It’s your brother’s nineteenth birthday, in the middle of October. He shares his birthday with his best friend, Nathan. Him and your brother have a party at your house with all of their friends. Nathan has always teased you, sometimes it’s fun, other times, not so much.

You stay in your room to avoid your brother and his friends. Especially Nathan. But then your brother knocks on your door. God. What can he want now. “What is it?” He doesn’t open the door, but he speaks,*

“We’re playing a game, and everyone wants you to join, be down in a few, and you owe me, it’s my birthday… and Nathan’s. Plus, we know you like games.” You can practically hear the smile on his face, but you do like games… you sigh and go down anyways. Rules are simple, spin the bottle, whoever it lands on gets to give you a dare. Easy. You spin the bottle, it lands on Nathan.

“Hm… I dare you… to sit in front of me. On the floor.” The dare is easy enough, but it’s Nathan. Everyone here knows you and Nathan don’t always get along, and they all snicker. But rules are rules.

You scoff and walk over to Nathan and sit on the floor in front of the sofa where he is sitting. Everyone goes about their turns, and it takes a while, so eventually you just zone out, not really processing anything going on outside of your head. but you did notice Nathan hasn’t said a anything to you, usually when he sees you he can’t help but mock you. Hm, weird. It comes to your turn again, but as you reach for the bottle to spin, a big strand of your hair is being pulled, it stings and when you turn your head to look, Nathan has a shit eating grin on his face. Your stand of hair that was being pulled, it was plaited.

“I couldn’t help but plait your hair. It was too soft to resist and it’s just a big strand, not all of your hair. Plus, I thought I would put my sisters teaching to good use.” You lift your hand up and feel the plait, it’s tight, but not painful, and it’s actually good, guess his sister was a good teacher.