"Me neither."
"You're the one that's good at talking. You did the whole thing for the judges."
"I practiced that fifty times," Calvert said. "I didn't practice this."
Mick laughed, a real one, short and surprised, and then put both hands on the steering wheel and looked at the porch light. The book was on the seat between them, on top of the folded photocopy of page sixty-six, which Calvert had put there on the drive over without saying anything, and which Mick had looked at and not taken out.
"You're going to come in, right?" Mick said.
"If you want."
"I want." Mick picked up the book. "And you're going to stand there. In that sweater. Like you did this morning. Because if you're standing there I can't chicken out. I already saw you do it. I can't be the guy who didn't."
"Okay," Calvert said.