"So." Kenji watched me over the top of his frozen yogurt cup.

I let out a long sigh, leaning back in the thin metal chair. I knew what was coming and I'd been purposefully avoiding it for the past four days. "Go on," I urged him, ready to get this conversation over with as quickly as possible.

"When did this start happening?"

"Around Thanksgiving," I answered.

"But you were straight before that?"

I nodded. "I think I'm still mostly straight. I don't know, labels are stupid."

He inhaled a large bite of his frozen yogurt. "Well, I'm happy for you. Just surprised, is all."

"Thanks." I'd be surprised too, if I was him. I was surprised myself, when I really thought about the situation. I spent the first twenty years of my life without a single inkling of attraction toward other men, but then Banks barreled into my life and here we are.

"Also, do you know that cousins share twelve percent of their DNA?" Kenji asked rhetorically, grinning sadistically at me.

"Okay?"

His grin widened. "So does that mean you're twelve percent attracted to Ollie?"

I flung a piece of my cookie dough crumble at his face and managed to thwack the top of his ear.

"I'm not going to tease you for sleeping with another guy, but I do have to give you shit for dating Ollie's cousin," he said with an unapologetic shrug. "That shit's hilarious."

"We're not sleeping together," I blurted out over a bite of frozen yogurt. I swallowed and then added, "I mean we haven't. Yet."

"Ooooh." This fact seemed to endlessly fascinate Kenji. "So you don't know if you're a top or a bottom yet? What if you're both tops or both bottoms? I've always wandered what people do in that situation."

I shrugged. "Haven't thought about it that much, I guess."

Liar.

"Well, you've been doing this for over a month now. What are you waiting for?" he asked. "Nervous?"

"No." Liar. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it, but it was intimidating to be completely new at something that Banks had done so many times. It felt like losing my virginity all over again. I didn't want to talk about all of that though. "How are things going with Bridgette?"

"I know you're trying to deflect," he laughed as I absently swirled my spoon through the last melting remnants of my yogurt. "Things are phenomenal though, so I'll oblige. She wants me to go to dinner with her parents next weekend."

"Really? That's serious."

"Her parents are pretty casual, so she said it's not that big of a deal," he shrugged it off, but I knew that when the day came, he'd be freaking the fuck out. "She's great though, really. She watches all of my favorite animes, prefers subtitles over dubs on live actions. And you've seen her, she's so beautiful. It's freaking me out, how good things are going."

"I saw you taking trash out of your room before break. Hopefully that's a good sign?" I knew Kenji long enough to know that he only cleaned his room to that extent if he planned on having company.

His dark eyes turned away from me, but a smirk started playing on his lips. "I can't kiss and tell."

"Hypocrite," I said quickly, because he was just interrogating me on the same sort of things. But still, I wouldn't press the subject. "If we can get Ollie to actually ask Morgan on a date, we'd all have partners at the same time. Don't think that's ever happened before."

There was always at least one single person in our group at all times, but that looked like that wouldn't be the case anymore.

"Didn't you hear? Morgan made a move at the party," he said. With both of us done with our frozen yogurt, we got up from the small table at the back of the restaurant and started bundling up for the ten minute walk back to the house. The January weather was unforgiving, the sidewalks crowded with people hustling across campus .

"Wait, what? Nobody told me anything, what happened?" I was deadly curious to know, and so curious as to why Ollie hadn't mentioned anything to me.

"Probably figured you had enough going on," Kenji shrugged. "From what I heard, she kissed him, made fun of him for not having done it himself, and then asked him out for dinner this weekend."

I would have loved to see his face in that moment. I bet he got so red and flustered, so nervous he was on the brink of vomiting.

"It was before you got there, before all of your shit went down," he added. "So yeah, I guess none of us will be single. As long as Walker and Beth figure their shit out."

"You don't think they'll actually break up because of me, do you?" I asked guiltily as we left the safe warmth of the yogurt shop.

"Even if they did break up, it wouldn't be because of you," Kenji assured me quickly. "It would be because Beth is a homophobe apologist. But I don't know, I get that Sam put her in a tough spot and I don't think they're actually going to break up."

I know, logically, it wasn't my fault. They were fighting because of what Sam did. The only thing I could have done to stop it was to have not kissed Banks, which was out of the question. Or maybe never have slept with Sam in the first place, which would probably have saved me a lot of trouble but it was impossible to know that at the time.

Still, I felt guilty that I was somehow playing a part in Walker and Beth's argument.

But when I arrived back at the house with Kenjie, Walker was watching Game of Thrones reruns in the living room looking like he didn't have a care in the world. He'd been sulking in his room since the morning after the party, so I was taking this as a good sign.

"Walker is the perfect man to talk to you about your situation," Kenji said as we walked into the room. I kicked my soggy boots off by the door and peeled out of my winter gear.

"His situation?" Walker quirked a curious brow in our direction. I could only shrug, because I had no idea what he was talking about.

Kenji continued, "Liam is nervous about having sex with Banks."

"I never said that," I objected.

He ignored me, throwing himself lazily onto the couch near Walker. "I have the misfortune of having the room right next to Walker's, so I unfortunately do know that he has experience with butt stuff," he explained, completely unbothered to be oversharing Walker's business.

Walker himself hardly flinched, laughing it off as he paused the TV show to put all of his focus into this completely inappropriate conversation. "Are you asking me for advice?"

"No," I said at the same time that Kenji said, "Absolutely."

"I don't need advice," I said, crossing my arms over my chest as I headed for the stairs. I needed to get away from this conversation immediately. I was already blushing, embarrassed.

But I'd only just gotten to my room, opening my book bag to pull out the new syllabus collection for the new semester when my door was barged through by Walker, Kenji following behind him. They both looked so thrilled.

"Listen, you've come to the right place," Walker assured me as he plopped himself comfortably on the side of my bed.

"My bedroom?" I responded sarcastically.

"Beth might not have an actual dick, but she does have a wide array of plastic ones. And she is not afraid to use them," he explained. "I'm an expert at this stuff by now."

I slumped further in my seat. I hated this conversation and I hated that I actually did want some advice, because I had no idea what I was doing in this department. So, begrudgingly, I did not kick them out of my room and I didn't try to make for another escape.

"Do you have lube? You'll need lots of lube," Walker began and I wanted to disappear into thin air. "And hygiene is crucial."

"Well, obviously."

"I assume you'll be bottoming, so you'll-"

"Wait. Why would you assume that?" I interrupted him, even though I probably didn't want to know the answer to that question.

He just shrugged and said, "Banks has top energy."

Walker then went into detail about starting with something small and the importance of a flared base and other things that I was secretly keeping mental notes of as he spoke.

I felt like a total virgin, all over again. It came with this same clueless type of feeling, sitting in a group of friends in high school listening to one guy talk about what it was like to have sex, because he was the only one of our friend group to know the feeling at the time and everybody was stupid and fascinated.

"You've really had nothing up there?" Walker asked at the end of his advice lecture, glancing between me and Kenji. Both of us were shaking our heads. "You're really missing out. It's a game changer." With an amused laugh, he added, "You'll see soon enough, I suppose."

"I hate both of you," I mumbled childishly.

"I'm keeping an eye on our olive oil. I better not see any large amounts go missing over night," Kenji warned me.

"Can't use olive oil with latex condoms anyway," I answered, because I'd gotten that warning already from my parents over Christmas break. "And I never even said that I'd be needing any lube."

"You'll definitely need lube," Walker interjected. "I'd suggest a silicone base."

"I mean that we haven't even talked about things going that far," I admitted to them.

"But you've been together since Thanksgiving?" Kenji asked with raised eyebrows, like he didn't believe me. "Coming from the same guy that usually puts out on the first date? When's the last time you waited an entire month to not even breach the subject?"

I slunk further in my chair. "We've done other stuff."

It wasn't like I didn't want to have sex with him, because I absolutely did. I wanted it so much that it had consumed at least a third of my waking thoughts, almost all of my sleeping ones.

But every time we were kissing or touching and I wanted to take it further, the suggestion got caught in my throat. What if I was terrible at it? Got the angles wrong, made things awkward? And what if he interpreted my nervous as hesitancy rather than performance anxiety?

"Told you. He's nervous," Kenji claimed.

"It doesn't hurt, if you do it right," Walker assured me.

"I'm not worried about that."

"If it were me, I'd be worried about shitting myself," Kenji said.

"Is that a thing?" I blurted out, because I hadn't been worried about that until just now.

"Don't scare him," Walker scolded. "You'll be fine. And, you know, you don't even have to do it if you don't want to."

"I want to," I said way too quickly, causing both of my friends to start snickering like children. "I really want to. A lot. I just... I don't know. I don't like you two trying to get so involved in my sex life."

"From what we're hearing, you don't have a sex life."

I tossed a pencil at Walker, who only started laughing more at my embarrassing predicament. His response was thwarted when there was a knock at my door. Identifiably Banks's knock, three soft taps followed by one last solid one.

"Come in," I called, flashing threatening glares to Kenji and Walker in hopes that it would scare them into silence.

My face went soft again as Banks peeked his head into the room and then stepped inside. "Whatcha talking about?" he asked, his eyes roaming between me and our two friends on the bed. He was still wearing his black smoothie shop polo and jeans, his hair looking loose and messy after a day of classes and work.

"Nothing," I said quick and loud as my face started getting hot.

His mouth curled into a smirk that he tried to bite back. "That was a rhetorical question, I've been eavesdropping through the door for like, five minutes."

I wanted to die.

"Well. That sounds like our cue to get out of here," Kenji announced as both he and Walker scrambled off of my bed, rushing past Banks before stumbling their way down the stairs as quickly as possible.

When the two of us were alone, I pinched my lips together, trying to replay that conversation in my head to figure out exactly what Banks might have heard in the last five minutes of it.

When he started to grin, I started to blush even worse. "I didn't mean to interrupt your conversation about how bad you want to sleep with me."

I rolled my eyes before they averted to the far wall, absolutely unable to look at him. "Don't act so surprised."

He stepped closer until he towered over my sitting frame, his fingers curling into my hair. "Are you actually nervous about it?"

My eyes were still cast across the room as I mumbled out a very unbelievable, "No."

Banks's grip tightened softly in my hair, tugging downward to get me to look at him. His eyebrow was arched, eyes piercing right through me and forcing the truth out of the back of my throat.

"I mean... not in a bad way. It's just something I've never done before and... it's kind of intimidating," I finally admitted, letting my hands reach up to grip either side of his waist. He smelled like mango and strawberry from working the last couple of hours at the smoothie stand.

"You don't have anything to be worried about," he assured me with a smirk. "I'm a great teacher. And you know I'd never do anything you're not comfortable with."

"I know that. I'm always comfortable around you."

He bent over me until our lips could connect for a quick, sweet kiss. "And if you had questions about lube, you could have just asked me."

"Their advice was completely unsolicited," I insisted as his thumb padded lightly over the blush on my cheek bones, and then because I had no pride left to protect, I added, "It wasn't anything I hadn't already looked up online anyway."

Again, he smirked and I squirmed under his gaze but this time, didn't look away.

"Did you want anything?" I asked abruptly in hopes of ending this conversation. "I'm sure you didn't come up here just to eavesdrop and talk about lube."

Lightly, Banks pulled at my hair until I was looking up at him again and he peppered another light kiss to my mouth. "Completely unrelated to this fun conversation, I was coming up here to see if you wanted to take a shower with me."

"Okay," I answered automatically, my entire blood stream turning into liquid steel, silver and hot.

"No funny business, I promise," he added, grinning again as he stepped back to allow me the space to stand up. It was more difficult to walk than it should be, my knees so weak it felt like I might topple over at any second. "I'm not putting anything inside of you until you're begging for it."