“You are such an ass**le sometimes,” I say, brushing them from my lap to the floor. Seriously, Ty’s feet stink.

“Yeah, well. Tell Mom,” he laughs. “Speaking of, I talked to them this morning. They’re coming to visit in a couple weeks. Taking us to dinner, and all that. I’m bringing Cass.”

My brother’s infatuation with Cass fascinates me. He has never held onto a girl longer than a week, but she seems to have found his weakness. What’s more amazing is how absolutely normal she is. Girls have never been a problem for Ty. He was homecoming king in high school, and that was after his accident. The local paper thought it was this cool story, about how our student body elected a guy in a wheelchair. Then the reporter interviewed Ty, and his quote pretty much summed it up.

“The chair might make people notice. But this face is so pretty, girls just can’t help themselves,” he said, right there in print. Mom told him he shouldn’t be so cocky, and Dad just high-fived him. That’s Ty. I wish I had an ounce of his confidence.

“You should ask Rowe,” he says, his back to me. That’s how I know he’s being serious, and not just teasing. If he were giving me crap, he’d be in my face, relentless and crude about her. But he likes her; he likes the idea of her and me. And I like that.

“Yeah? You think she’d go?”

“Bro, I know she’d go,” he says, turning around and throwing his dirty boxers at me now.

“Fucking ass**le!” I get him back when I stand up and push his underwear on his own head as I leave the room.

“That’s right, you better run!” he yells as I swing through the door.

Their door is open, and for some reason that makes me nervous. I can hear music blaring as I get closer. It’s not the kind of stuff I’d expect to hear from a girl’s room. I knock on the door, but I know they can’t hear it, so I step slowly around the corner. Rowe’s back is to me, but Cass sees me right away and winks. Rowe is singing “Sex Is On Fire” by the Kings of Leon, standing on a chair in the middle of her room, her arms pumping in the air as if she were actually on stage. It’s the single cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life. I quietly slip all the way into the room and slide my back along the wall, pulling my knees up so I can sit and just look at her for a little longer.

When the chorus comes around, Cass jumps onto the bed and sings along with her. They sound terrible, but I’d watch an entire concert of this just to look at Rowe. She spins around once, but her eyes are closed, so she doesn’t notice I’m here, and it gives me such a good idea.

I put my finger to my mouth, motioning to Cass while I sneak up behind Rowe; Cass grins and nods. I wait for a few seconds for them to get to the chorus again, and when Rowe lifts her arms up, I wrap my arms around her waist and lift her up from the chair into my arms.

Rowe has a hell of a right hook. It’s amazing how fast my nose is bleeding. I’ve been hit in the face by ninety-mile-per-hour pitches, and I’ve never bled like this. “Ohhhhh f**k!” I say, embarrassed that my eyes are tearing up as much as they are.

“Oh my god! I’m so sorry. Hold on, I have a towel,” Rowe says, running to her closet and pulling out a giant bath towel and handing it to me. I hold it to my nose quickly because the last thing I want to do is bleed all over their floor.

“My fault,” I say, raising a hand and sitting down on the chair Rowe was just dancing on.

“No…oh god! I’m so sorry. I just…I scare really easily.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

Cass turns the music down so we can hear better, and Rowe kneels next to me, putting her hand on mine to pull the towel away from my face. It’s the smallest gesture in the world, but for some reason, the way she’s looking at me takes my breath away. Her eyes are so concerned, and her hand is trembling against mine. I’m unable to stop myself from reaching up to hold her hand with my other one. As soon as I do, her gaze jumps to our hands and she jerks away.

“I should get you ice,” she says, standing and hugging herself.

“No, really. I’ll be fine. I have a brother, and I’ve been punched…a lot! It will stop in a minute.”

Rowe keeps her arms around her stomach and moves backward until she sits on the edge of her bed. Cass reaches under her own bed for a duffle bag, pulls it out and goes into the closet to fill it with laundry. “I’m going to go do a load. Rowe, you need me to wash anything?” she asks.

“No, I’m good. Thanks,” Rowe says, her eyes watching her friend walk out the door, and her breath stops the second the door closes behind her. Cass may just be my new best friend, because I know she did this so Rowe and I could be alone. But for some reason, her leaving has Rowe acting even more nervous and uncomfortable; she stands and walks over to the small corkboard by her bed, arranging some photos, and pushing in a few pins.