“Oh, come on. I invite this kid into my home — he at least owes me an explanation. What was it? If it wasn’t liposuction, did you jam those fingers of yours in your mouth?”

“That’s enough,” Mel snapped. “Leave him alone.”

“Yeah, don’t be such an ass, Desmond,” Steph added.

“I’m just saying what I heard from Lewis.” Desmond shrugged.

“Lewis is an idiot,” Mel huffed.

“You’re right. But still . . .”

“But nothing,” I finally said. “I lost weight from kickboxing. That’s it.”

Lying was the only sensible way out of this conversation, but it only opened up more awkward subjects.

“So, you must be able to throw down, right?” Desmond asked. “You seem super timid, a bit fragile.”

Wanna see how fragile I can be? Of course, I didn’t say that out loud. I kept quiet because I knew better. Desmond sat back in his chair and continued to drink. I didn’t understand why Mel was friends with this dude. He just seemed like the kind of pretentious person that Mel tried to avoid. He was rude to his friends, but they seemed to put up with him because of his fancy house. The dynamic of their friendship was very strange.

Desmond finished his beer and placed the empty bottle on the floor.

“Anyone wanna play spin the bottle?”

“What are you, twelve?” Steph asked.

Derrick laughed as Desmond spun the bottle. It spun, and spun, and spun, and it stopped on me. Desmond looked me in the eyes, made a smoochie face, then laughed. I didn’t find it funny.

“You take the first spin, Adrian.” I had no intention of kissing anyone in that basement, but I grabbed the bottle anyways, and it spun. My heart raced because I wasn’t quite sure where it would land, so I closed my eyes until I heard, “Well, this is a bit awkward,” from a voice I recognized.

I opened my eyes and the bottle was aimed toward Mel.

“That’s unexpected.” Desmond laughed. “Well, are you guys going to kiss?”

“How about asking me if I want to kiss anyone?” Mel said.

“You’re right. Do you want to kiss him?” Desmond replied.

A silence followed. “Just kiss him!” Desmond commanded.

Mel just looked at me for a few moments. I didn’t know what to do, or what to say, so I just sat there, frozen.

“Can we put on a movie?” Mel asked.

“Yeah, sure. We can do that.” Desmond grabbed his remote and showed us a selection of films we could watch. What had happened had made me feel very weird. But I think what made me feel most weird about it was thinking about how Desmond just assumed that it was okay for me to kiss Mel, and how I didn’t say anything about it.

Mel picked the film. It was a documentary about climate change, but as the film began, I laid back in the La-Z-Boy, shut my eyes, and before long, I was asleep.