“Fine,” Alex says. “I’ll start for you. Nolan took fencing in college.”

“You went to school?” I had assumed he hadn’t gone.

He sighs. “One semester.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I can tell he would rather not talk about it, but it’s the last night and I’ve had enough wine to warm my insides, so I ask, “What was your major?”

“I didn’t really have one. I just took classes I thought might be interesting.”

“They were all English classes, except for fencing,” Alex pipes up helpfully.

I look down into Nolan’s face. “And you didn’t like the English stuff?”

Nolan drops my gaze. “No. I didn’t like how author names were suddenly trading cards, a kind of academic currency. They didn’t have any real meaning. And everybody loved to argue over which one was the rarest, the most valuable, but nobody wanted to…” He falters and throws his arms up haphazardly, trying to make his frustration tangible.

“Read?” I ask.

He nods and then, eager to switch subjects, adds, “Besides, Alex will end up doing enough school for both of us combined. He’s going to live and die in academia.”

Alex, who appears to be doing his best impression of being drunk on less than one glass of wine, will not let Nolan’s college experience go.

“Oh! Speaking of fencing, tell her about the sword thing.”

Nolan blushes so hard I’m worried the boat might catch fire.

“Don’t you want to know why he carries around that ridiculous phone?” Alex asks.

“If he wants to tell me.” I keep my voice neutral. If I sound too excited, Nolan will balk. He sighs and rolls off my lap and into a sitting position, his face grumpy.

A pause. “It was because of a review.”

“Like that explains everything,” Alex mutters, and I shush him.

Nolan glares at Alex before turning to me. “Long story short, I read a bad early review on my phone. It pissed me off. I broke the phone. End of story.”

Now Alex is sitting up, dislodging his legs from Wally’s girth.

“Oh no it isn’t. You stabbed your brand-new phone with a literal bejeweled sword.”

I can’t bite back my laughter at the ridiculous image in my head. Nolan poised above his cell phone, the hilt of a sword clutched between two hands as if he had just pulled it from a stone. It’s ridiculous enough to be one of my fantastical photos.

“You stabbed your phone?” I repeat. “And where did you get a sword?”

Nolan opens his mouth to answer, but Alex beats him to it. “He bought it. Custom-made, too. It was like, literally the first thing he bought when his advance check came in. I know, because he sent me a picture of it. This was of course before he had a phone camera that was complete crap.”