The afternoon sun baked the asphalt like rocks in a desert. Heat had started to scald the bottoms of my sneakers, but I’d gladly have put up with that over sitting and braiding each other’s hair with Josh.

“You guys doing anything tonight?” Josh asked.

“Obviously,” said Austin, “we’re on a mission to end Carter’s dry spell. How long’s it been since you had a date?”

Carter replied with a clean swish of the net, shooting from the three-point line. We had absolutely no plans for the evening, especially since I’d be studying, but Austin took every opportunity he could to make fun of Carter.

“Nah,” I said, “unless its first name is text and its last name is book, Carter won’t be giving it the time of day.”

Josh snorted.

“This is true,” admitted Austin. “I heard that if you don’t get all hundreds on your high school quizzes you can kiss graduating college, getting a good MCAT score, being accepted into med school, winning your dream residency, passing your boards, and becoming a surgical attending good-bye.”

“Assholes,” said Carter. “Without me you’d literally fail biology.” He lined up another three-point shot. It banged against the backboard.

Austin mimed bowing down to Carter, stopping when two sophomore girls strutted by us, tennis rackets over their shoulders. The basketball’s synthetic leather felt good against my palm, but even better when I whipped it at Austin’s head.

“You’d all be failing b-ball without me,” I said.

Carter tossed me his ball and grabbed his empty water bottle from the sideline.

“I’m filling these up. Had enough of your smack, Maguire.” He plodded across the neighboring grassy field to the water fountains.

Austin waited exactly four seconds for Carter to be out of earshot. “How’d it go with LOC? What’d you guys talk about?”

LOC, or Little O’Connor, was Austin’s code name for Eliza. Another rule of the Bro Code is that a bro always kisses and tells. It was time to hear Josh’s side of things. If he didn’t exaggerate the deets anyway, which a bro also tends to do.

A warm bead of sweat rolled down my cheek. I wiped it away, but a salty scent still lingered in my nose. With insincere indifference, I aimed at the net for an easy two-pointer.

Josh smirked. “Didn’t talk that much, if you know what I mean.”

I intentionally missed my rebound. The ball bounced at Josh and slapped against his head.

“Oops,” I said. Josh waved me off.

“You give her enough jungle juice . . .” Josh continued. “Isn’t that how you guys have added, like, ten girls to your lists? Legend has it that you guys can mix some pretty potent drinks.”

“Yikes. Def hope not.” Austin stood, gesturing for me to pass him the ball. His sudden restlessness signaled that he was 100 percent done with this conversation.

“Hope not what?” Carter jogged back with his water bottle.

“Oh,” said Austin, “Nick and I were giving Joshy pointers for being a perfect gentleman.”