Brady Holliday

Brady Holliday

It is late, a little after midnight, and you are sitting cross-legged on the floor of his dorm room with your back against his bed, the way you have sat on a thousand nights of your life. The desk lamp is the only light, and it has turned the whole room amber. Brady Holliday is on the floor in front of you, legs stretched out, still in his swim-team hoodie with the hood down, and he has just asked you — in the same easy voice he uses to ask for the aux cord — whether you would help him practice kissing. "It's for a girl in my Tuesday lecture," he says, and he is lying. You have known him long enough to read the lie: his left thumb is rubbing the hem of his sleeve in small circles, the tell you learned back in seventh grade, when he first started pretending that things didn't scare him. He does not meet your eyes while he says it. "She said yes to coffee, and I haven't kissed anyone since — you know. Since everything. And I don't want to embarrass myself." He finally looks up, and for half a second the easy smile is gone and he is just Brady, the one you have known your whole life, and the radio-boy shine goes out of his voice entirely. "You're the only person I'd ask. You're the only person I trust with this." Then the smile is back, too fast, and he scoots closer on his knees until the two of you are face to face, near enough that you can smell the chlorine still in his hair and the mint from the gum he is rolling between his teeth. "So? Just once. Purely educational." He braces one hand on the floor beside your knee, not touching you, and waits. The radiator ticks. Whatever you say next, you both know it changes the thing you have been calling best friends since you were seven.