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“That’s nice. Very supportive,” he called out, wiping the sweat from his brow again as he leaned down to grab his water bottle from the dirt.

“I’m just preparing you for hecklers,” Jane replied, twisting her fingers through the chain links. “It’s what good sisters do.”

Thomas let his body loosen further as he stepped off the pitcher’s mound and started toward the break in the fence, chugging from his bottle so that drops of water slid down to join the sweaty shirt already clinging to him.

“This is why I prefer Cassie,” he said, to which Jane flipped him off. He merely grinned and dropped down onto one of the bleacher’s silver beams, rolling his right shoulder, where a small strain had started.

Jane pushed back from the fence. “How long have you been out here?” she asked.

Thomas gulped down some more water, shrugging slightly. “A couple of hours, I guess.”

His sister was quiet for a moment as she glanced around at Athens University’s baseball practice field, empty save for the two of them. Dozens of baseballs littered the catcher’s mound.

“Don’t you think you might be pushing yourself too hard?” she said, joining him on the bleachers. “Practice doesn’t start till Monday, right?”

Thomas finished off the last of his water. “There’s always room to push harder,” he said, though the words weren’t entirely his own.

“You know, Dad’s not watching,” she replied, tapping her fingers along the metal beam. “You don’t have to prove anything.”

He rolled his shoulder again, stretching out his right arm until the strain felt lighter. “And you don’t have to keep forcing yourself to rush Mom’s sorority, but when have you ever taken my advice?”

“That’s because I’m the wiser one,” Jane answered, waving him off. “I don’t need your advice.”

Thomas scoffed out a laugh. “Okay, freshman.”

A peaceful silence settled between them, and they were temporarily captivated by the bright red feathers of a cardinal atop a nearby fence post. The sun beat down strong overhead in a final, desperate burst of Georgia summer, and Thomas felt the exhaustion of the day settle over him in a sudden, hazy rush.

“I guess part of me does want to quit sometimes,” Jane admitted, referring back to the sorority their mother had been president of when she attended AU. “But it’s a great way to make friends, and I know how happy it makes Mom that I’m doing this. She’s just so excited, and—”

“Mom’s a grown woman, Janey. She’ll get over it if you bail on doing Greek life.”

Thomas leaned back on his elbows until a small smile broke across his face, trying to think of a time their mother had ever actually gotten over anything in her life. After all, someone had to teach soap opera–level dramatics to their older sister. “Alright, so she’d probably be completely devastated,” he added, to which Jane shoved him hard.

He barely budged, instead tightening his grip around the baseball he’d gotten booed out of throwing earlier. He lined up the pads of his fingers with the seams the way his dad had first taught him to when he was four years old.

“Look, all I’m saying is that it’s not fair for her to use you as a way to relive her glory days just because she’s unhappy with everything else in her life.”

Jane raised an eyebrow and laughed. “You mean like Dad does with you?”

“Ouch.” Thomas threw the ball out onto the field, where it rolled to a perfect stop at the indentations in the dirt where he had been standing earlier.

Jane tilted her head back, shielding her eyes against the sun. “Rushing will get better,” she said, though Thomas wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or herself. “Besides, there’s this big annual party tonight that’s supposed to be a fun time.”

“Your enthusiasm certainly sells it,” Thomas noted, before lying down flat on his back across one of the beams. He laced his fingers across his stomach and looked up at the sky, vibrant and marked with fluffy storybook clouds. “Wait, you’re not talking about the Fifth and Cuffs party, are you?” he asked, suddenly realizing it was already the end of September. The clock he was on felt somehow separate from the rest of the world, leaving time to pass by in hazy blurs all around him.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Jane said, squinting at him beneath the sun. “Why? What’s that look for?”

Thomas shook his head. “Those kinds of parties can just get out of hand pretty quickly, ya know?”

He remembered coming back from the one thrown his freshman year—he had been steering his roommate down the hallway toward their dorm, when he spotted the cute girl who lived across from them sitting on the floor outside her room and sobbing as she wretched into a small trash can. He’d seen her at some point during the party, though already the night felt as though it were being hammered away by the pounding in his head from all the alcohol. She had looked up at them both with a frightening amount of mascara running down her cheeks, right as Thomas’s roommate got the brilliant idea to start pissing himself.

Thomas grimaced at the memory, recalling the stench of urine that seemed to linger in their doorway for the rest of that year. “I could tag along if you want,” he offered to Jane now. “Act as moral support and whatnot.”

She waved him off before shifting to lie back across her own bleacher beam. “Sorry, bud, but you’re just not popular enough. Maybe if you were quarterback,” she replied, gazing up at the open blue overhead. She reached out a hand and traced a finger through the air, outlining one of the clouds, and added, “I’m going with a date, anyway.”

“He has my condolences.”

Jane reached over to sock his shoulder then. “You’re an ass, you know that?”