You and Me and Him by Kris Dinnison Page B

down, expecting me to drop off and let him by. But I just smiled and kept going, grabbing the outside bar to get myself around him. He followed me around the playground the rest of the day, and by the time we left the park, Nash and I were friends.”
    “I find a child-size version of Nash a little terrifying,” Tom says.
    I laugh. “Most people do. He wasn’t exactly the poster child for American boyhood.”
    “Yeah, I kind of got that. I’m guessing he got teased a bit?”
    “Kids knew he was different, even before we were old enough to understand about gay and straight and everything in between. But Nash is a fighter, and it didn’t take long before kids looked for victims who weren’t quite so feisty.”
    “Still, it seems like people are okay with him now.”
    “I guess. It’s not so much that Cedar Ridge is open-minded. I think people just got tired of the wrath of Nash descending on anyone who harassed him. The man has some rage.”
    “I kind of got that, too,” Tom says. “But you seem to have tamed the Tiger.”
    “Being friends with him is a skill I have mastered through trial and error. A lot of error.”
    “Saint Maggie.”
    “No,” I say. “Not a saint. You’re not getting it. Nash is . . . He helps me see the good things in myself when I have trouble remembering. He does that for his mom too.”
    Tom looks skeptical.
    “I know you think it’s the other way around, that I prop him up. And I do sometimes. But our friendship is . . .” I flip through words in my head, but none of them convey what I want Tom to understand about Nash.
    “Symbiotic?” Tom offers.
    I smile. “Wow, more AP bio vocab! Impressive. But, yes. Thanks. Symbiotic. It’s good for both of us.”
    “Well, then, you are both saintly and lucky.” Tom turns to the window, and I realize fully that Tom’s never had what I have with Nash.
    He still has on my “Weekend” playlist, and it flips to Billie singing “All of Me.”
    I’m not really sure I’m ready to explain Billie to Tom, so I skip to the next song as fast as I can.
    “No, wait. Switch it back,” Tom says. “What was that?”
    “What? Oh, um, Billie Holiday, I think?” I’m feigning indifference, but Tom persists.
    “Let’s listen to it.”
    I give in and flip back to the song. Billie starts singing again, and I look sideways at Tom. He has his head cocked, listening like a Labrador or something, letting the music wash over him. When the song ends, he sort of shakes his head.
    “Jazz. Not really my thing,” he says.
    “Not really your thing?” I take the bait.
    “Nope. Too sappy, too old. Not my thing.”
    “Don’t make me pull this car over.”
    “So, change my mind, then. How did you get into this kind of music?”
    “I’m more into Billie than jazz in general.”
    “Oh, you’re on a first-name basis?”
    “Definitely. We’re like this.” I cross my fingers. “Anyway, Quinn was playing her one day in the store, and I loved her voice. Simple as that. But then when I listened to the lyrics . . . they’re so melancholy, but also so hopeful. They just . . . they feel true.” I keep my focus on the road. Another song comes on. I can feel Tom studying me.
    “Yeah, that fits,” he says.
    “What fits?”
    “Melancholy but hopeful. That’s a good way to describe the music. And I think that’s how it feels when you’re in love.”
    “I wouldn’t know.” The words are out of my mouth before I can think. I pray silently that Tom will leave it at that, but I know he won’t.
    “You’ve never been in love?” he asks.
    I shake my head. I do not want to have this conversation. Not now. Not with Tom.
    “Never had a boyfriend?”
    I shake my head again. I’m choking the steering wheel, my knuckles white.
    “Okay, that’s weird.”
    “Thanks a lot.” I accelerate without meaning to, then force myself to let off the gas a little.
    “Sorry,” Tom says. “I didn’t mean that to sound . . . I just can’t believe some