“Wednesday all-you-can-eat Jell-O.”

Willow stopped attempting to force the tip of her tongue inside her straw and looked at Xander. “That’s what you’re going to miss most about high school? Cafeteria food?”

“Hey, unlike some of us who had the option of brown-bagging every day but pizza day, others may have enjoyed the novelty of deep-fried fish sticks as opposed to the at home microwaved variety.” Xander didn’t bother to look up but instead occupied himself by chasing the cherry at the bottom of his cup through the sludge of melting slushie.

Willow flipped over onto to her stomach. “Buffy?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know that I have the cred to weigh the decrease of yuck between deep fried versus microwaved frozen fish parts.”

“No, I mean your turn.”

Buffy rolled over onto her back and let her head fall into the curve of Willow’s knee. Her forehead wrinkled as she tried to remember the categories they’d already chosen. “Oh. Um…biggest disappointment.”

Xander snorted. “Sex.”

“Xander!” Willow quickly jerked the straw from her mouth before Xander could give her a well deserved ‘say it, don’t spray it.’ “Ladies present,” she giggled in mock horror. “Way to be gentlemanly.”

Xander pinned the cherry down and impaled it on his straw. He nibbled around its edges, shrugging. “I had sex with Faith – how gentlemanly am I required to be?”

“Good point. Dish - I bet her legs weren’t shaved all the way, huh?” Willow poked a toe into Buffy’s ribs and then ignored the jalapeño flinging that earned her.

Xander kept his eyes on his straw, digging through the ice in case this was a rare two cherry slushie. “Big build up, couldn’t live up to the hype, all kind of a blur,” he said quickly.

Willow smirked, and then turned her head to look into Buffy’s bedroom mirror to see if it looked like a smirk. It didn’t; but that could have been the jalapeño juice in her eye. “Oh, believe the hype,” she said, “I mean…” her brain caught up with her mouth and she glanced over at Buffy.

Buffy’s smile was sad, but it was a smile. “A world of regret, yes, but disappointment? No.”

Willow’s attempted smirk grew into a huge grin. “Big no.”

“Okay, that’s so not fair,” Xander muttered.

“Why not fair?” Buffy and Willow said together, and then gave each other ‘jinx’ rib tickles.

Xander set his cup on the floor next to the bed and stretched out next to them, his gaze earnest. “Okay, as a chance to establish my manliness, it was definitely not up there with my shining moments, and as a whole…physical experience thing, well…” He coughed. “I mean, mine was just kind of a variation on a theme – a massively more exciting variation but you get me. But you guys, you had to to deal with…” He chuckled nervously. “And then there’s, you know, an ick factor…”

Buffy closed her eyes, Xander’s t-shirt covered shoulder warm against her side, Willow’s leg cool and silky beneath her cheek as she relaxed into the mattress. “Xander, say ‘hymen’ and become one with the floor.”