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Truth or dare is never as fun as it sounds. This is the conclusion you've come to while at one of your dumb work parties. Well, okay, maybe not dumb. That would be mean. It's just celebrating one of those silly YouTube milestones, and you can't quite remember what. It might've been the subscriber count on one of the channels or the completion of a certain series. Had it been that world record thing? You weren't sure at all.
It doesn't take much for the cast to celebrate, always eager to lift each other up (and have a few drinks). The only twist is that these aren't normal office parties. After hours, late at night when all the shooting would wrap for the week, you'd all sneak in with speakers and bottles of shitty alcohol. It's a dumb tradition, but there's always something a little fun about sneaking around and messing with the props the art team would normally put off limits.
So this is how you're sitting on the floor in a sort of lazy circle of people, with half on the couch and half on beanbag chairs they've dragged around. To your right is Courtney, on a hot pink beanbag that belongs to one of the editors, and to your left is Spencer, also on the floor crisscross-applesauce style, with a red solo cup that's got his Mountain Dew Kickstarter mixed with something else.
Chanse had been the one to recommend a game of truth or dare. Everyone had agreed rather quickly. It was early enough in the night that everyone buzzed with excitement and hadn't drunk themselves out of their minds. You were feeling a bit fuzzy at the edges and thought a game seemed like a good enough idea. You'd have rather played some board game or something (there are a thousand on the other set, hello!), but they didn't all make great party games, so you gave in.
So far, dares had been silly, cartwheels and chugging drinks, and the truths had been stupidly tame. In fact, the game is sort of fizzling out because everyone is getting too into some other conversation. It's supposed to be Arasha's turn to ask, you think, but she's too busy saying something to Trevor.
You survey the room, sipping on whatever it was that Chanse made, it's rather strong, which was probably why he giggled when he handed it over.
Angela is across from you, sitting on the couch, and she's arguing with Tommy. It's something dumb, musical theater-- the words Rent and Cats are thrown around often, and you can't help but notice how she gets so passionate about it. On another level than everyone else, who all have some sort of past with theater, really. Except no one reads Shakespeare for fun the way she does, or still participates in musicals and plays in their free time (outside of anything Smosh related). Her eyes light up, even as she's yelling.
"Ben Platt did not ruin that role!" She shouted, almost spilling a drop of her wine on the grey couch, "Evan Hansen was always a weirdo!"
"Not when Jordan Fischer played him!" Tommy gestured like some sort of alcoholic aunt, eyebrows raised, hands flying.
"You wanna go? You wanna go?" Angela hyped herself up, and the circle was starting to take notice, "You know what, truth or dare, motherfucker!"
Tommy looks around like calling for a ref, "It's not your turn!"
"I don't know," Spencer shrugs, "I say we let her cook."
"Pick dare, you loser," She taunts, "You won't-- you won't."
"Fine, Angela. Dare." Tommy throws his hands up in defeat.
Angela looks around, as if this were unexpected.
"Okay, yeah," She stalls, "So-- Hold on--"
"You don't even have a dare?!" Shayne laughs, pointing at her, "You just did all of that, and you didn't have a dare in mind!"
"HOLD ON!" She shushes and shuts her eyes, thinking, "I've got one."
"Are you gonna..." Trevor asks after far too long a silence.
"SHUT UP!" She snaps, turning her head to look at Tommy, "I dare you to sing all of Dear Evan Hansen off the top of your head!"
The group erupts in laughter, "What kind of dare is that?" Courtney asks.
"'Cuz he can't do it," she grumbles, "He's such a fake fan."
"Pull up the karaoke track to Waving Through a Window right now," Tommy says, standing up, "Right now, come on."
Someone obeys, Spencer probably, and everyone claps along and hypes him up. Angela groans and says that everyone knows that song, but no one listens because they all sing through the chorus with him.
Once he's done, everyone decides it's best to just let him stop there. Angela says that it's just because he can't remember any other song, but she doesn't fight him to keep going.
Tommy takes his seat and looks around the circle. His eyes land on you.
"Y/N," His eyes narrow, "Truth or Dare?"
It's one of the first times you've been asked today, thank god, and all you had to do was eat a muffin bite with hot sauce and admit to the first fictional crush you had as a child (Po the Teletubby, yeah, that was a fun moment). The muffin was sitting strangely in your stomach, though it was probably the hot sauce making things weird. You thought it would be best to avoid anything else of the sort.
"Truth."
"Who was the last person you kissed?"
The question makes your heart drop to your stomach, down there with the muffins, and dread starts creeping in.
"That's a good one!" Arasha claims, "Y/N never talks about her love life!"
"Dare?" You ask sheepishly, hoping you can get an exception to the rule as Angela did.
Everyone starts 'ooo'ing and laughing.
"That's not how the game works," Chanse points out, "Spill, girl."
None of them know that you can't say it. Not when she's on the other side of the circle, sitting on the couch. It was just a stupid night out at the bar-- although it got blurry when you tried to remember how you even ended up at a bar alone with Angela in the first place. Things started off normal, drinks and conversations that felt devastatingly easy. You never wanted to talk to anyone else once you started talking to her. She could bounce off topics with ease and always knew exactly what to say.
She was an incredible wing-woman, and so you think that's where things took a turn, when she spotted a hot guy across the bar and asked if you liked him. You hadn't, and you wondered why she wouldn't just go for him if she thought he was that hot.
"Not really into the whole..." Saying it felt awkward.
"Lumberjack thing?" She filled in, nodding, "I totally agree. Wearing a flannel in the middle of June is wild."
"No, Ang, I'm not into the whole..." You gestured to him, absent-mindedly, "Whole men thing."
"OH!" Her eyes went wide, and she looked between you and the guy a couple of times. "Me neither."
"Really?"
"Well-- I am, but not right now, I guess." She took a long sip of her cocktail, "Not really dating at all right now, things just never feel right."
"I know what you mean."
But things got quiet after that, and you paid for the next round of drinks, attributing the silence to your odd coming out of sorts. Except the conversation just kept circling back, to dating, to girls versus boys, to you. Angela was normally pretty good about moving on from a topic, but somehow anything that came up was getting hit with a "Oh, for sure, I love that place, have you... ever been on a date there before?"
When she'd asked if you wanted to take a lap around the bar, see who was around, you assumed it was because she wanted to wing-woman you correctly this time. She was putting together her own little dating profile for you.
You two went around the bar rather quickly, not stopping to talk to anyone, and it ended with both of you in a corner, talking. She seemed more awkward, a sort of nervous energy to her.
"I love that lipstick shade," She had said after looking down at your lips for too long, "I feel like I can never match my shades right, like I need to need to get one of those color palette season things to see what shades I'm supposed to be buying, because I swear all of the reds I have look so intense but the nudes just look like those early 2000s concealer lips."
"Oh, I never wear lipstick," You'd said, maybe too humble or dismissive, "I hate how it transfers everywhere and gets on my teeth. This was just something I had lying around-- supposed to be smudge-free."
"Is it?" She asked, her eyes still down at your lips, and you tried not to look so nervous, because it only made sense. Obviously, she would be looking at your lips when talking about your lipstick. Still, it made your heart race in a way it shouldn't.
"I don't know," You'd tried to look at anything else, but there wasn't even anything else to look at, not when she was right there, "I haven't tested it."
"I mean," She bit her lip, her eyes never moving, "You probably should, right?"
You couldn't tell if you were tipsy or if Angela was flirting with you. It could be both, could be neither. The thought felt like a chill down your spine, in a good way, and it made you feel much too sober for the actions you'd be taking.
"Yeah..." You took the initiative, the one step closer, bringing the distance between you to almost nothing, "I should, shouldn't I?"
"It would be the right thing to do." She nodded, and she looked so tense you thought about changing the topic and pretending this never happened.
"I think it would."
There you were, leaning in, and she was leaning in, too. Then, BAM. That was exactly how it felt-- like an explosion. For once, there was no voice in your mind reminding you of the fact that you were co-workers. Co-worker was such an unattractive word, which is how you concluded that Angela must not be your co-worker, because you would never kiss a co-worker.
It hadn't been a long kiss. It wasn't drawn out or hot and impulsive. That was the strange part; it felt like the first kisses in the movies, when the music swells because everything had been leading up to it. It felt like the world finally making sense, like so many moments finally clicking together.
You had never meant to fall in love with Angela. You would never use the word Love out loud, either, but the amount of fondness that grew in your chest at the sight of her wasn't something that could be attributed to words easily. From the start, your first day on set, she'd welcomed you without question, invited you into conversations, and made it easy for you to riff off of her bits in videos. Starting work at Smosh felt so easy when she was by your side. Everyone had been helpful, but she seemed to make it a personal project.
Then it was a friendship, one that was impossible to ignore, and you guys were considered the cast 'besties,' and on screen, you had a rivalry with Chanse. The world had noticed it before you had, and you noticed it pretty damn quick. You were always next to her, and it seemed like half the time you didn't need to try. When the producers tried to place you on opposite sides of the Games table, somehow you always ended up side by side, and everyone let it happen. There was always a hand on your arm, a head on your shoulder when she laughed, and whenever something shocking happened, it was you that she turned to first.
There was this embarrassing moment while you were scrolling on TikTok, and an edit came up. You didn't even know it was an edit at first, you just saw a clip of Angela, one you didn't recognize, from before you were there. She said something about not being a physical touch person, that she was never liked that kind of stuff. It cut to an edit of the both of you, attached at the hip in every video. You scrolled, face red, and only lasted a minute before you swiped back up.
You'd had this sort of worry after that you had been the one to push it, so you were careful to stay in your own bubble that next shoot week. Being in your own space didn't matter much when she found a way to be there, too.
All of that was to say that this moment felt magical, sweet, and perfect and magical, and the world slowed to a stop to let you savor the moment a little longer. You both moved in tandem, with an understanding that needed no words, no signs, no signals.
She'd been the one to pull away, though, hands reaching to your shoulders, physically breaking apart.
The worst part was that she didn't say anything. She looked up at you with those wide eyes, shocked, afraid, maybe, and she ran. You watched, feet glued to the floor, and saw her call someone, a ride, you guessed. When you finally got the strength to move, it was to rush to the bathroom, the feeling of vomit rushing up to your throat.
You hadn't actually thrown up, but the unsettled feeling never left, like you were being torn apart from the inside out. Sighing, you looked up at the bathroom mirror and noticed how your lipstick smudged around your lips, and wondered if she took any of it with her.
"Um..." You stalled and tried not to look at Angela, to let your face reveal things that weren't meant for the rest of the world. You wished desperately for her to make a sign, to show what you were supposed to say, but she looked at you with the same expectant stare everyone else in the circle did, "Guys, it's actually really boring."
Her face flashes with something disappointed, a stitch between her brow, a frown on her lips.
"I'm sure it's not, BB," Court reassures, but at the same time, Chanse is sitting up and putting on a sassy voice.
"Nope, that's not an answer."
"Alright, fine," You shake your head, and tell the story-- no, not the real one, "It was just an improv show from a few months back."
Angela stays confused while everyone shouts a variety of questions. You look at everyone except for her. You aren't sure you could lie if you had to see those brown eyes locked on yours.
"It was Jeremy-- SNL Jeremy, yes--" You laughed, trying to pretend like this was the funny story that it once was, "We were playing the milkman and the mailman, right? And we were both arguing over an affair with the wife of the household. The audience was just dying, it was the best feeling, and each joke just kept getting bigger and bigger, so we just kind of kissed to throw in a plot twist."
"You can officially say that you've kissed an SNL cast member, at least?" Arasha offers, shrugging.
"While dressed as a mailman with the shittiest Party City wig, yes," You laugh bitterly. There's a need to move on, to not stay in place for so long, "Chanse, Truth or Dare?"
"I'm liking how spicy this is getting," He tucks his invisible long locks of hair behind his ear, "Truth."
"Uhhh.. Who's the last person YOU kissed?" You throw back, admittedly not original in the slightest.
"Girl, you know I kissed Arasha on accident while filming the new Love is Blind video," He points out.
Arasha blows him a kiss.
"What? How did I not know this??" Trevor asks, but everyone else in the room laughs at him.
"Angela, Truth or Dare," Chanse points at her, holding up his drink.
She spares a nervous glance at you, like she's scared she'll get the same question.
"Dare."
"Hm. I dare you to post on your story that Cats is your favorite musical."
"That's just cruel, man," Shayne plays off as if he's being serious.
Tommy lets out a loud goose-like honk laugh and points at Angela, "Do it, freak!"
"Fine, fine!" Angela whips out her phone and types away furiously, "I did it!"
You all open Instagram to check. The story says: Cats is tbe cooooolest and bestest mudical ever mabe.
"What the fuck is this?!" Tommy yells, "The only word you spelled right was Cats!"
"What?" She looks down, surprised, "Guys, I'm dyslexic, please."
"And wine drunk," Shayne laughs, looking down at the post.
It takes a moment before everyone remembers the game.
Trevor is the one to realize, "Are you gonna ask, Angela?"
"Oh, right," She looks around the room, and there's a shift to her mood when her eyes land on you. It makes you nervous, makes your heart beat in your chest, makes you feel all hot and sweaty and weird in your body, but you aren't worried because she'd never ask you--, "Y/N, truth or dare?"
It feels like you have fallen through the floor, like you are still free-falling.
"Oh, come on, they just went!" Spencer pointed out, fighting Angela.
Shayne throws his hands up, "There's no rule about that."
"Truth or Dare?" Angela repeats, staring dead at you.
There is no way in hell you'll admit to lying in the last round.
"Dare."
You're certain that she'll tell you to do something stupid like wear one of the Shit City rat costumes for the next 10 minutes.
"I dare you to kiss someone in this room."
Or maybe you don't know Angela at all.
Everyone goes wild at this, talking over each other.
"That's too far!" Chanse says, "You can't ask that!"
Most people start to object in some way.
"Come on, guys, it's for the game," Angela says, trying to gain the room back, "Just pick whoever you want to kiss the most."
Spencer puts on a lazy Chosen voice, "Finally. You can kiss one of the gays. This will be in the history books."
"We're all adults here, we're okay with this, right?" She asks, looking around the entire room.
You're shocked to find everyone agreeing. Angela has the talent to get an entire room on her side, although it must make up for the times that she somehow loses one in a millisecond.
"So who is it?"
When she asks, she isn't confident at all. It's nervous, she bites her lip, and watches you like she's afraid of you blowing up.
Your eyes scan the crowd, circle the circle. Except there's no one here you want to kiss-- not even Tommy or Chanse, just to say that you had, not even Courtney or Shayne, just to joke about being the third. No one but Angela.
"I don't know, guys," You feel like you might lose your muffins, like you're being folded from the inside out.
"You don't want to say your last kiss was with the milkman, do you?" Arasha asks, joking, "This is your chance!"
"Yeah, we're all okay with it," Chanse shrugs.
"No, I just..." You're careful with your words, "The last time I... tried... to kiss this person, it didn't go well."
It was the wrong thing to say. Everyone snaps their head up, looking at the person next to them, the person across from them, trying to figure out who you're referring to.
They miss how Angela stares a hole into your head. Mostly because you won't meet her eyes.
In under ten seconds, the group has narrowed it down. It feels a little like a failed game of werewolf, when someone claims the wrong role too quickly and gets voted out immediately. So many decisions led to this moment, and they are all folding together, rapidly, crumbling.
No one yells, or shouts, or lets out exclamations. There's this sad silence that takes over the room, and you finally meet Angela's eyes through it all. For a moment, it's just you two, and everyone else is gone. Things are normal, and there was never any kiss or worries or games of truth or dare. It's only a moment, and it doesn't last long.
You steal a line from Arasha's book:
"I lied."
Everyone's waiting on bated breath for you to explain what that means. Your eyes never leave hers, and you can't read her. If only you had a sign, you'd do whatever she asked of you. You would lie again, come up with some pathetic story that portrays you as this desperate loser, or find a way to spin it into something charming and funny. But she doesn't give any signs, and the truth slips its way out before you can process it.
"The last person I kissed was Angela." The silence feels suffocating as everyone just stares and watches and waits, "I did kiss Jeremy, that wasn't a lie-- but that was just a long time ago. I've kissed Angela since. And I totally fucked everything up--"
Your mouth keeps moving, and suddenly a fabricated story is being spun, except a part of it doesn't feel made up-- it feels real, devastatingly real.
"I was too drunk, and I-- I came out to her and-- and she was supportive about it, right? And I took it as a sign, I guess. I totally pushed myself onto her. It wasn't okay, and things have just been weird since because, obviously. I never should've done it, but I didn't want to say anything because then I would have to report it to HR as sexual harassment, and I love this job SO much and--"
"God, Y/N, stop!" Angela cuts in, raking a hand through her hair in that way she does when she's stressed, before her hands tense up and she shuts her eyes for a moment, "Stop lying, okay?"
You can't respond to it, not sure how to say that it isn't really lying. That you had done all of those things, in a way, that when you played through the situation in your head, that was how it looked.
"I was the one who kissed her," She says, addressing the room which you completely forgot was there, "She's just trying to protect my feelings. I've had this stupid godawful crush on Y/N since the day she fucking auditioned, and when she came out to me, I took it as a sign to make a move on her. She rejected me, and it was totally humiliating, and she's just trying to be nice about it."
Her story feels so false that your nose crinkles. The nuances are gone to you, of who really initiated the kiss, of who reacted to what in what way. The one thing you are sure of is that she was the one who rejected you. She left, and you were alone, picking up the pieces.
"Wait, guys, I'm confused," Arasha says, looking between the two of you, like she can make sense of it.
Trevor backs her up, "Yeah, what's even happening anymore?"
"I--" You can't bring yourself to explain, to deny, to add, to reframe, "I think I need to leave."
And that you do. Scrambling, you sort of crawl backward and trip over your own feet multiple times standing up. The building is so empty that each step feels so loud, and you feel like you've gone mad. Surely, this will get brought up to HR, and you'll have meetings about it, and she'll say how much she feels uncomfortable around you, and you'll have to make a social media statement about how you're leaving 'on your own terms' and get cancelled when the truth comes out. None of that hurts as much as the idea of not seeing Angela every day anymore, of not having someone you can turn to first when you make a joke, because you know she'll always be the first to laugh. Always.
"Y/N!" That voice calls from behind you, the one voice you always look forward to hearing, even when it's early in the morning of a long shoot day, "Please!"
She pleads without saying what she wants. It stops you in your tracks, anyway. It doesn't even take any thought; it just happens.
You both stand outside, only the streetlights with their harsh fluorescent glows and the chilly night air.
"I wasn't lying," She says, but shuts her eyes as she does so.
"What?"
"This is so embarrassing to admit-- but I've had this stupid-- stupid CRUSH thing on you. Actually. I just thought you didn't-- I don't know, like girls? And when you said you did it just felt like a sort of sign that things were meant to be, so I kept asking those stupid questions. It wasn't until we kissed that I realized that just because you like girls doesn't mean you like ME. I felt so stupid."
Her palms press into her eyes, and you wonder if she'd even notice if you walked away, so caught up in her ranting.
Somehow, you laugh at it, this whole situation. It starts low, breathy, but builds and builds until you're doubling over at the waist, feeling your core muscles tighten.
"What?" She asks, looking at you, not understanding.
"I wasn't lying either, Ang," You manage to squeeze out in between laughs, trying to take a deep breath, "I like you too- a lot, too much, maybe. Is that bad to say? I thought I was being weird and coming onto you or something-- that I read the room wrong. We're both idiots."
"Oh."
She stares blankly ahead, but within an instant a small laugh jumps up from her ribs, and she, too, is laughing.
"Oh god, we're stupid," She says, but it makes her laugh harder.
"Yeah, I guess we are."
You could listen to her laugh all night. It was music to your ears, maybe better.
"Wait," You pause, mind now reeling, "Why would you dare me to kiss someone??"
She sheepishly looks away, "I wanted to see if you would kiss me."
"Jury's still up on that one," You joke, but close the distance between the two of you.
It is real, and it is perfect, and the starless LA sky stretches out forever above your heads, but that doesn't matter when the only star you care about is in front of your face, attached to your lips.
When you break apart, you give her a stupid grin, "Truth or dare?"
"Dare." She doesn't hesitate.
"Do that again."
And she does. And you think that maybe you do like Truth or Dare.