Now and again, he ran over and tackled me. I let him. I didn’t mind. Once or twice, he gave my ass a sportsmanlike slap. I let him. I didn’t mind that either. I really didn’t. I knew it was part and parcel of playing glorified fetch. We played until our T-shirts were soaked through with sweat and we were hungry and thirsty, and Jules’s face had arranged itself back into a lopsided grin.

“Hey, Sully,” he said on our way home, “I’m glad it’s you.”

“You’re glad it’s me what?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what he was going to say.

He’d said the same thing when we were kids and he knocked over a vase in the pack house. He was so terrified that Dalton was going to whup his ass, I took the blame for him. He’d said it again, years later, when the first girl he really liked broke up with him and I didn’t let him out of my sight for a week.

“I’m glad you’re the one I go through all this shit with.”

6. Six

6

We were watching TV at my place, a week or so after Jules turned eighteen. All the adults had been called to the pack house, so we had the place to ourselves.

“Guess what happened last night?” he asked.

“Do I get a clue? ’Cause that’s a pretty broad question.”

He slapped my shoulder playfully and his eyes glistened darkly. “I lost it.”

“Lost what?” It wasn’t that Jules was careless exactly; it was just that he lived supremely in the moment and as a result couldn’t always recall where he’d put things the moment before.

“I lost my virginity, you dork. What’d you think I lost?”

“Uh, I was thinking maybe you lost your mom’s car keys again, or that you left your backpack at school like you did last week.”

I was scrambling. Talking nonsense as I tried to circle back to a feeling that made a little more sense. On the one hand, I was surprised that he hadn’t lost his virginity much sooner. Very surprised. It was strange. I spent so much time thinking of ways to get myself into a position where having sex could be a possible outcome, that I hadn’t really spent any time thinking about Jules having sex. I just kind of assumed that he had been. But that was strange too, because nothing big ever happened in either of our lives that we didn’t immediately tell the other about. It wasn’t that I was unhappy about the news. It was just that I felt a bit weird about it. That was all.

“You jealous?” He laughed.

“No! Why would I be?”