Page 13 of Happiness for Beginners

“A bromance,” I said, just to see if it would irritate him.

He nodded. “Of the highest order.”

“And Duncan’s a good friend?”

“The best. He always defends me.”

I couldn’t imagine Jake needing to be defended. “Against?”

“Myself, mostly,” he said, giving that half smile.

“And what do you defend Duncan against?”

Jake frowned. “Death, I suppose.”

I coughed. “Death?”

“Oh,” he waved, “you know. He wants to jump off a roof at three in the morning, and I suggest it might not be the best idea. Or he wants to throw a match into a box of firecrackers to see what will happen. Or he wants to stare into a flashlight until he has a seizure. That kind of thing.”

“See, now,” I said, “I always thought those were your ideas.”

“Nope. That’s all Big D.”

“So you’re the straight man.”

He thought about it. “In terms of not getting killed, I am the straight man.”

“But you’re not always the straight man?”

“We take turns, I guess,” he said.

He was so earnest. So thoughtful about it all. He was nothing like what I would have imagined, if I had ever thought to imagine him.

“So Duncan brings near-death experiences to the relationship—” I began.

Jake nodded. “That’s his area.”

“What’s your area?”

He shrugged. “Everything else. Talking to girls. Swing dancing. Harmonizing. Accents.”

“Why would you have to do accents?”

“I don’thaveto do them. It’s just fun.”

I had known so little about Jake for so many years that almost everything he said surprised me. He could do accents? He could swing dance? He could talk to girls? Who knew?

Without meaning to, I shifted into Q & A mode, asking him question after question like we were on TV. Partly, it was an offensive play to keep the focus off me. But, I must confess—I’d also suddenly become curious. As we cruised west on I-90, I gathered a whole raft of trivia about Jake. Like he was allergic to almonds and pecans, but not peanuts. He’d double majored in English and pre-med, writing his thesis on Nathaniel Hawthorne. He just got in to medical school but had decided to go see the world, instead—starting now. With Wyoming. Then, off to Baja to pet the whales. After that: The ice caves in Juneau. The Tianzi mountains of China. The ruined mines of Cornwall. The Black Forest. The Taj Mahal. The northern lights. Not necessarily in that order.

“You’re taking a year off?” I asked. “Before med school?”

“Actually,” he said, “I’m just not going.”

“What do you mean, ‘not going’?”

“Not going at all.”

There he went again, surprising me. “You got into your first-choice school,” I said, “but you’re not going? At all?”

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