“I didn’t!” They only made out. A lot. And did some light grinding. And definitely intended for it to happen.
“Then why are you blushing so hard?” Arya asked.
Raminwasblushing. Part of him wanted to protect this fledgling thing with Noah, whatever it was. But part of him wanted to shout it from the rooftops. He wasn’t usually the one with stories to share. He was usually the…
Well. The boring one.
“We only kissed this morning,” Ramin admitted. “We had sex yesterday morning.”
“I knew it!” Arya shouted, and promptly dropped his phone again.
Ramin’s face burned so hot, he thought he might catch fire. Farzan and David were grinning at him.
Finally Arya picked his phone back up.
“Okay, dude, spill. What? Who? Where?”
“Promise not to make fun?”
“Make fun?” Farzan asked. “We’re happy for you!”
That was fair. His friends really did want him to be happy. Ramin took a deep breath and then let it spill out of him.
“I kind of gave Noah a handjob.”
Arya whooped.
Farzan’s eyes went wide. “Wait, really?”
“Really.” While Ramin waited for his water to boil, he leaned against the kitchen table and told them the story.
“Wait,” David interrupted when he got to the wine shop. “You had 2016Gaja? Which one?”
“Conteisa?”
David groaned in appreciation, closing his eyes like he was drinking it himself. He probably had before. “First the Ornellaia, now some Gaja. And a handjob too? You’re living the dream.”
“Hey!” Farzan smirked and elbowed David.
David gave him a big smooch. “Don’t mind him. Keep going.”
Ramin went down the whole thing—the wine shop, getting strong-armed into lunch, the rain, the hotel—
“Waitwaitwaitwaitwait,” Arya said, steepling his fingers over his mug of herbal tea. He’d moved to his couch, jacket slung over the back,phone propped up against something on his coffee table. “Are you trying to tell me that you, Ramin Yazdani, engineered an only-one-bed scenario with your big-dicked high school crush?”
“I didn’tengineeranything,” Ramin said. “It just happened. How was I supposed to know he was bisexual and had a crush on me, too?”
Arya cackled. Farzan sighed, but it was a fond one.
“Are you kidding? You’re a catch. You know that.”
Ramin shook his head.
“Anyway, we got interrupted before anything else happened, and then he had to come back to Milan but his phone was dead, so I thought he was ghosting me, and then Todd called and I got into a weird headspace—”
“Todd?” David asked. “Like,Fucking ToddTodd? That Todd?”
“He’s the only one we know,” Arya said. “What did he want?”
