I got the name and address for the doctor before pulling out of the driveway and onto the street. I was glad I’d kept my wardrobe understated today and that I’d neglected to wear any eye shadow, because there was reason to believe an old woman from Alabama wasn’t the most open-minded about boys in make-up or leggings. She seemed like a nice lady though, and she was clearly talkative. She asked me where I was from and what my family was like. She asked me about the city and how much it rained per year, to which I didn’t have a concrete answer. She told me how nice the weather was and how much she appreciated our lack of mosquitoes.

“I’ve been told the Pacific is cold though,” she said. “We lived about two hours from the Gulf back in Alabama, and the water was so warm.”

“Yeah, the ocean’s pretty cold here.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“You haven’t seen the ocean yet?” I asked in disbelief.

“The car’s been broken down, and we’ve been so busy with other things… we haven’t gotten around to it. But we’ll see it eventually. I’ve always liked the beach more than Thad. Thad’s not much of a fan. Ain’t that right, hon?”

“The beach is fine,” he said. He hadn’t spoken much since we’d gotten into the car. “I just sunburn really easily.”

“Oh, yes. He gets that complexion from his daddy. My daughter is a redhead, too, and you know how fair redheads are. You know what they call his daddy? Whitey. Can you imagine?” She tsked, then laughed. “I guess he don’t mind.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror back at Thad, who was staring out the window. He was either very invested in the scenery or ignoring the conversation.

There was traffic on 105 and we go to the doctor’s office late, but they were running so far behind that the woman at the front desk said it’d probably be forty-five minutes until Thad’s grandmother could see the doctor.

“I hate to see you wait that long,” Thad’s grandmother told me. “Why don’t you and Thad go next door to the café and get something to drink? No one likes waiting rooms, and I can amuse myself.”

“I can stay with you, Nana,” Thad offered.

“I got my crossword, it’ll be fine. Go socialize with someone who ain’t an old lady.”

Thad looked at me, as if to ask for permission. I shrugged, so he gave his grandmother his cellphone and told her to call my phone when she was done so that we could come back over to pick her up. After getting her situated, we headed back outside into the sun and walked toward the Starbucks nearby.

“I can pay for your drink,” Thad said. “To thank you for your time and gas.”

“It’s fine, really. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to.”

Thad still looked guilty, but he didn’t protest, and we headed into the store and then to the end of the line. At first there was awkward silence, so I searched for something to say.

“Your grandmother seems really nice.”

“Yeah, she’s friendly.”

“It’s just you and her then?”

Thad nodded. “My dad’s got his own family, and I don’t talk to them much. My mom’s not really… well, she has her problems.” He bit his lip. “My nana’s sister died last year, and so we got her house in the will. My nana considered just selling it, but she knows how much I don’t like Alabama and how I wanted to try a better school. So instead of selling it and making some good money from it, we moved here instead.”

“That was nice of her.”

“Yeah, she’s real good to me.”

“What school are you going to? UCLA?”

“Hmm? Oh, I’m not in college.”

“You’re… what?”

“I’m still in high school.”

“What?” I stepped away from him in my shock, because I hadn’t even considered that he was still in high school. I’d pegged him as 21 or 22, somewhere around my own age. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Wow. Okay.” Now I felt creepy. Which was absurd. How could I have known he was so young? The dude didn’t look seventeen. I guess I imagined seventeen-year-olds as I’d looked at seventeen—scrawny, with a poor choice in haircut. But Thad was probably not struggling with a cocaine addiction, so he had that going for him. “I did not know that.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“What college did you go to?”

“Do I look like college material to you?”

“I dunno. What does college material look like?”

I couldn’t answer him. I simply assumed that people could see my idiocy from a mile away. “I didn’t go to college. I skipped the partying period between being a high schooler and being dead ass broke. This means you’re going into your senior year?”

Thad nodded. We were interrupted by the barista asking for our orders, and we took a moment to get that sorted out before we grabbed our drinks and headed to a table by the front window.

“It sucks to be the new kid your senior year,” I told him as I sat down.

Thad shrugged. “It’s fine. I had some friends in school back home, but not really close ones, so it doesn’t make much of a difference. I’m actually a little excited. I’ve had to make my schedule and there are so many AP classes here! In Alabama I think we had two, and they were a joke anyway.”

“You… want to take AP classes?”

“Well, sure. I want to get as much college credit as I can before I start college. Maybe I can graduate early.”

“What do you want to do?”

Thad took a sip from his smoothie. “I wanna be a neurosurgeon.”

I nearly spit up my coffee. “Seriously?”

He nodded.

“You must be pretty smart then.”

“I don’t want to brag, but I think I am.”

“Alright, if you’re so smart… what’s 202 times 5?”

He spent maybe half a second thinking about it. “A thousand and ten.”

“Right. I probably should have picked something harder than that.” I scavenged through what little I’d retained from high school. “What’s the powerhouse of the—”

“Mitochondria.”

I snorted into my coffee, nearly choking on it. Thad grinned at me, an expression that suited him.

“That’s about all I remember from high school, sorry,” I said, mopping up my mouth with a napkin. “You’re officially smart in my eyes. Have you taken your SATs?”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking I might retake them.”

“What’d you get?”

“1520.”

“A perfect score is 1600.”

“Yeah.”

Christ on a cracker. I guess he wasn’t lying about being smart. He could get into any college he wanted with a score like that. Maybe it was the accent or his dopey looks that fooled me into thinking he was pretty average, but he kept surprising me.

“Anything else I should know about you while we’re going through your repertoire?”

Thad considered it a moment, then said, “I play the trombone.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s adorable.”

“I like jazz music. I dabble in photography. Um. What else?” He tapped his chin. “I dunno, that’s about it. What about you? Anything I should know?”

“Not really. I barely graduated high school. I wasn’t terrible at academics, I just skipped school too much. You shouldn’t do that, by the way. Stay in school. But I guess I don’t have to tell you that.” Oh man, I was starting to sound like a guidance counselor, as if I had any right to tell him what to do with his life. He had proven himself to be far more capable than I could ever hope to be. “I play guitar and sing a bit. I wanted to be in a band for a while but I grew out of it. Other than that, I mostly just watch movies and read.”

“What do you like to read?”

“I like sci-fi. But I’ll read anything gay, to be honest.”

Thad wasn’t satisfied with that and demanded specifics. So I went through the short roster of books I’d finished in the past six months, leaving out anything too nerdy, even though Thad was the last person to judge me for that. That served as a segue into favorite shows and movies. I couldn’t keep myself from mentioning Star Wars, and then that segued into a thorough discussion of the political themes buried in the depiction of the First Order and what characters I thought were most likely to be bicurious. It was probably the nerdiest conversation I’d had in years, and I would have been embarrassed by that had Thad not been so genuinely interested in what I had to say.

I wasn’t someone who opened up easily. Too many bad experiences had taught me how to put up walls to keep others out. I knew how to play it cool and flirt for as long as it took to fall into bed, but beyond that I was about as awkward as the next person. Often conversations with others reminded me of why I’d rather not being having a conversation. But it was different this time. I was enjoying myself. There was no haughty air to Thad, nothing he tried to protect. There were no walls, no closed doors, no defenses at all. He wasn’t ashamed of his interests, nor was he ashamed of his enthusiasm for them. Beyond that, when he asked me questions, it seemed like he really wanted to know the answers. It was flattering to talk to someone so interested in my boring life.

Eventually his grandmother called and said that her appointment was over. I wasn’t ready for the disappointment I felt as we tossed away our trash and headed back out into the sun. I wanted to talk more—about me, about him, about our mutual interest in pop culture. But I wasn’t sure how to express that, and I also had to keep reminding myself that he was seventeen. Even if all I wanted was a friend—that was all I wanted—it might come across as creepy to ask him to hang out again. At least last time I’d had the excuse of inebriation and ignorance to his age.

“How’d your appointment go?” Thad asked his grandmother as he held open the doctor’s office door for her.

“Oh, same old same old. Feeling spry as a colt.” She flashed him a smile. “Gotta pick up some prescriptions though. Jordan, hon, would it trouble you too much to swing by the pharmacy on the way home?”

“It’s Justin, Nana.”

“Oh, right! Justin!” She tapped her temple. “Memory’s not what it used to be. That’s why I’m so glad to have Thad around. He remembers for both of us.” She grasped his arm and squeezed it, giving him an affectionate look.

“I’ll get the car and drive around so you don’t have to walk across the parking lot,” I offered. I usually wasn’t this thoughtful with old ladies, but I suppose Thad and his grandmother brought out the best in me.

“That would be fantastic. What a dear.”

I left Thad with his grandmother and wove between cars until I reached mine. Five minutes later, I was pulling up to the curb and Thad helped his grandmother into the front seat. Just as she had on the way over, she chit-chatted on the way to the pharmacy and then back to her house, occasionally asking Thad for his opinion but pushing onward even when his response was lacking. Once I got her home, she asked if I wanted any dinner for the trouble, and I politely declined simply because I thought I’d taken up enough of their time. So as she hobbled into the house, Thad hesitated by my side, his hands jammed into his front pockets.

“Thanks so much for doing this,” Thad said. “Especially considering we didn’t know one another.”

“You can call me again if you need anything. I really don’t mind. It was nice getting to know you and your grandmother.”

“I’m kind of glad that you were drunk at a bus stop,” Thad said with a small smile. “It was a terrible first impression, but I had fun today. You turned out to be a lot cooler than I thought.”

Was I blushing? I felt like I was blushing. “I wouldn’t use the word cool, but okay.”

“No, seriously. The move has been really hard and we’ve been worrying about money a lot, and it’s… it’s great to meet someone who’s been so nice and understanding.”

I had no idea how to deal with compliments, so I just shrank and said, “It’s no problem.” I glanced over at Thad’s car in the driveway, then perked up. “Hey, you know what? Why don’t I give you the name and number of a mechanic I know? He’s the brother of my friend, so he can give you a big discount.”

“Oh, no, that’s fine, I don’t want to ask for too much—”

“Hey, it’s not me giving you a discount. I’ll just argue on your behalf. Why don’t I text you his info? His name is Adrien Moreau, and he’s a really good guy. And if you still can’t afford it, I can ask my friend to come out here and see if you can fix it on your own. He knows a bit about cars, too.”

“Justin, you don’t have to do this.”

“Like I said. All I’m doing is asking for favors from other people.”

“Well…” Thad flushed, which might not have been obvious on someone else but with his complexion turned his whole face blotchy and red. “Thank you.”

I whipped out my phone and quickly texted Thad the web address of Adrien’s garage and his phone number. I’d have to call him on the way home to see if he could help Thad out. I still had that gift certificate for car repairs that I’d gotten for my birthday in May; I could regift it to someone in even more need than me.

I said my good-byes to Thad and slid back into my car, where I watched him move up the walkway and into the house, closing the grate door behind him. I wasn’t sure where this sudden charitable nature had come from, but it felt good. I didn’t meet very many people whose kindness impressed me, but Thad was something else. Here was a teenage boy taking care of his ailing grandmother, trying to juggle multiple AP courses and SAT tests while also struggling to find money for car repair. But he still wanted to be a neurosurgeon despite it all. It was no wonder I thought he’d been older. Thad was dealing with adult responsibilities on top of the stresses of being a teenager.

I took a stroll through the “recently sent calls” on my phone and tagged the latest with Thad’s name. He had become a part of my contacts list.