at lunch. She says she has errands on this side of town."

"Nobody has errands on this side of town. There's nothing here but your store and my desk."

"Then she's coming by for you, isn't she."

Bernadette blew in at noon, all sunburned arms and sunglasses pushed up in her hair, and she hugged me like we were best friends, which maybe we were becoming, I honestly don't know what you'd call what was happening.

"Right," she said, dropping her purse on the counter. "The bird seed's for Miss Ollie. The dare is for you. Storeroom. Ten seconds. You kiss Stuart. Not a peck either. I want to see both your faces after."

"Bernadette," I nearly dropped the scratch grain I was holding, the stuff I absolutely did not need and had now bought twice.

"Ten seconds. I'm timing it. And you can say no, that's the rule, I heard all about the rule." She crossed her arms and leaned against the shelf of mealworm cakes, absolutely delighted with herself.

Stuart had gone a little red around the ears, which I have to tell you, did something good for my own nerves. Five years of flirting and the man still colors up like a kid when somebody says the word kiss out loud.

"Well?" he said. "You can say no."

I looked at him. He looked at me. Bernadette looked at her phone like it had a stopwatch app, which of course it did.

"Fine," I said. "But I want the ten seconds counted out loud, so I know when to stop."

"That," Bernadette said, "is why you're my favorite."

The storeroom is in the back, all shelves and feed and dust, one bare bulb swinging a little. Stuart closed the door behind us and we stood there like two idiots, about a foot apart.

"One," came Bernadette's voice through the door.

"Come here," Stuart said, quiet.

That's a kind of asking, right? And I answered by stepping into him and getting up on my toes, because he's taller than me and I was done waiting. Our mouths met and oh, it was not a peck, Bernadette was right about that. His hand came up to the back of my head and my hands grabbed his shirt and we kissed like the feed store was on fire. Open mouth, tongue, the whole deal. He made a low noise into it and I felt it right down my spine.

"Three. Four."

He pulled back just enough to say, "Still okay?"

"Yes," I said, and pulled him back in, because I was done being the one who waits.

"Seven. Eight."

We broke apart at nine and a half, both of us breathing hard. His glasses were fogged. His glasses were fogged, you know! Fifty-eight years old and fogged glasses in a feed storeroom.

"Time." Bernadette sang through the door.

We came out and she looked at our faces and cackled like a hen. "Oh, that was not ten seconds of a grandma's pace kiss. That was the real thing."

"Your turn's coming," I told her, straightening my shirt.

"Promises, promises. Same time Saturday, Stuart? The fair setup?"