Davis Pickett

Davis Pickett is the son of missing businessman Russell Pickett and a young man whose inherited wealth complicates his attempts to understand friendship and intimacy. His connection with Aza Holmes develops amid the search for his father, but Davis’s texts and decisions make clear that the family mystery is also personal: the possibility of his father’s return carries the prospect of prison, while money makes it difficult for Davis to know whether others want him or what he can provide.

Identity and Introduction

Davis first meets Aza at his family’s pool, where he is reading on a lounger in a school polo shirt and khaki pants. He has sunburned legs, plastic-rimmed glasses, and an Indiana Pacers hat. The greeting is tentative: both he and Aza seem uncertain about whether to hug, and they stand without touching. The awkwardness establishes a pattern of closeness approached cautiously rather than assumed.

His Father’s Disappearance

The news coverage of his father’s disappearance unsettles Davis partly because broadcasters repeatedly say his father’s full name, Russell Davis Pickett. Davis recognizes the name as his own, and the reports make the missing man’s public identity press in on him while he remains at home. He recalls thinking of Aza then, connecting the strange experience of hearing his own name on the news with her explanation that her mother chose Aza so she could make the name her own.

Davis’s position on his father’s fate emerges indirectly through Noah Pickett. When Noah asks Aza about the investigation and offers notes recovered from their father’s phone, he says Davis believes the brothers are better off with their father on the run than in jail. The view does not resolve what Davis feels about his father, but it shows that finding him is not a simple objective: discovery could mean a worse outcome for the family.

Money and the Question of Friendship

Davis knows Aza is pursuing the reward connected to his father’s disappearance. His concern is not merely that she wants money; in a series of texts, he reconsiders his belief that nobody should be friends with someone who wants proximity to wealth or access. He wonders whether money may be part of who he is, rather than something separable from him. The hesitation matters: he is trying to distinguish being valued as a person from being valued for his circumstances, even as he recognizes that those circumstances have shaped his life.

Relationship with Aza

Davis’s relationship with Aza moves between thoughtful attention and the limits of what he can do for her. He makes efforts to restore her happiness when she is distressed, but she recognizes that neither of them can simply think their way out of what she is feeling. After a movie, she tells him she is tired because she needs to be alone. He drives her home, walks her to the door, and gives her a chaste kiss before leaving. Once he has gone, she retrieves her deceased father’s phone from Harold’s trunk and looks through its photographs. The juxtaposition places Davis’s caring presence beside a grief he cannot replace or resolve.

Change and Ending

In the months after their relationship ends, Aza misses Davis and initially keeps checking her phone for a reply. Gradually, she understands that they will belong to each other’s past, although missing him does not disappear. Davis’s place in her ending is therefore neither restored romance nor simple erasure: he remains part of the life she has lived, as does the grief for her father and the loss of Harold. Through Davis, the story connects intimacy to uncertainty about what another person wants, while allowing affection and separation to remain true at once.