Page 24 of My Brother’s Best Friend

“No, rambling requires at least a solid minute of talking, not letting another person get a word in edgewise, either because you’re so nerdy that you don’t realize the other person doesn’t care at all about what you’re talking about, or because you’re so nervous that you couldn’t shut up if you tried.” I smiled ruefully. “Trust me, I’m kind of an expert in both, and you weren’t doing either.”

“Is that right?”

“Two days ago,” I told him, “the cashier at the hardware store asked me how my day was going, and I got so tongue-tied trying to say that it was fine, that she said, That good, huh? But I still couldn’t figure out how to respond, so she goes, completely deadpan, So do I need to put you on a watchlist? They say it’s always the quiet ones. Because I was buying fertilizer, which you can use to make a bomb, I guess. And I knew she was joking, but I got so freaked out that she thought I was trying to make explosives that I spent the next five minutes explaining, in detail, that I was actually testing the effects of store-bought fertilizer versus homemade varieties on subsistence farming crops in a home garden for the book I’m working on, and how if she wanted, she could come out and look at the different varieties of gourds and fruits I was experimenting with.”

“Wow.” Jordy’s eyes went wide.

“I’m pretty sure I am on a watchlist now,” I said. “Possibly several. One for people who make bombs, and one for sex offenders, because I couldn’t stop talking about melons, and how I was trying to see if growing them vertically and exposing them to the air made them larger and healthier, and I don’t think she realized I meant literal melons and not, you know, breasts.”

Confiding all of that was terrifying, but weirdly freeing, and when Jordy cackled, I felt absurdly pleased to have made him laugh, even if it was at my own expense.

“She must have been really pretty,” he said when he got his laughter under control.

“What? Why?”

“For you to get that nervous.” He grinned. “Maybe you should ask her to the dance.”

“She was about eighty years old. And I wasn’t nervous because I wanted to ask her out, I was nervous because I’m weird, and any time I talk to a stranger, there’s a seventy-five percent chance I’m going to make a fool out of myself.”

“You’re not weird.”

“I know a lot of people who would beg to differ. I would beg to differ.”

“You’ve never gotten tongue-tied around me,” he pointed out.

That wasn’t strictly true. I never used to get tongue-tied around Jordy, but the past twenty-four hours had changed that dramatically. Explaining that, however, seemed like a bad idea.

“You’re not a stranger,” I said instead.

Sometimes, I thought it would be easier if he were. Easier to deal with garden-variety social anxiety, instead of the extra-special, grass-fed, organic anxiety that came from having a crush on Levi’s off-limits little brother.

Jordy took another sip of his beer, and when he set his glass down, he had foam on his upper lip.

“What?” he asked, when he noticed me staring.

“Nothing.” I shook my head. I could not stare at him like that. Why was that so hard to remember?

“Come on,” he pressed. “Don’t clam up on me. You just told me I’m not a stranger, so you’re not allowed to be silent. What mortifying secrets are you holding back from me now?”

“None, I swear,” I protested. None that wouldn’t creep you the hell out, anyway. “It’s just—you’ve got—there’s foam on your lip.”

“Oh.” Jordy flushed. “So I’m the one who should be mortified, and you weren’t even going to tell me.” He shot me an injured look. “Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I thought we were friends, Cam.” He sighed dramatically and wiped the foam away, except what he mostly managed to do was flick it onto his left cheek. “And yet this is how you treat me.”

“You didn’t actually—that is, you have some more.”

“Well, then help me, dammit. Don’t just sit there.” He gave me an impudent grin.

“I am helping you.” I tapped my left cheek. “It’s right there.”

But he swiped his fingers against his right cheek, mirroring my motion, and brought them away clean and dry.

“Clearly not very well,” he retorted. “Are you just fucking with me? Do I actually have foam on my face, or are you just—”

“Oh, shush,” I told him, and brought my fingers to his cheek.