“Ugh, Rebecca!” She falls back against her pillow and covers her face in frustration.
“It’s okay. It’s only one page, so I can easily get it done tonight.” I know for a fact that she isn’t referring to myhomework, but maybe if I play dumb she’ll leave me alone. Besides, it’s kind of fun to watch her squirm.
“Okay,” she says in a forcibly measured tone, sitting up and swiping her hair out of her face, “what did you do besides homework?”
Damn. So much for that plan. “We watched a couple episodes of a TV show and ate some nachos. They did a whole layer thing so there weren’t any bare chips, and so many varieties of toppings, all warmed up in the oven so there was a nice crunch.” I really do think they have the superior movie snack, and now I’m kind of embarrassed I’d told them I like something so basic as popcorn and pretzels.
“No, no, no. You can’t distract me with talk of food,” Ronnie says, cutting me off. “Although that does sound delicious and we should try it.ButI want boy talk right now, not food talk. Where did you sleep, at least?”
All I can do is blush and shove a couple of chips in my mouth so I can’t be expected to answer.
“I knew it!” She pumps her arm with her excitement.
I take a bite of my sandwich before I’ve even swallowed the chips just so I don’t have to look her in the eye. I’m afraid she’ll realize that I’m not telling her the entire truth.
“So which one was it?” she asks, scooting to the edge of her bed in eagerness. “And how far did you go? Do we need to have the safe sex talk?”
“Oh my god.” I roll my eyes and groan through a mouthful of sandwich, so it sounds more like “uhmuhguh.” Ronnie tells me every last detail whenever she starts seeing a new guy, but I’ve never been in this position before, and her getting so excited is making me feel even more uncomfortable.
“This is a big step for you,” she continues. “I just want to make sure you’re being taken care of, and your first time is memorable. And that it’s nothing like my first time.”
I know exactly what she’s doing. She’s trying to use her own bad experiences to get me to offer up details to prove that mine was a good one. And we’ve been friends long enough that I know if I don’t give her something, she’s just going to keep pushing until I blurt out everything just to get her to stop. Normally this trait doesn’t bother me, but right now I’m really wishing she would read the room and accept that I don’t want to share everything with her.
“I slept in Felix’s bed,” I admit, biting into another chip. May as well start eating at a normal pace, since my attempts to avoid talking by cramming my face full of food don’t seem to be working.
“Which one was that?”
“The one in the red.” He’s always wearing something that’s red. I’m pretty sure it’s his favorite color. No one wears that much of a color if they don’t love it.
Ronnie looks up at the ceiling, searching her brain to remember their faces. “The one with the glasses?”
“Yes, the one in the glasses.” I shouldn’t be annoyed that his glasses are the feature she remembers, but there’s so much more to him than being “the one with the glasses” and I don’t like that he’s being distilled down to just that. Although I suppose I should cut her some slack since she did only meet them once, briefly, and it was mostly dark. And she’d been drinking.
“He was cute! Did you fuck him? Tell me!” Ronnie claps with excitement, squealing and bouncing on her bed.
“I am really not comfortable with this conversation.” Ronnie is my best friend, but I hate feeling put on the spot like this, and I haven’t even had a chance to figure out how I feel about the weekend’s events without her influence.
“Becks.” Ronnie shuffles forward so she can put her hand on my desk and force me to look at her. “If talking about it is this embarrassing, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”
I scrunch my nose at her. “You’re really annoying, do you know that?”
She’s not wrong, but at the same time, I think it’s valid to be comfortable doing a thing but not want to air all the details about it. Although if I can’t talk to her about these things, there’s no hope that I’ll ever be able to talk to anyone at all about it. I need to just tell her and deal with whatever the fallout is.
“Would you rather I tell you about what Trevor and I did this weekend?” she asks, her voice dripping with fake innocence. “Because I’m completely comfortable with that, and maybe it’ll give you ideas of things you could do with this Felix guy,” she adds with a little wink.
“No, I do not want to hear any more details of things you’ve done with Trevor.”
“Well, it’s that or you tell me about what you did.”
May as well just rip off the Band-Aid, I think. Resting my elbows on my desk, I cover my face with my hands as I mumble, “Fine. With which guy?”
I am positive that every dog in a three-mile radius of our dorm hears the shriek Ronnie lets out as she falls back on her bed, kicking her feet against the covers in giddiness.
Well,thiswas not what I was expecting. Even though she seemed breezy about the idea of me hooking up with all of them when she told me to let them help with my list, I was prepared for judgement and condemnation now that it’s not a hypothetical, not delighted thrashing and celebrating. I’m not even sure what to do with this, so I take another bite of my sandwich and wait for Ronnie to come back to her senses.
It takes three bites before she regains her composure enough to sit up and speak calmly. “So … who? Felix, obviously, and which other one?” When I don’t respond, her eyes grow wide. “More than one other one?”
In for a penny, I guess, though my voice is barely above a whisper when I answer. “All of them.”
