Friends Like Us Read Online Free PDF

over.”
    Ben shrugs, then hands me the bag, which is full of baked goods—muffins, doughnuts, scones. I pull one out, a long, sugar-dusted cookie. “Remember?” he says, and I do, a long-ago morning at Baywood Bakery involving a man who didn’t speak English, and the word “ladyfingers,” repeated over and over in increasing volume, accompanied by much useless hand waggling and, at one point, the grabbing of an actual, unsuspecting lady’s fingers, until Ben and I, in line behind the man, were doubled over; and then, when it was our turn at the counter, Ben, with an innocent gaze and an improvised Russian accent, ordering bear claws. This is like finding twenty dollars in the pocket of my winter coat on the first cold day of the year, like discovering my favorite, long-lost necklace behind the dresser. This is the shorthand, finally, of a long friendship. I bite into the ladyfinger and recognize its sugary density, along with a slight cardboardy staleness that I choose to ignore, because I know a peace offering when I taste one.
    When my parents finally split up, toward the end of high school, mostly I was relieved. Their divorce was a quiet détente after three long years of volcanic arguing and festering ill will. But what made sense during the day grew leaden and confusing as the sun went down, and for months I lay awake every night, counting my own shallow breaths, trying to soothe myself to sleep by conjuring up situations in which it would be impossible for my parents not to admit that they still loved each other. (Most of these dramas involved me, weak and pale on my deathbed, rasping judgment as my weeping mother and father finally came together in their shared regret. Too late … too late! ) In the end it was Ben—not my parents, definitely not Seth—who saw through the flimsy shell I built around myself, only Ben who didn’t flinch when I broke down crying over Hallmark commercials, who didn’t freak out when I abruptly turned from myself into a snapping turtle. It was Ben who brought the Rocky Road when he came over to study, Ben who stayed on the phone with me until I fell asleep, Ben who drove me to the DMV three times until I passed my driver’s test. If this was all motivated in part by a crush he was secretly nursing, it doesn’t change our history.
    I offer him half of the ladyfinger, and we stand in the doorway for a while, chewing, before I remember to invite him in.
    “So,” he says, settling himself on the sofa and looking around the neat, spare living room. “How’d you do on that math test?”
    “Huh?” I’m standing at the kitchen counter, pulling plates and napkins down from the cupboard. The coffeemaker gurgles. I turn to Ben, confused, a crackle of irritation sparking through me. He’s as twitchy and inscrutable as ever. Math test? “What?”
    “Well, I thought we’d pick up where we left off.” He glances down at the doughnut in his hand as if it has just appeared there, as if it’s some kind of strange, tiny puppy that has just hopped into his palm. He considered how to handle this moment, I realize. He tried out different versions of what to say to me, here in my apartment, how to appear casual and unstudied and charming and easy, and now that his joke has fallen flat and the air between us has gone still, and without the last decade as ballast, we’re losing heft, starting to drift.
    I walk over and plop down next to him, reach for his doughnut. “I skipped that test and got high in the parking lot,” I say, and I take a huge bite of the doughnut, lick my fingers. “Do you have a job?” I ask. “An apartment? A girlfriend?” I ask the last question out of courtesy; something tells me the answer is no.
    “Did I not mention that I’ve been married and divorced three times?”
    “You did not,” I say.
    “Yes! And I have, um, twins. Four-year-old twin, uh … boys.”
    “Really!”
    “Yes, and from different mothers!”
    “Interesting. What are their