We never got to be friends, exactly. We were more like soldiers who had fought in the same war. We talked in shorthand. I didn't have to explain eating a box of Girl Scout cookies in one sitting. He didn't have to explain trying to find a pair of pants that fit his waist and his thighs at the same time.
In a lot of the important ways, we had lived each other's lives.
In other ways, we hadn't. Jared Lorenzen had been a star quarterback at Kentucky and won a Super Bowl ring with the New York Giants.