My sister opened my bedroom door without knocking, because she definitely hadn’t learned her lesson on that one yet. Some guy out there named Jamie would forever have the memory of his blowjob being interrupted by his one-night-stand’s college-aged sister, as well as what a binder full of psychology class notes felt like when thrown at his head.

Fortunately, this time I was just laid out on my bed, playing Mario Kart.

“Hey, you want some Dodgers tickets?” she asked.

“What?”

She proferred two pieces of paper. “My friend Derek gave me these Dodgers tickets because he confused me with someone who likes sports.” She paused as I stared at her. “Do you even know who the Dodgers are?”

I pretended to think about it. “Do they play… hockey?”

“Nevermind,” she grumbled, moving to close the door.

“Wait, wait.” I tossed the controller aside and crawled across my bed until I reached the edge. “Come back.”

She returned to the crack in the door. “I wasn’t even going to ask you, but everyone else has told me no.”

“Lemme see.”

She held out the tickets, and I snatched them away from her. They were tickets to a game this Thursday, against the Atlanta Braves.

“Do you seriously want to go to a baseball game?” Zoe asked with a hint of incredulity. “Do you even know how baseball is played?”

“No. I mean, yes, I know how baseball is played—sort of—but no, I don’t want to go to a baseball game. But I know someone who might.”

***

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah, I got two tickets. You can go to the game with you and your grandma.”

Thad laughed on the other line. “I ain’t takin’ my nana to a Dodgers game, Justin.”

“What? Why not? Doesn’t she like baseball?”

“No. She does not. She goes to my games because she likes watchin’ me play, but she’s not into sports. She will not be willin’ to sit in the Los Angeles traffic and heat to attend a Dodgers game.”

Her and me both. “Oh. Well. Is there someone else that can go with you?”

“What about you?”

I almost snorted. “I know my masculine affect can be deceiving, but I’m not into sports.”

“Have you ever been to a Dodgers game?”

“No. I went to one Lakers game as a kid, when my stepdad still held out some hope I’d end up straight. I think I read a book the whole time.”

“It can be fun, even if you’re not into baseball. You can go for the atmosphere.”

“The atomsphere of overpriced hot dogs and drunk idiots starting fights?”

“You’ve never even been to a game. People bring their kids. It’s pretty tame.”

“How would you know? Have you ever been to a Dodgers game?”

“I’ve been to a few Braves games. If you can forgive the, uh, racist costuming, it’s good clean fun.”

I was torn. I really didn’t want to go to a baseball game, even if it was as wholesome as black and white movies pretended. Sports were as boring to me as watching C-SPAN was to everyone else. At the same time, I wanted to hang out with Thad more. Which was bad. He’s in high school, I kept having to remind myself. Boundaries are key. He was from some podunk town in Alabama, and I knew people were friendly down there. Maybe that’s all this was—a guileless kid desperate to make new friends in a new place. But I was the older one and therefore wiser. He needed to be hanging out with other seventeen-year-olds, not jaded twenty-three-year-olds who were just lonely and bored enough to contemplate attending a sports game with a minor.

At his age, I was doing drugs and fucking guys in their late twenties and early thirties. Dylan had been “young” by my standards back then. Maybe that was why I was so paranoid about the age thing. Maybe I didn’t need to be. Thad was not me. He wasn’t some strung-out teen rebel looking to gain acceptance from mature men so that he could feel cool. He was just a nice kid being friendly. I didn’t have to see it as any more or less than that.

“Okay,” I said, against my best interests. “We can go together.”