Page 16 of Happiness for Beginners

“I love this tree house,” he said. “Duncan and I used to spend whole weekends out here. I had my first kiss here.”

“Not with Duncan, I hope.”

“Leah Pearson. Redhead. I tried to French her and she bit me on the tongue.”

“I like her already.”

The dinner was warm, and the night was cool. Being outside in the fresh air woke me up. I picked up my wineglass, and lifted it in Jake’s direction. “To biters,” I said, and we clinked and sipped.

“To first kisses.”

“To driving like a bat out of hell.”

“To letting your little brother’s pain-in-the-ass friend ride with you cross-country.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, as I realized it was true.

We fell quiet for a few minutes while we gazed at GiGi’s house. It was an actual prairie-style Frank Lloyd Wright house that my grandparents had bought for a song when it was listed as a tear-down back in the 1960s. My grandpa, who died before I was born, was an architect, and he and GiGi kept the house exactly in its original 1912 condition, except for a few kitchen and bathroom updates. GiGi had raised their four kids here before taking in Duncan and me. It had all the gravitas of a stately old home that had seen it all and then some.

I hadn’t been back in a long while, and as I listened to the summer crickets, I swung my feet back and forth over the tree house ledge like a kid. The moon was out, and plenty of stars, too, and the kitchen lights made a warm glow in the windows across the yard. Even before we’d moved here for good, I’d spent lots of nights at Grandma GiGi’s, and this yard held just about every connection to my childhood I had left.

“Thank you for dragging me out here,” I said after a while. “I’d forgotten about this tree house.”

“You know another thing I remember about being out here?”

“What?”

“You,” he said. “Through your window.”

“You can see into my window from here?”

“Yep.”

“Did you guys watch me or something?”

“Tried to,” Jake said, with a nod. “Every time you came home to visit.” He took a swig of wine and added, “Not Duncan. Just me.”

“Why?”

It was dark enough that our faces were mostly just collections of shadows. But he studied mine just the same. “Because I had a crush on you.”

“You did?” I said. “I never knew that.”

He nodded. “A bad one.”

I shook my head. “But I was married.”

“I know. I met you on your wedding day.”

“I remember. You weren’t invited.”

“Duncan brought me as his date.”

“Duncan did that to piss me off.”

“Found that out later.”

“I was mad about that for years.”

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