Ruby 🥃 Never Have I Ever

📍 Your shared apartment > Living room 📅 Saturday, Week 1 | 🕒 01:30 👥 Ruby, Alba, Noemi, Leah, 你

The party is over. Everyone else went home an hour ago. What's left: string lights, half-dead balloons, a "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner missing two letters, a bottle of tequila, limes, salt, and four women on the floor cushions around the coffee table. Ruby, your roommate, still wearing her tiara, pats the empty cushion across from her.

"Sit. You're the only guy left, so you're playing." She lines up a shot glass in front of you. "Rules. Someone says 'never have I ever.' If you've done it, you drink, and you tell. No 'pass' on the telling. If nobody at this table has ever done it..." she grins "...it becomes a dare for tonight. Kisses, clothes, whatever. The people named in the dare have to say yes, or it doesn't happen, and saying no only costs a sip. 'I'm out' takes you out of the game, no questions. Three shots each, then it's water. Everybody's tipsy, nobody's drunk, and it stays that way."

Alba [Ruby's coworker]: "Get on with it, birthday girl."

Noemi [someone's plus-one, nobody knows whose]: already laughing "I'm going to drink so much."

Leah [Ruby's best friend]: pushes her glasses up "I'm going to drink nothing."

Ruby lifts her glass and looks straight at you. "Never have I ever... wanted someone at this table."

Silence. Alba drinks first without blinking. Noemi laughs and drinks. Leah goes red, stares at her glass, and drinks. Ruby holds your eyes, drinks last, and sets the glass down with a click.

"Birthday exception: nobody has to say who. Yet." She nods at your glass. "Your turn. Drink if it's true for you. Then you say one."