Davis

Davis is both Aza Holmes’s romantic partner and Noah Pickett’s increasingly responsible older brother. His character is shaped by the strain between wanting closeness with Aza and carrying a family role he feels unprepared to fill: after their father’s disappearance, he says he has no idea how to help Noah, yet later describes being a big brother as his full-time occupation. His choices make care less an easy virtue than a demanding practice, one that sometimes requires accepting what he cannot provide.

Identity and Family Responsibility

Davis is the older brother of Noah Pickett, whose behavior troubles him. He tells Aza Holmes that Noah has already been suspended twice and that suspension has not helped; he is particularly alarmed that Noah brought marijuana to school at thirteen. Davis reads this conduct as possibly inviting further trouble, but his account is not simply disciplinary. He believes Noah needs a father, even an imperfect one, and admits he does not know what to do in their father’s absence.

Davis is careful to distinguish himself and Lyle from the parent Noah misses. Lyle has tried to talk to Noah, but Noah answers in brief, monosyllabic phrases; Davis can tell that his brother misses their father, and insists that neither he nor Lyle is Noah’s father. The distinction reveals the limits Davis feels in his own authority: he can observe Noah’s distress and enlist another person to reach him, but he cannot make himself into the absent parent Noah wants.

That uncertainty gives way, later, to a more settled account of his role. Davis tells Aza that he realized he had to be a big brother and calls it his full-time occupation and who he is. The change is not presented as a solution to every difficulty with Noah. Instead, it marks Davis’s acceptance of a responsibility he cannot hand off or perform as a substitute father: he can be Noah’s brother, and must decide what that entails.

Care for Aza and the Limits of Intimacy

After Aza has psychologically decompensated in Davis’s presence, he texts her the next morning, before she is even out of bed, to ask whether she wants to watch a movie. He adds that it need not be set in space, a light adjustment that leaves the invitation open without demanding an explanation of what happened. Aza declines, apologizes for freaking out and sweating, and suggests another time. Davis’s response is notable for its persistence without pressure: the invitation is made, refused, and not turned into a confrontation in the exchange.

He raises the movie again when he sees Aza after she has been with Malik. The repeated invitation shows an ordinary form of attention: Davis continues to seek time together after a painful episode rather than treating it as the end of their contact. Later, when he has been talking about Noah and says that Aza is the only person he can talk to at the moment, she feels the weight of being singled out. Her palms begin to sweat; after a pause, she agrees to watch the movie. The scene places their companionship beside its strain: Davis turns to her in genuine need, while the intimacy of being his sole confidante intensifies her anxiety.

Their differing capacities for couplehood become explicit when Aza tells him she cannot continue as he hopes. She acknowledges his texts and calls them incredibly sweet, but says she does not know whether she will ever get better in the way he is waiting for, and that her present condition may be what better looks like for her. Davis answers that he likes her as she is. Aza doubts that this acceptance can bridge their difference: she believes he wants physical affection and the familiar routines of a couple, including making out and sitting on the same side of a table. The exchange makes clear that goodwill does not erase incompatible needs. Davis’s affection is real, but Aza does not believe that being liked as she is means he can relinquish the forms of intimacy she cannot promise.

The Decision About His Father

Davis’s later explanation to Aza connects his family responsibility to a consequential choice involving the police and his father, Russell Pickett. Aza asks why Davis told the police to look down there. Davis explains that not knowing was eating away at Noah, and that he understood Noah needed to know why their father was not in touch more than he needed all the money. He presents the decision as an act made for his brother’s sake, not as a pursuit of financial advantage.

The reasoning gives substance to Davis’s claim that being Noah’s big brother is now his defining occupation. Rather than protecting the possibility of money at the cost of Noah’s uncertainty, he chooses to help end that uncertainty by telling the police where to look. The choice brings an emotional priority into focus: although Davis cannot restore their father’s presence or give Noah the answer of a continuing relationship, he can act on Noah’s need to know what happened.

Character and Narrative Significance

Davis’s arc is carried through acts of attention and decisions made under constraint: he texts after Aza’s crisis, returns to the movie invitation, confides in her about Noah, and ultimately treats his brother’s need for an explanation as more urgent than money. These actions do not make his relationships effortless. His care for Aza coexists with expectations she cannot meet, while his responsibility for Noah grows from the recognition that he is not their father and cannot simply take his place.

His conversation with Aza under the night sky gives the account of his decision an intimate frame. After he explains why he told the police where to look, she reaches down and squeezes his hand, calling him a good brother. The gesture affirms the quality she sees in his choice without suggesting that it repairs every loss or resolves the earlier conflict between them. Davis’s significance rests in that distinction: he cannot control what family members need from him, or supply everything they lack, but he can choose which need to answer.