Page 73 of All Our Nevers

“Very fair.” I take another swig of the beer that’s rapidly warming in the sun. “But hey, you’re a catch. You’ll find the right girl. And uh…” This is probably as good a segue as I can expect, so I go for it. “I may be in a bit of a similar situation. With the, um, messing up on a date and not knowing exactly how.”

Nolan says “Yeah?” just before the Sox pitcher strikes out the Yankee at bat. The crowd roars to its feet and the stadium speakers blare “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” and maybe this is divine intervention cutting me off. Maybe I shouldn’t talk to Nolan about this after all.

But the crowd eventually dies down, and Nolan’s attention span is better than I gave him credit for because he asks, “So, you’re dating someone? I mean, it seems like you’re always dating someone.”

He’s not exactly wrong. “Well, I’m often dating, but rarely dating someone specific.”

He raises both eyebrows, grabbing my shoulder. “But now you are? Tell me about her. She someone special?”

I laugh, because I really picked my poison with this situation. “She’s an enigma, and I think I need some advice about it.”

Nolan grimaces. “You know I’m probably not the best person to ask.”

“I mean this as unoffensively as possible, but I think you’re my only option.”

He laughs again and it’s warm and open, because he’s such a fucking nice guy. “Okay then, lay it on me.”

“I take it you haven’t heard anything from Amelia this week?”

“About what? Does she know the girl you’re seeing?”

I swallow the lump in my throat. “About the fact that she’s the girl I’m seeing.”

Nolan, who had been taking a nice long swig of his beer, suddenly starts choking—coughing and sputtering and pounding his chest as he wheezes in his next breath.

“Please don’t die,” I say, clapping his back. “It would be a shit way to start a relationship with Amelia by killing her brother.”

“A relationship?” He’s still coughing, hacking, fighting for his words, but he’s too impatient to wait for his throat to clear. “You’re in a relationship with her?”

“I mean, no. I don’t—I don’t know. It’s early. We went on one date, and neither of us is big into serious relationships but… is this weird? She’s your sister. I can stop talking about it if you want.”

With one final hacking cough, Nolan fully meets my eyes. “I honestly don’t know either. None of Lia’s partners have ever wanted to talk to me about her before.”

“It might be over before it begins anyway. I kind of messed up on Saturday.”

“Lia can make it feel like you messed up for breathing too loud,” he says dismissively. “If she’s being rude it doesn’t mean you’re actually in trouble.”

Even though this is her brother—someone with far more right to speak about her than I have—I still feel irrationally defensive. “She didn’t do anything wrong. It was me. I… You sure I can talk to you about this?”

“Yeah, man, of course. What is it?”

I allow myself a single, bracing breath. “Well, I thought the date went well, but when I was dropping her off at home I…” I cringe. “Sorry in advance for this, but... well, I went to kiss her and just got caught up in it and I moved my hand to her throat and I thought I was barely touching her but maybe I pressed too hard or in a way she didn’t like or something, because—”

“Are you saying you choked my sister?” Nolan asks, more forceful than I’ve ever heard him. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

I’m suddenly very aware of the crowd around us, the extremely public setting I’ve chosen for this humiliating and questionable conversation. The middle-aged woman behind Nolan looks over from beneath the brim of her baseball cap, eyeing me like a hawk.

“No! No, Jesus, no. Not like choking her,” I say, lowering my voice to a pseudo-whisper over the bustle of the crowd. “Fuck, I’m explaining this so horribly. Just like… you know when you’re making out with someone and you kind of get lost in it and your hand goes up to their neck? Just to like hold them there in like a sexy way? It was in a sexy way, I swear. Or it was supposed to be, but… Jesus, I’m really fucking this up, aren’t I.”

“You were choking my sister in a sexy way,” he says flatly.

I collapse forward, head in my hands. “I swear it wasn’t anything violent at all, or at least I didn’t mean it that way. I really thought I was barely touching her but I guess… I don’t know.” I look up at him, and he must see the despondency in my eyes.

“Okay, yeah. No, I get it, I think.”

“Well, whatever my intentions were, she really didn’t like that. And then she ran inside and we’ve barely talked since.” I think of the sparse texts we exchanged earlier today. My shock when she reached back out—even if just to get Guy’s number—then my disappointment when the line went dead. “I tried to bring it up but she never texted back. So long story short, I think I fucked it.”

The Sox put a man on base. Nolan doesn’t stand and cheer. He’s lost in thought, gaze down, picking at his nails.