Chapter 261: Asher
The cake’s mostly gone. Someone stuffed one of the fake grenades into it. Boomer swears it wasn’t him, which means it definitely was. There’s frosting on one of the mirrors and someone probably Max – drew a mustache
on the Grinch cutout.
In other words: things are… escalating.
1209
I lean against the far wall, arms crossed, soda can warm in my hand, and survey the room like I’m on recon.
Some of the guys from base are tipsy already, shoulder–checking each other, retelling stories too loud and too slurred. Mila’s been mock–interrogating them for gossip. Anna started dancing in slow–motion to Danger Zone earlier and hasn’t stopped. The playlist is pure chaos half 80s action movies, half Penny’s rehearsal tracks.
And Penny?
She’s across the room. Laughing with Mila, hair falling out of the loose braid she threw together earlier, hands animated as she talks. She hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol. Neither has Mila. Their “no booze a week before performance” pact is still holding strong.
Watching her that lit–up version of her, so completely in her element even at my dumb birthday party – feels like something I shouldn’t be allowed to see. Like sunlight from underwater. Too much. Too good.
The kind of thing you look away from, just to survive it.
Our parents left a little while ago. Penny’s mom kissed her on the cheek and whispered something that made her. blush. My dad told me to try not to destroy the structural integrity of the building, and my mom handed me a Tupperware of leftover rice balls “just in case“. I didn’t ask in case of what.
Fifteen minutes later, she showed up.
Madame Loretto.
Heels clicking, Lips pursed. Arms behind her back like she was here to issue court martial.
Everyone went quiet.
Her eyes swept the room – Max in a ridiculous vest, Rooster duct–taping goggles to someone’s face, and the cake leaning precariously on a table someone had accidentally karate–kicked earlier.
She looked at me and said, “Mr. Hayes. If this studio is not returned to the exact condition I left it in, I will make you run barre drills in steel–toed boots.”
I said, “Understood, ma’am.”
She nodded. “I always approved of you.”
Then turned to Boomer. “And you. But…”
Chapter 261: Asher
Her hand lifted. Finger pointed across the room.
At Mila.
“She eats boys like you for breakfast.”
Boomer made a sound like a squirrel getting caught in a garbage disposal.
And now here we are. Madame Loretto has left. Most of the room is at that lovely stage between buzzed and boldly making poor decisions.
Penny walks over to me just as Rooster climbs on top of a stack of ballet mats with a beer in hand and a megaphone someone definitely should not have given him.
I already don’t trust this.
“Alright, you degenerates,” he shouts, the beer sloshing over his fingers. “Time for the main event of the evening! Welcome to the first and probably last – annual SEAL–themed birthday party games, officially sanctioned by the Department of Party Shenanigans, codename: Operation ASHERBORN.”
The room groans.
–
Someone throws a napkin.
Rooster dodges like he trained for this. “You think this is a democracy? That’s cute. I run this unit now.”
Beside me, Penny lets out a soft laugh and slides her arm around my waist, her palm resting just beneath my shirt like a calming weight. She smells like vanilla and strawberry tea and I already know I’m going to miss this moment even while I’m living in it.
Rooster slaps his clipboard. “We have five games. You will participate. You will lose. You will suffer.”
“Do we win anything?” Max calls from the floor, where he’s already seated cross–legged like a kindergartener on story time crack.
Rooster grins and points dramatically to the cake table.
At first, I don’t see it.
Then I do.
Nestled next to the candles and cake crumbs is what I assume is supposed to be…
- me.
A plastic army man, glued to a rock,/painted gold and sparkly like a failed Pinterest craft. Someone’s added sharpie scowl lines and what appears to be an attempt at a scar down his left eye. Googly eyes wobble on his face.
“This is your prize,” Rooster says proudly. “The Asher Effigy. The golden grump. The sacred symbol of no- nonsense masculinity and scary hot silence.”
Boomer mumbles, “It looks like it wants to die.”
Chapter 201: Asner
“Don’t we all,” Rooster replies cheerfully.
Someone starts clapping. And then, somehow, we’re doing this.
Rooster announces the first game like he’s calling a mission drop from a helicopter.
The rules, such as they are: Everyone is given a ridiculous object – a pool noodle, a toilet plunger, a feather boa, a spatula – and has to “hide” it on their person without being caught or adjusting it. Last one standing wins.
Rooster tosses me a rubbe
I stare at it.
“You serious?”
“Hide it, Hayes, SEAL style.”
Max immediately shoves his pool noodle down one pant leg, limps across the floor like he’s lost a bet, and says, “Don’t judge me.”
Luc sticks a whisk into his hoodie sleeve. Anna tapes the feather boa around her waist like a tutu.
Boomer tries to pretend the plunger is a back injury support brace. It fails.
And Penny? She smiles sweetly at me, tucks a spatula into her ballet wrap skirt so it curves naturally against her thigh, and winks.
Showoff.
“Three minutes on the clock!” Rooster shouts. “Blend or die!”
By the end of it, Max trips and the noodle bounces halfway across the room. Anna’s boa falls off mid–spin. I forget the chicken is under my shirt and nearly elbow someone in the face with it.
Winner? Penny.
Obviously.
The moment Rooster starts hauling out red balloons from behind the sound system like he’s detonating a minefield, I know it’s about to get worse
Way worse.
He’s grinning like he’s ten seconds away from committing a federal crime. “Alright, nerds! Next up is what I like to call the Bomb Squad Relay.”
He punctuates that with a dramatic spin and slams a bright orange Home Depot bucket down on the table. Glitter spills over the rim like radioactive dust. A collective gasp rises from the crowd, like we’re all about to witness an
execution.
Chapter 261: Asher
“You will be crawling across a battlefield,” Rooster announces, motioning toward the middle of the studio, where dozens of red balloons are now being taped to the floor by Anna and Mila with chaotic enthusiasm, “Inside each balloon is a slip. Some say ‘SAFE. Some say ‘BOOM.‘ You pop three. Your mission: retrieve only SAFE slips. Too many BOOMS and…”
He picks up the glitter bucket, lifts it above his head like a trophy.
“You get glitter bombed. Brutally. Without mercy.”
“Define ‘too many,“” Boomer calls out warily.
“One,” Rooster replies.
Luc groans. “That’s all it takes?”
Rooster nods. “Glitter is unforgiving.”
I glance at Penny, who’s biting her lip to keep from laughing. She’s perched on’a folding chair nearby, still barefoot from her Hostage Extraction win, hair escaping its braid, cheeks pink from laughing through three rounds of chaos. She looks over at me, eyes sparkling, and says under her breath, “I’m going to destroy them.”
Of course she is.
Boomer goes first. He’s careful, strategic, crawling low to the floor like he’s back in training – or pretending to be. He pops one balloon. SAFE. Second balloon… BOOM.
Rooster dumps a handful of glitter down Boomer’s shirt before he even makes it back across the finish line.
“Welcome to hell,” Rooster whispers, deadpan.
Boomer.coughs, spits glitter. “Why is it mint–flavored?!”
Rooster shrugs. “Just in case you inhale it.”
Then it’s Max.
Max dives face–first onto the balloons like he’s skydiving into enemy territory. He’s screaming the entire time.
“FOR THE EMPIRE!”
“Wrong fandom!” Mila calls out.
He pops
three in record time. The first? BOOM. The second? SAFE. The third? Another BOOM.
Two glitter bombs.
Max glitters for the rest of the night. I don’t think he even cares.
Then it’s Penny.
Chapter 261: Asher
She walks toward the balloon field 19 a parlar is geen and are 10 yelling, no chaos. Just grate
Rooster raises a brow, “You sore, Bettering?
She gives him a look. “Try me
He gives her a thumbs–up. “Your funeral?
She crouches, studies the terrain like she’s reading the floor for seismic pressure
genter fe tension i
the balloon rubber. She selects three–eath one deliberate, each one popped with a surfed tick of her Halles
calluses–and then stands.
Three slips. All SAFE.
She raises them over her head,
Rooster stares. “Did you cheat?”
“No,” she says, smiling sweetly. “I observed. You taped them in patterns. Two rows of every free have at least one
BOOM.”
Rooster blinks. “You counted rows?”
“She counted everything,” I say.
He whistles. “You spend too much time with Tank.”
Penny just bows like it’s curtain call.
She walks back over to me, tucking her SAFE slips into her jacket pocket like war medals.
I catch her hand and pull her in gently, pressing a kiss to the top of her hair.
“You’re terrifying,” I whisper against her crown.
“I’m efficient,” she replies.
And she is. Scarily so.
Rooster calls for the next team, but the energy in the room’s shifted. Everyone’s side–eying Penny now like she might blow them up just by looking too hard.
Can’t lie. I kind of love it.
She grins up at me and mouths, “You’re next.”
And I am. But right now?
I’m just watching her glow in the soft studio lights, red balloons still deflating behind her, glitter still floating in
Chapter 261: Asher
the air like battle smoke, and I think-
Hell of a girl.
Hell of a night.
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