Chapter 14: Remember truth or dare?
The silence at the table was a physical thing, thick and suffocating. Hardin’s eyes were fixed on the wood grain, the storm in them now a flat, dead calm. Molly’s smile was a razor cut across her face.
Tessa’s voice, when it came, was quiet but it cleaved through the noise of the café. “Yeah, like what’s been going on between you and her?”
Hardin huffed, a sharp exhale through his nose as he looked up at her. His expression was pure, defiant annoyance. “Nothing’s going on with me and her.”
“Well, I don’t believe you,” she said back, the words brittle.
“What have you said?” Hardin’s head snapped toward Molly, his gaze dangerous.
“Tessa, I swear—” he turned back to her, but she cut him off.
“I saw the texts that she sent you.”
“They didn’t mean anything! I didn’t even reply to them, they meant nothing,” he said, the words tumbling out in a rushed, defensive heap. “Tessa, nothing’s going on.”
Molly interrupted him, her voice sweetly poisonous. “Don’t you think this thing has gone a little too far?”
“What thing, Hardin?” Tessa said, looking directly at him. Her heart was pounding against her ribs, a frantic drum counting down to something awful.
“Something’s going on,” Molly said, leaning forward, her eyes glittering with a vicious delight. “But it’s not what you think.”
“Molly, shut up,” Hardin said, looking at her. His eyes had gone cold, the blue turning to arctic ice.
He stood up so suddenly his chair legs screeched against the floor. Every head in the café turned for a second before looking away. “Tessa, let’s get out of here,” he said, his voice low and urgent. He reached for her hand. “And I’ll explain everything, I promise.”
She looked at him, at his outstretched hand. The bathwater, the candle, the word traced on her skin—it all screamed at her to take it. To trust him. But her body was frozen, locked in place by Molly’s triumphant smirk.
Molly leaned further over the table, her voice dropping to a theatrical whisper meant to carry. “Remember Truth or Dare?”
The effect on Hardin was instantaneous and terrifying. All the color drained from his face. He looked at her, his eyes glossy, too bright. A muscle in his jaw jumped wildly.
Tessa turned to Molly, confusion breaking through the hurt. “What?” she said.
Hardin looked at Molly, a desperate, silent plea in his now-shining eyes. “Molly, don’t,” he said, the words barely a breath.
But Molly was already moving, her movements slow and deliberate, savoring the moment. She kept her eyes on Tessa, She pulled her phone from her pocket.
She handed the phone to Tessa. A video was already cued up, the thumbnail a blur of familiar faces from the party. “See for yourself,” Molly said, her voice sickly sweet.
Tessa took the phone. Her fingers felt numb, disconnected from her body. She hit play. The sound was tinny, but the voices were unmistakable. She saw herself on the screen, She was walking away from the group, her shoulders stiff.
“I’m done playing this game,” her pixelated self said, walking away.
“Ohh, looks like Hardin got rejected!” Molly’s voice chirped from behind the camera.
The frame shifted to Hardin. He was leaning against the wall, He smiled, but it was all teeth, no warmth. A cold, challenging smirk. “You don’t think I can make it happen.”
“Make what happen, Hardin?” Molly’s recorded voice asked.
Tessa watched, her confusion a cold knot in her stomach. “Here’s a dare,” he said, his voice clear and careless. “Make her fall in love with me.” He paused, letting the words hang in the recorded air. “Then I’ll just…” He snapped his fingers. The sound was crisp, final. “…turn it off.”
The video ended. The screen went black, reflecting Tessa’ own pale, ghostly face.
She turned off Molly’s phone. The action was mechanical. She placed it on the table with a soft, definitive click. She was looking at nothing, the entire café blurring into a smear of sound and color. The ringing in her ears was louder than any noise.
“It was all a game,” Molly said, leaning back. She shrugged, as if stating the weather.
Hardin was already talking, the words rushing out in a panicked, jumbled stream. “Tessa, Tessa please, you—you have to believe me.” He reached for her again, but she flinched back as if burned. “That was before everything, before I got to know you.”
Tears welled in her eyes, a hot, shameful flood. She couldn’t look at him. She turned instead to Ariana, her friend’s face now a mask of pained sympathy. “Is that true?” Tessa whispered.
Ariana’s gaze dropped to her lap. She gave one slight, almost imperceptible nod.
Tessa’s head swung slowly, taking in Noah’s uncomfortable grimace, Molly’s vindicated calm. Her voice broke, shattered glass in her throat. “And all of you knew?”
No one answered. Their silence was the answer. It was complicity. It was a wall. The ringing in her ears became a deafening roar, drowning out the music, the chatter, the whole world.
“Tessa.” Hardin said her name like it was the last word he owned.
She looked at him then. She saw the boy from the video, the cruel smirk. She saw the man from the bath, tracing letters on her skin. They merged and split apart, a terrifying distortion. She stood up, the chair legs screaming against the floor.
She backed away from the table, from all of them.
“Tessa, wait.” Hardin was on his feet, his chair clattering to the floor behind him.
She turned around. She didn’t run at first; it was a swift, desperate walk that broke into a sprint halfway across the café. She shoved the door open, the bell jangling a frantic, discordant alarm.
The cold night air hit her like a slap. The rain had softened to a mist that clung to her skin and hair. She heard the door bang open again behind her.
“Tessa, wait!” His voice chased her, raw and ragged across the wet pavement.
She didn’t stop.
She didn’t stop. Her shoes slapped against the wet pavement, a frantic rhythm matching the chaos in her chest. Hardin’s longer strides closed the gap quickly, his hand grabbing her arm just past the glow of the café’s window.
He spun her around. “Just listen to me for-“
She turned around, cutting him off mid-sentence. Her voice was breaking, eyes watering in the misty rain. “So what exactly did you tell them then?”
“Nothing,” he said, looking at her. His hair was already plastered to his forehead.
“None of it was real, I actually thought…” He looked at her, his own eyes glossy. “I thought that…” She continued, the words a dull, cold blade. “You’re just a liar.”
He shook his head, rainwater flying. “That was all before.”
“Before what?” she said, her voice rising.
“Before I—”
She interrupted him, throwing his own recorded words back at him. “You snapped your fingers and turned it off.”
He looked down, a sharp inhale racking his frame. Then he looked back up at her, his gaze desperate, searching for the girl from the bath. “You said nothing could change the way that you felt about me.”
She swallowed, looking down at the cracks in the sidewalk. The memory of that night, of his vulnerable tracing on her skin, now felt like the cruelest part of the joke. “Then I guess we’re both liars.”
She turned around, walking away, wrapping her arms around herself as the rain hit her. She didn’t run this time. The fight had drained out of her, leaving a hollow, aching stillness.
Tears brimmed in Hardin’s eyes, mixing with the rain on his face. He walked a few steps, watching her walk away, a shrinking silhouette under the jaundiced glow of the streetlights. Then he stopped. The rain bucketed down on him. He ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at the roots as a raw, guttural sound was torn from his throat.
He didn’t follow her.
He stood rooted to the spot, water streaming down his neck under his shirt. He watched until she turned the distant corner and disappeared. The finality of it unlocked something in his knees. They gave out.
He crumpled onto the curb, the cold wet concrete seeping through his jeans. He dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking. It wasn’t a clean sob, but something choked and silent, a convulsion of pure wreckage.
A car drove through a deep puddle nearby, sending a wave of water across the sidewalk. It soaked his legs. He didn’t move.
He replayed the snap of his own fingers from the video, the sound that had just ended everything. He’d been so wrong. You couldn’t turn it off.