“Julian, I’m going to tell you a story,” Ashton said, “about a rider and a preacher. The rider bet his only horse that the preacher could not recite the Lord’s Prayer without his thoughts wandering. The bet was gladly accepted, and the holy man began to mouth the familiar words. Halfway through, he stopped and said, ‘Did you mean the saddle also?’”
“That is not a story about a rider and a preacher,” Julian said. “It’s a story about how to lose a horse.”
“Ashton, why aren’t you eating my Kjøttkaker?” Julian’s mother said.
“Oh, he doesn’t like it, Mom,” Julian said. “He told me when you were in the kitchen. He doesn’t care for your Norwegian cooking.”
“Julian!”
“Ignore him, Mrs. C,” Ashton said. “I love your meatballs. You know he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”
“Consider me risen. Why do you do that, son?”
“Do what, Mom, joke around?”
“Mrs. C,” Ashton said with a mouth full of Kjøttkaker, “the other day your son told me I was like a brother he never had.”
“Julian!” yelled his mother and five brothers.
“Jules, remember to look both ways before you go fuck yourself,” said his brother Harlan.
“Funny, I was about to say the same thing to Ashton,” Julian said. Ashton laughed and laughed.
Julian’s mother made Ashton’s favorite for dessert: lefse—rolled up sweet flatbread sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.
“Ashton, did Julian ever tell you the story of how he stumped a mystic when he was thirteen?” Joanne Cruz said. “Eat, eat, while I tell you. A pillar of the church was visiting our parish, a revered Augustinian monk, a man of prodigious theological output. He gave a lecture and then invited some questions. And your skinny friend, his voice still unbroken, stepped up to the microphone and squeaked, ‘Um, excuse me, why did Jesus weep for Lazarus when He saw him dead, even though He knew that in a few minutes He would raise Lazarus from the dead?’ The monk thought about it and said, ‘I do not know the answer.’”
Ashton, wiping the cinnamon sugar off his face, smirked. His shaggy blond hair needed a cut; his happy blue eyes gleamed. “Even I have the answer to that, and I’m no wise man and certainly no monk—pardon me, Mrs. C. The God in Jesus may have known, but the Man in Him wept because Jesus was both—fully human and fully Divine. And to mourn the dead is the human way. Next time, Jules, ask me. I have an answer to everything.”
Fast forward.
“If you wake up first, don’t go out there without me, like you did yesterday,” Ashton said. They’d been camping for days. “Promise you’ll stay put?”
“I don’t know what you’re all up in my grill about. We’re camping, not caving.”
Fast forward.
“Oh my God, what happened, Jules? We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Everywhere but here. You don’t know what you’ve done to us.
“Julian, say something!
“You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. Help him! Help him!
“Why did you do it, I told you not to go, why do you never listen, why did you leave without me?”
I’m sorry, Ashton, Julian wanted to say, but couldn’t speak. I don’t know what happened.
Fast forward.
“My buddy Jules over here used to be a boxer,” Ashton said to Riley and Gwen the night they met. The boys were groomed and shaved, wore jeans paired with Hugo Boss jackets. “You should be impressed, ladies.” The girls were young and sparkling. “He was nearly untouchable in the ring. He hit his opponents with shots that could’ve brought down mountains. Yes, he was a magnificent fighter but a flawed human being. Whereas now, he’s precisely the opposite—lucky for you, Gwen, and I mean the word lucky in the most literal sense—ouch, Jules! What are you hitting me for?”
“Lucky Gwen,” Riley said after a beat, turning her smile to Ashton.
A flirty Gwen scooted over to Julian. “Well, I am feeling pretty lucky, I must admit.”
Fast forward.
“Do you know any boxing jokes?” asked Riley. They had settled into a booth, ordered drinks and snacks. It was their first double date.
Julian did. “Did you hear what Manny Pacquiao planned to write on Floyd Mayweather’s tombstone? You can stop counting. I ain’t getting up.”
The girls laughed. Ashton laughed, even though he’d heard the joke before.
Fast forward.
“Riley, don’t try so hard,” Ashton said. “Women have no need to appeal to men by also being funny. They appeal to men already, you know what I mean?”