"SO YOU TWO are dating?" Mina Choi looks between Cassian and me with a raised brow expression, slowly lifting her red solo cup and taking a sip from whatever is inside.

"Hell no." Bergman and I both barked in sync, our voices blending in with the sound of the house party going on around us. There's loud music, drinks flowing, and people dancing in celebration of the first win of the season and here I am in a corner with Mina Choi and Cassian Bergman trying to explain to her why she saw us kissing in the locker room after the game.

What the hell is my life?

"I'm not gay . . ." I try to explain to her for the like third time tonight and Cassian chimes in behind me. "Neither am I!"

Mina offers an eye roll before taking another swig of her drink, eyes peeking out from the rim of the red solo cup. "Okay, okay, I get it. I'm not gonna out two."

"There's nothing to out Choi because I'm not fucking gay. We just kissed that's it, that's all." I tell her.

"Hmm," Mina falls back against the wall behind her, legs crossing over one another as she stated between the two of us in front of her. "looks like y'all were about to do a lot more than that if I hadn't come in." she sips, eyes daring elsewhere for a moment. "So who's the bottom?"

Cassian made a face at her and I mirrored it with one of my own. "Girl the what?"

"The bottom," she repeats like we're supposed to know what that means because she said it again. "you know the top and the bottom? The one who pitches, the one who receives?"

I turned to Bergman to see him just as puzzled as me. "What are we playing baseball now?" and he shrugged his shoulders at me.

"Oh I have to show you this," Mina let out a laugh as she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. I raised a brow at her as I watched her type something into her search bar for a moment before flipping the phone toward us to show us what she had pulled up.

What we saw was . . .

"Mina are you fucking serious," Cassian covered his eyes at the gay porn playing on the girl's phone right in front of us. She lets out a laugh, a real one, voice deepening and eyes squinting into a pleasant eye-smile like this was the funniest thing to her like she doesn't have two grown white men fucking one another playing on her phone right now.

"The bottom is this one," she points at the man getting rammed like someone stuffing a Turkey on thanksgiving, "and the top is the one on top." I grimace at the scene before me wondering how the hell my life ended up like this. Where did I go wrong in life for me to be receiving gay sex lessons from a lesbian at a party?

"We are not doing that." Cassian shoved the phone out of his face, brows knitted together as he stared ahead at the girl.

Mina chuckled to herself as she shoves her phone back into her back pocket. "I don't see why you two are making such a big deal out of this. It's not the end of the fucking world."

"I know it's not but I'm not gay. I've been attracted to guys a day in my life. I don't know what's going on." I found myself admitting aloud, and Cassian nods in agreement before voicing in. "And the same for me."

Mina sends us both a look before switching her cup in the other hand. "You two do know there's more to sexuality than just gay and straight right? There are bisexual, pansexual, asexual, and demisexual. Sexuality is many things. You don't even have to label yourselves if you don't want to. It's all up to you."

I blinked at her. "Those were a lot of words."

Mina Choi lets out a low growl before she nearly leaps forward at me with her claws and if it wasn't for Cassian in between us I definitely think she would've without any hesitation. "If you two losers really wanted to learn more about sexuality you'd come to one of the LGBTQIA meetings and get to know some people who were in the same predicament you were in and learn how they dealt with finding their sexuality instead of taking quizzes on Buzzfeed."

"To be fair that was Jaylen's idea. Not mine." Cassian throws me under the bus and I nudged him in the shoulder at the disloyalty.

I opened my mouth to say something but I'm immediately cut short when my hands find they were around my waist. I'm so caught off by the sudden action I'm ready to swing on however is touching me without my consent but I look down at my side and see a smiling Karina beaming up at me, a drunken daze in her brown eyes. Not too long after another body sneaks up on us and out pops Lourdes behind Cassian, manicured hands falling around his shoulders as she leaned into his shoulder.

"Aw, you two are talking. I'm so happy." Karina finally stood up straight and said, eyes bouncing between Cassian and me.

"See I told you they would click eventually Rina. We just had to give them time and now they're huddled in like besties." Lourdes said, swaying with her arms around Cassian. We both exchanged a look, a knowing one that said more than enough about the drunken girls in our arms right now.

I looked over at Mina to see she had disappeared. What the fuck . . . she was just here a second ago.

"Oh, I love this song." Karina suddenly blurts, hands finding their way around my own. "Dance with me," she said before dragging me to the middle of the dance floor. I'm so caught off guard by the motion I don't even have time to react properly, and neither does Cassian because Lourdes drags him right behind us.

Karina and Lourdes bring us to the middle of the dance floor with the rest of the CU students, drunk and intoxicated on God know what letting the alcohol take over their limbs as they swayed to the music blasting around us. Karina danced on me, my arms on her waist to keep her steady because I'm sure she'd slip into the heels she was in. I look ahead to see him trying to hold Lourdes up as well, she and Karina seem to have a dance battle on the floor that neither of them seems to be winning both looking like the white girls in the movies after taking ecstasy for the first time.

Cassian must've felt my stare on him because he looks up from the drunken girl dancing in his arms and meets my stare. Oddly enough, we don't look away the minute he catches me and instead just hold the gaze, a slight tug coming over his lips at the sight of him struggling with Lourdes, and his smiles causes me to smile and for a moment it seemed like even in a house party full of people we had our own form of communication and understood one another — our own language.

And for a moment I thought about what if there wasn't anyone here with us right now, no house full of people, no Karina or Lourdes, just us and the music. How would we act together? How would we dance together? Would it be awkward? Of course, it would be because everything with Bergman is awkward — awkwardness in his bones, but I don't think I would mind it as much if we were alone dancing. Just for a moment, I let the thought run through me, a single moment was all I gave the thought before I let it go, shaking my head at the thought just as quickly as it came.

That was just something for the moment.

••••
EXCUSE ANY MISTAKES OR ERRORS