Page 19 of Advanced Chemistry

“Everything is not okay!” Everett said. “Chase, are you going to tell them what you did this weekend?”

“Certainly,” I said, only to be cut off by Everett a second later.

“CHASE. HAD. A. THREESOME,” he whisper-yelled.

“Oh?” Amos deliberated for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Okay. Cool.”

“Sounds like a fun time,” Julian said.

“WITH. TWO. FORMER. STUDENTS.”

“What?” Amos yelled, no whisper.

“Shut the front door.” Julian’s eyes bulged from his head.

“Usually I’m good at reading your reactions, but I must say I’m confused at the moment.” I tipped my head, trying to make sense of the mix of emotions criss-crossing my friends’ faces. “Is this a bad thing?”

“No, not bad. We’re not mad. We’re just…taken aback,” said Amos.

“We’re in shock. We’ve fallen through the ice on a frozen lake, and we’re in hypothermic, motherfucking shock,” Everett said.

“What Everett means to say is that we’re excited to hear more.” Julian could’ve been a press secretary in another life as he had a skill in translating Everett’s histrionics.

“We bumped into each other at SpringFest. We talked, we danced, it started to rain, we went back to their apartment. I’m loath to use cliches, but one thing really did lead to another.”

We paused my interrogation as our kindly old school librarian Mrs. Peterson passed our huddle.

“Hello, Mrs. Peterson,” we all said as pleasantly as could be.

“Hello, boys! Happy Monday!”

We watched her go until she turned the corner. Then the inquisition continued.

“There’s a gap in there. How did it go from getting dry at their apartment to getting it on?” Amos asked.

“Yeah, who initiated it?” Everett crossed his arms.

“Well…I did.”

“How? You don’t even like asking the waiter for extra napkins when we go out to eat,” Amos said.

“We were watching TV.”

“What show?” Julian asked.

“Schitt’s Creek,” Everett shot back, admonishing him for interrupting. “And what does it matter what show it was, J? Go on,” he told me.

“We were watching TV and…” Here was the part that I kept getting stuck on, as pure lust had defied my internal logic. Usually I could keep myself in check, but the combination of Anton and Sebastian proved too much to resist. “I made the first move. I believe the technical, Urban Dictionary term is skiing.”

Amos had to hold out his hands in fists like he was holding two ski poles to get the reference.

“And from there, I progressed things by getting on my knees. I believe the position we were all in was the Eiffel Tower. You’re the French scholar, Julian, so you can confirm.”

“That sounds right,” Julian said, turning red.

“So it was all you. Huh.” Everett scratched his head.

Huh seemed to be the appropriate reaction. I’d been forward when it came to sex before. I wasn’t shy about my urges when I was with a guy. But in those instances, I had been on dates or had arranged to hook up. On Saturday, there was no similar agenda or pretense. We were merely hanging out. Yet there was this nebulous buzz in the air that hung between all three of us, something I didn’t know if I could put into words for my friends. It was like the electrostatic activity that created the adhesive forces that pulled molecules of different substances together. I definitely couldn’t putthatinto words for my friends.

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