“But you’re so shy,” he said, something people often said to me when I told them what I was studying.
“I’m not really shy. I’m an introvert.” I went on to explain the difference—the fact that being around people didn’t make me uneasy, I just preferred to be alone most of the time. “Daniel was an introvert, too. He was selective about who he spent time with….He loved hanging out with you.”
Nolan smiled, as it occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t just being nice by inviting me to dinner. Maybe I was a comfort to him, too, his closest connection to Daniel.
“How else are you alike?” he asked.
I hesitated, unsure of what tense to use, the present for me, or the past for him. “I have his OCD. And his GPA.” I smiled. “Though you can’t really compare neurosurgery and Shakespearean theater…I’m smart, but he was way smarter.”
“What you study has nothing to do with your IQ.”
“True,” I said, though I was still sure Daniel’s had been higher than mine—higher than anyone’s in our family.
“You two are more alike than you and Josie, aren’t you?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, she’s a straight extrovert. Party girl. But it’s weird….I’m more like Daniel, but he was closer to her.” I felt a stab of jealousy, then guilt for feeling jealous. “Daniel was drawn to people like you…and her.”
“Fuckups?” He smiled.
“Happy people,” I said, wrapping my hands around my warm mug, having switched to coffee. “Fun people. You could always make him laugh.”
Nolan’s lower lip quivered.
“I heard him tell Sophie that you were going to be his best man. One day.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I guess I did,” he said. “But he was the best man. The best friend you could have. God. All the times he had my back…the messes he got me out of…”
I mustered a smile, recalling some of the funny stories in Nolan’s eulogy, how he had so perfectly captured Daniel’s loyal, solid essence while painting himself as the foolhardy sidekick.
“I still can’t believe it was him—and not me,” Nolan said. “God, I wish it had been me.”
I shook my head, although I’d had the same wish about myself. If only it had been me, I’d thought more than once, then my parents would still have a daughter to spare.
—
LATER THAT NIGHT, when Nolan dropped me back at the house, he asked if he could see Daniel’s room. I hesitated, feeling uneasy. I had yet to set foot in his room and knew that my parents had only been in there once, and that was only out of necessity, to get Daniel’s burial clothes. But I said yes and the two of us walked silently into the house, then upstairs and down the hall to my brother’s closed bedroom door. My heart raced as I turned the knob and peered inside. The room was dark, the shades drawn, and for a second, I actually found myself praying that we would find a miracle: Daniel asleep in his bed, the whole thing a bad dream. But the sight of his creaseless comforter and tight hospital corners confirmed our nightmare.
“Jesus,” Nolan whispered, as we took a few tentative steps into the room, our eyes adjusting to the dark. I tried to speak but couldn’t begin to think of what to say. There was nothing to say.
But Nolan found something. “I don’t think I’ve been up here since high school. It looks exactly the same.”
I nodded, grateful that my parents hadn’t redecorated our rooms the way a lot of parents did when their kids left for school—and wondered if they ever would now. Nolan and I looked around, taking visual inventory of Daniel’s bookshelf lined with paperback novels and tennis trophies and signed baseballs and his snow globe collection. We studied the framed baseball jerseys hanging on his walls and the collage of photos tacked to the bulletin board and the stack of medical books on his desk. His suitcase was open and neatly arranged on an ottoman in the corner, and I could see the pajamas Josie had given him for Christmas, the tags still on them. I stared at the jar of Carmex on his nightstand, sitting on top of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, an index card slipped inside, somewhere around the midway point. I had a sudden urge to read the page he had last read, but didn’t dare touch anything. I could tell Nolan felt the same, as if we were standing before a roped-off room in a museum, staring back into history, the end of a young man’s life, a moment frozen in time. We looked and looked until there was nothing left to observe, and then Nolan took my hand in his, pulled me to his chest, and wrapped his arms around me. “I love you, Meredith,” he whispered in my ear.