The Durham Bulls home opener is a big deal. I want to be clear that I understand this. I have always understood this. I bought my ticket in February. I hydrated the morning of. I wore sunscreen with a number on it.
Kieran did none of these things, but he did spend forty-five minutes the night before making what he called "a gameday itinerary," which was a Notes app list that said: "1. Food trucks maybe? 2. Merch (cool merch only) 3. Champ the Bat Dog!!!! 4. Win."
He texted it to me with the subject line "THE PLAN." I said there wasn't really a subject line field in iMessage. He said I was missing the spirit of it.
We left the apartment at noon, which Kieran had described as "early, actually." The forecast had been all over the place — something about a surge into the mid-nineties, gusty and dry, wildfire-risk language that felt alarmist for April until you stepped outside and your face immediately confirmed it was not alarmist at all. Kieran stepped into the parking lot, squinted, and said, "It's not that bad."
I was already sweating. He was wearing a long-sleeve henley.
"The app said seventy-three," he said, looking at his phone.
"That was this morning," I said.
"Temperature doesn't just change like that."
Reader, it was ninety-one degrees.
He had planned for us to walk from the parking garage to the ballpark via a route that he described as "straightforward," and which turned out to route us directly through the Jackie Robinson Drive construction zone, which would have been fine except that we were now walking an extra four blocks in direct sun while he consulted Google Maps with the confidence of someone who had personally designed the road grid. At one point he stopped in the middle of the detour to show me a meme on his phone — something about 2016 being a simpler time, a whole ironic sepia situation — and I stood there vibrating with heat while he laughed at it.
"You have to admit this is funny," he said.
"I am too warm to admit anything," I said.
We made it to the ballpark. This part I'll give him: Kieran is genuinely excellent at baseball games. He knows things. He gets invested. He cheered for Champ the Bat Dog with a sincerity that I found moving despite everything. He also found the new merch booth and spent eleven minutes debating a hat with a focus that he had not applied to anything else that day, including the weather or the route or the concept of sunscreen.
He got the hat. It was a good hat.
By the fifth inning, he had located a shaded section by an act of what I can only call structural instinct — he just drifted toward it, no announcement, like a plant in reverse. He brought back a thing called the Bull City BBQ Brisket Wrap that he had selected with zero prior research and which was, genuinely, excellent. He handed it to me first. He does that.
"See," he said, settling in under the overhang, "this is what I was envisioning."
"You envisioned construction zone detours and the henley?"
"I envisioned us having a great time at the home opener," he said, very pleasantly.
And here is the thing about Kieran, the thing that is extremely inconvenient to admit while you're standing in ninety-degree April heat in a city that has decided to behave like it skipped spring entirely: he was right. We were having a great time. The Bulls won. Champ retrieved a bat with enormous professionalism. The brisket wrap was so good I asked where he'd gotten it and he said, "I just looked for the longest line," which is — fine. That's a good heuristic. I'm not going to tell him that.
On the way back, we walked past a poster for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and Kieran said, "Oh, we should go to that," and I said, "That runs through Sunday," and he said, "Great, I'll make an itinerary."
I said, "Please don't."
He already had his Notes app open.
The henley, for the record, did not come off once. When I asked him about it later he said he runs warm naturally and therefore it evens out. I thought about arguing. I looked at him in the hat.
I did not argue.