Eventually Jake seems to run out of favourite things, but then he just moves onto facts: sisters’ names and ages and degrees, childhood pets, things that David has no match for. And firsts — broken bone, city away from home, European country, kiss.

‘Real’ kiss, Jake specified — when u thot girls had cooties it dosnt count :) — then supplies his answer first, as always, jessica henry i wuz 12 she wuz 13 ;), and maybe David overstated Jake’s experience a little in his head, but there’s a pretty massive difference between twelve and eighteen. David knows Jake wasn’t a virgin to guys or girls before he had sex with David, that was obvious from his reputation and the ease he seemed to have with everything, but he doesn’t want to know.

Jake wasn’t David’s first kiss. David was a junior hockey player in Québec, there was no way his teammates would have let that stand. And he doesn’t think girls have cooties, he’s not five, but the first time he’d been kissed was at a house party, some girl who’d pretty much been shoved at him and drunkenly went with it.

She’d tasted like rubbing alcohol and could barely keep her eyes open, and David had wanted to be sick, wanted to push her off. He didn’t do anything because his team was there, didn’t really kiss back but didn’t pull away, not until her hand had landed on his fly in the middle of a crowded fucking room and he’d caught her by the wrist and shoved her off, too roughly, maybe, because he was the opposite of hard, and the last thing he needed was for her to tell everyone that.

If that was his first real kiss —

It wasn’t. Even the humiliation of kissing Jake and expecting to get punched was better than that.

He can’t tell the truth. Can’t lie, because he’s a terrible liar. And he can’t just send nothing, because he always responds, and then Jake thinks up a new question and sends him another text. That’s how this works. Even so, he puts it off, tucking his phone away. It’s not until he gets back to his hotel room after a tight win that he checks his phone again, finds three texts, one from that afternoon saying, u there?, one from during the game saying, nice assist!, and one soon after saying, u dont have to answer.

It’s humiliating, Jake letting him off because he knows the answer’s embarrassing. Of course it’s embarrassing. It’s David, so it must be embarrassing.

He doesn’t know if he’s angry or not, doesn’t quite understand how he feels, everything tangled up in him, but there’s a stab of vindication running through him when he types out It was you., since that’s actually the truth, because Jake said first ‘real’ kiss.

He sends it. It disappears almost immediately, but the humiliation lingers, and David turns his phone off so he doesn’t have to look at what Jake says, doesn’t have to see if Jake doesn’t say anything.