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Walker: Are you serious?

Lawson: What’s wrong? Is she sick?

Ledger: Are YOU sick?

Me: Nobody’s sick.

Me: I need help and none of them need to be around.

Ledger: Well, for once, no one’s home over here so honk and drink at my place. Bring your own chairs.

***

“I’m sorry, explain it again.”

I pinch at the bridge of my nose, and when a red F-150 rushes past us honking, I don’t even lift my cup as everyone takes a drink. “A third time feels unnecessary.”

“I just don’t get it.” Lawson grabs a cornhole bag and tosses it aimlessly in the air. “What are you both getting out of this?”

“She has this…thing where she doesn’t want to go her senior year without a boyfriend. She wants a first kiss and dates and…everything. And she ideally wants it by the winter dance.”

“Did you guys see the flyer for that thing?” Ledger groans. “Seriously, who picks this stuff out?”

Ignoring that, Lawson gets back to the task at hand. “And you’re getting…what out of the arrangement?”

I shrug and hold out my empty palms like, You tell me.

“I told her it would help me get a date, too, but that’s the last thing I need right now.”

“So, let me get this straight: She asked if you had dated anyone, you said no.” I nod along like I’m a red string conspiracy theorist trying to find anyone to agree with him. “And she said she wants to go out with someone, but she doesn’t think she can do it without help. So you offered to take her out on practice dates, tell her how she can improve, and then send her on her way to find some other guy.”

“Yes.” I sigh a relieved breath. Finally, someone gets it.

“I don’t get it.”

Never mind.

“Why would you offer that?” Lawson squints.

My face falls and I pick up a nearby stick, drawing in the dirt. “I don’t know. She looked so desperate and I didn’t want her to be sad, and the last couple months have been weird since…” Something about sharing the details of that night with the guys feels wrong, so I push around it. “…this summer and I want things to go back to normal.”

Which, out loud, sounds ridiculous, because how can things go back to normal if I’m expected to take her on dates and show her how to be with another guy?

Ledger yawns, and it’s so loud birds go fluttering in the distance. “Flick’s super cute. If she wants a good first kiss, I’m happy to—”

“Do not finish that sentence.”

“I think it’s a great idea.” Walker finally puts his phone away after staring at his lockscreen of my sister for the last three minutes. Seriously, he saw her this morning. She’s at work, not being shipped off to war.

“You do?”

“Yeah.” A Bug rolls by with three honks. Lawson punches Ledger in the shoulder, and I have a feeling it’s less to do with the car and more to do with the insistent flirting with his best friend’s sister.

Walker keeps going. “If you’re serious about her, and I assume by all of this freaking out that you are serious about her, then I would take it as an opportunity and grab it.”

“Opportunity for what?” I ask.

“I think you guys are too comfortable with each other. You’re too close with her, so she can’t see you as anything else.”