I stare at the both of them, unable to believe I didn’t know this. “Who with?” I ask Bass.
“Two people. Ping, in my sophomore year…”
“Ping? Your senior Ping? You did not!“ Cushion’s eyes are wide with surprise. I’m a little shocked, too, that Bass would go for an older girl.
“Yes, I did. You were going through your goth phase and always pulling your hood over your head and drawing sad pictures, so it’s not surprising you didn’t notice that I went out with her for a while.”
“I never went through a goth phase,” Cushion says, throwing a pillow at him that bounces off his head.
“Yeah, you did. You were all gloomy and never wanted to hang out.”
“Where was I during all this?” I ask, trying to remember Bass dating one of his seniors. I do recall Cushion’s moody phase that Bass is referring to.
“That’s when you were doing the play. You were always rehearsing,” Bass answers.
“And who was the other girl you slept with?” Cushion asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Not a girl, a guy. Freshman year I dated Moss. He was my first. Well, first guy. Ping was my first girl.”
“The guy in the band?” I ask. All I remember about Moss is that he spiked his hair, smoked cigarettes, and played guitar in a band called Drip.
“I should have realized,” Cushion says. “That guy wouldn’t date anyone who wasn’t having sex with him.”
“Way to make me feel used. I’ll have you know, I wanted to sleep with him. In fact, I topped,” Bass says.
“You did not,” Cushion and I say at the same time.
“I did so! From the bottom.” He mumbles the last part.
“What the hell does that even mean?” Cushion asks. I’m not sure, either.
“Look it up,” Bass says. “Who did you sleep with?”
“You don’t know him.” Cushion taps her phone. “Siri, what’s topping from the bottom?“ She reads a moment, then looks up. “You’re kidding me. Sorry, but I find that difficult to believe.”
My phone pings with another text from P’Park.
Wow. I can’t believe it’s getting so much attention. Khun Lee’s going to flip.
I don’t want to admit I don’t know what the term topping from the bottom means, so I ask P’Park.
He immediately texts back.
Why are you asking me that?
“I’ll have you know I can be extremely aggressive,” Bass retorts. “Now, back to you…Was it at a party? Someone at university? Which year? Wait…tell me it wasn’t that math nerd with the big glasses from sophomore year. Did he work it out on the whiteboard before doing it? You know, like speed of thrusts times angle divided by number of orgasms or something like that?”
Cushion makes an infuriated sound. “Oh, would you just shut up? You think I’d really tell you when you make those kinds of remarks?”
“I think we have our answer.” Bass grins at me, but I’m not so sure. Because talking about all this is bringing back memories, and now I remember a time early on in freshman year when I thought Cushion might like Kiet. It’s hard to tell with Cushion because she isn’t the type of girl who gets all moony-eyed over guys. But there was definitely something in the way she acted around Kiet back then that gave me that impression. She never went after him, though, and soon after that she started talking to the math guy, so I figured I was wrong. But what if…
No. Kiet wouldn’t have taken advantage of Cushion like that. Bass is right; it must have been the math guy. But when I look at Cushion, she’s staring at me oddly—kind of defeated.
“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you, Baby?” she says with a sigh.
My eyes go wide. “No, I don’t think so.”
Another text comes through from P’Park.