“Everyone pukes at least once.”
“Houston didn’t.”
“Like hell he didn’t.” Ramsey twisted the cap off his bottle of Jack, then grabbed a Rush Tervis tumbler and dumped it in along with some ice he’d stored in the tiny freezer of our mini fridge. “Maybe not at camp, but definitely during a practice. More than once, I think.”
“Shit, see, even I compare myself to him.” I pushed my binder aside, slid to the end of the bed, and grabbed another tumbler off the counter.
“It’s hard when it’s deeply ingrained. It’ll get better with time, just wait.”
“Hold up, what are you doing with that?” I asked when Ramsey pulled a Diet Coke out of the fridge.
Index finger poised on the tab, he looked at me like I was an idiot. “Pouring soda into a cup?”
“Fuck that. If you’re gonna do Jack and Coke, do Jack and Coke. Diet Coke doesn’t count.” I slid from the end of the bed and reached around him, grabbing a Coke from the fridge and dumping it in my cup along with the whiskey. “God,” I moaned, closing my eyes as the refreshing fizz and sugar rush of the soda mingled with the bite of the whiskey. “That’s so damn good.”
With a shake of his head, Ramsey put the Diet Coke back and retrieved a Coke. He let out a similarly satisfied groan seconds later as he took the first swallow, the sound doing some messed up shit to my willpower. The long day had weakened my defenses. It wasn’t fair.
“God, my body aches.” Ramsey set his drink on the bedside table between us, kicked off his shoes, and peeled off his undershirt. He flopped onto the bed and picked up his drink again. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not really, nope. I’ve had enough of that kind of talk today.” When his eyes raked over me, I strongly considered sticking my tongue out at him like a child.
Then he grinned. “Never have I ever puked at training camp.”
Really? I turned a scathing look on him that I hoped transmitted my extreme lack of interest in this game or rehashing my puking. Ramsey’s stupid blue eyes twinkled with humor as he arched a challenging brow.
I took a small, acquiescing sip of my drink. Fine. I could return fire. “Never have I ever dated someone whose name starts with an A or”—I lifted a finger as his grin got wider—“who didn’t pull some weird-ass behavior.”
“All right, fair. No never have I ever.” He picked up the remote and turned on the TV.
“You realize there are amazing, gorgeous women out there who would legit be interested in you, not your money or your career, and who wouldn’t squirrel away weird photos of you—yeah, Houston told me about that—and wouldn’t ask you to marry them after a month? Yeah, he told me about that too. Seriously, do you have some internal radar for crazy women the way I have bi-fi?”
“Bi-fi?” Ramsey snorted.
“Yeah, you know. Like gaydar.” I ticked a finger back and forth like a probe. “Beep, beep, beep. Uh-oh, I think I’m in a dead zone.”
Instead of laughing like I expected him to, Ramsey tilted his head, raking his teeth over his lower lip. “Maybe you need to get it checked.”
I cackled and then stopped suddenly, blinking. “What?”
“What?”
We’d missed a connection. Or a sentence. Maybe a whole paragraph. “You said I need to get my bi-fi checked, as in it’s not functioning properly. As in there is another bi in the room, and since I don’t see anyone else in here besides you…”
He scratched his jaw. “I’ve never acted on it, so…”
Now I was thoroughly confused, and also something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on yet. “What, is this like the sexuality version of if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest argument? If a guy gives you wood and no one is around to see it, you’ve still got wood. So fuck yeah you can be bi without having ever touched another guy. Have you wanted to touch another guy?”
“Hold on, don’t get me wrong. I’m bi. I’m just saying I’ve never hooked up with another guy.”
For the first time in all the years I’d been around Ramsey, he’d struck me silent.
Briefly.
Then curiosity overwhelmed me.
“Have you been interested in someone before?”
“Not seriously.” He shrugged. “It’s more like…the idea of it. I thought about downloading an app, hooking up with some random guy. But I haven’t done that either. Fuck, it’s weird to be talking to you about this.”
“Why? It’s just me.”
“Exactly.”
I flipped him off. “Does Houston know?”
“Yes.”
I stared at him. “And neither of you told me?”
Ramsey cracked up. “It wasn’t any of your business. Why would it even come up?”
“Well, now it is.” I guessed it made sense Houston hadn’t said anything since he was Ramsey’s closest friend, and yeah, it hadn’t been my business. But it still felt like a brotherly oversight in my book. “Did you go down a Pornhub rabbit hole?”