“Pretty much. I fell hard for her.”
He got up to flip the fish. His back was to her, which was probably the only reason she had the guts to ask, “What was she like?” She was so curious about the woman who had captured Jake’s heart.
“Out of my league.”
That was the last thing she’d expected him to say. “What does that mean?”
“Smart. Driven. She wanted to be a lawyer—which she did end up doing.”
“You’re smart.”
He snorted. “You need a 2.0 GPA to graduate from the high school here, or you did in my era at least. Guess what mine was?”
She chuckled. “I’m going to go with 2.0.”
“Nope, it was 1.99, but there was a tornado that year, and it destroyed the outdoor stage they always used for graduation. I rebuilt it, and the principal rounded me up.”
“Jake!” She hated hearing him run himself down, though he didn’t seem that concerned about it. “There are lots of different kinds of intelligence.”
“Don’t worry, Doc. My self-esteem is fine. In those years I was just way more interested in being on the lake or snowmobiling or whatever than I was in being inside doing homework. And I have lots of other redeeming qualities.” He did the over-the-top eyebrow-wagging thing again. “Thanks in part to Mrs. Robinson.”
“So here we are supposedly talking about sexual insecurities, but it doesn’t seem like you actually have any. It seems more like you had a dry spell by choice.” A grief-induced dry spell, but she wasn’t going to say that.
“I guess. Sawyer and Law bought me a phone a couple years ago because they thought I should get on one of those hookup apps, but I wasn’t feeling it.”
“I seriously cannot imagine you with a phone.”
“I know. They were like, ‘Well, you can use it only for this.’ But no thanks, man. To the hookup apps but also to the phone more generally. I don’t need my brain turned to mush.”
“See? You are smart.”
“So what about you, Doc? Hit me with those insecurities.” She paused, and he got up and went to the grill. “If you want to. This is done. You want to eat out here or are you too cold?”
“Out here, please.” She was cold, but she didn’t want to go inside yet. “I’m still not over the fact that your front yard is literally Lake Huron.”
“Okay, sit tight for a sec. I’ll be right back.”
She appreciated what he was doing, which was breaking up their heavy conversation. She suspected that when he came back, he wouldn’t prod her. He would leave it to her to decide if she wanted to tell him anything. Which she did. Even though it was slightly embarrassing, given that he apparently had no sexual hang-ups to speak of. But his absence afforded her the opportunity to gather her thoughts as she stared at the lake.
She was starting to see that the lake had moods, for lack of a better word. The stillness of her first visit here, back when it was still warm, was nowhere in evidence. Tonight, there was a decent wind, and the water was choppy and gray, crashing against the shore in big, foamy waves. But it was still soothing, somehow. What had he said before? The lake goes on. It was oddly comforting. The lake didn’t care about her tale of woe.
But you know who did?
He came back out with a tray laden with dishes. He winked at her as he set it on the table. “One more trip. Be right back.”
Jake did. Jake cared.
A startling thought hit her: Jake was pretty much her best friend these days. Yeah, she had friends in Toronto. She had a couple group texts going, and people had checked in on her since the move. She’d issued vague invitations for them to come visit “once she was settled.” But most of them were friends from the hospital who knew Rufus, too, and she felt awkward about that. Anyway, she’d always been closer to her sister—and her grandma, for that matter—than to her friends.
But what made a best friend? Someone you liked hanging out with? Someone who was always there for you? Someone you had inside jokes with? By all those metrics, Jake fit the bill, though maybe if there was a long-standing-history requirement, he didn’t pass that.
Also, what about “Someone you have sex with”? Ha. She should probably be freaking out a little more over the prospect of sex messing up their friendship. People in books and movies were always worried about that. But for some reason, it didn’t bother her. She wasn’t having any problems compartmentalizing, and she was pretty sure Jake wasn’t, either.
He came back with a bottle of water, a bottle of wine, a lantern-style flashlight—it had been late when she arrived, and it was getting dark now—and a big, heavy quilt that he draped over her shoulders before settling himself next to her on the bench.
“This is the softest quilt I’ve ever felt.” It was like a cozy, cottony hug. She eyed as much of it as she could see, tucked as it was around her. “It’s gorgeous, too.” The design was subtle but complex, made of tiny triangles that varied only slightly in color or pattern. You had to look closely to see the variation.
“My mom made it. She always said you shouldn’t treat quilts like pristine works of art. That you should wash them a lot so they get nice and soft. Use them, and not just inside. She was always dragging them around to use as picnic blankets or camping bedding.” He served her a piece of fish as he spoke and nudged the salad bowl toward her.
“Oh my God, this is good,” she said after her first bite of fish. “It’s different from before, I think?”
“Yeah. This is pickerel. It’s also good lightly breaded and panfried. I’ll do it that way next time, but I’m trying to make the most of the last days of grilling season.”
Next time. She loved the way he kept saying that. And the amazing thing was, she was pretty sure there would be a next time regardless of whether they ever got around to sleeping together this evening. It ratified her feelings that things weren’t going to get weird. Jake was a person who could roll with the punches.
And, slightly surprisingly, she seemed to be, too.
Look at her. The life reset had yielded a new, flexible personality and a man-god best friend with benefits.
“I had a string of failed relationships before Rufus,” she said, steering them back toward the topic at hand, even though he’d given her an out. “Going all the way back to high school. They almost always ended with the guy complaining that I didn’t have enough time for him. Which I can’t really argue with. School always came first, in high school and in undergrad, and then med school and my residency? I mean, forget it. You work a million hours a week. My last boyfriend before Rufus told me I was not cut out to be someone’s girlfriend. He issued this ultimatum, saying I had to meet him halfway or he was going to leave me.”
“What did that mean?”
“I don’t know. I interpreted it to mean I should cook more, do more around the house. And to be fair, I really wasn’t doing my share.”
“What did this guy do? For a living, I mean.”
“He was a junior high school science teacher.”
“Well, that’s just stupid. You’re working more than he is—and he’s not working at all in the summer—he should do the cooking.”