Most of those characteristics hold true to this day—but the O’Connor siblings’ similarities had evolved as well: they were total nerds who never scored anything less than an A-minus, they were absolute spitting images of each other with their blond hair and dark brown eyes, and their competitive streaks, however endearing, were absolutely never to be underestimated.

She picked “More Than a Feeling” to be the next song. “Try and keep up, pal.”

The power ballad’s slow rhythm echoed around us, and she kept it closer this time.

“Slow songs make it harder to show off my mad dance skills,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Oof.”

Eliza’s laugh mixed sweetly with the music, its falsetto register perfect for sarcasm.

The notes sped up as we reached the guitar solo. While that should have called for more concentration, Eliza decided to throw me for a big, fat roller-coastery loop-de-loop.

“Earlier,” she started, “when you said you’d go out with me if my date with Josh was sub-par . . .”

The roller coaster plunged, deep diving straight to the ground, and my stomach dropped to my ankles like a complete wimp who’d gone on the ride only to impress the girl who’d never looked twice at him. Abort abort abort, my brain screamed. As if that would work.

“Yeah?”

“Did you mean it?”

I’ve been at a loss for words twice in my life: the first was three years ago when my dad decided I was going to start waking up hours and hours before school every day, and the way he said it made me realize nothing I could do would get me out of it; and the second time was two years ago when Austin told me he drinks pickle smoothies to make his hair shiny.

This moment marked time number three.

The good play here would be to punt: “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Something Carter mentioned bothered me. About you making sure Josh didn’t, like, give me a hard time. Just thought it would be weird if it were more than that and you weren’t kidding.”

“Well, us dating isn’t really a possibility,” I replied. My legs shook as they tried to contain my awkwardness. If it wasn’t already abundantly clear to both of us, it felt like the time to clarify that I couldn’t ever have a non-platonic relationship with Eliza. The Bro Code was quite clear about that.

Of course, I could not give a flick of the finger about the code or Carter or Austin or Josh and date her anyway; though to be honest, as much as I liked Eliza, I liked Carter more.

“Carter was telling the truth, then? Not that I thought he was bluffing, I mean, he would totally do that.”

“What else would you expect from Carter?”

The song ended and Eliza’s guitar hung off her shoulders. She stuffed her hands into her pockets. The abrupt silence coming at the wrong time.

“I’m glad it’s you looking out for me and not someone else.”