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It’s late September. Spring in Sydney. Ethan is on the bus heading towork.

“Would you look at the color of that cherry blossom tree!” says the woman sitting next to him. She points through the window at the abundant froth of pale pink flowers.

“Beautiful,” says Ethan.

“But they never last long, do they?”

“No,” agrees Ethan, who has no idea how long cherry blossoms last.

He puts his AirPods in before the woman has the chance to point out more local flora.

Eleven days until his thirtieth birthday. It falls on a Monday, which is a shit day for a significant birthday. Especially if it’s my last.

These morbid thoughts are like pop-up ads and he can’t seem to access the right security software for his brain to stop them from appearing, even though he truly believes himself to still be unconcerned and skeptical.

Sometimes he catches himself hoping his “assault” will be quick, or that he at least gets one good punch in, although he still can’t imagine himself hitting someone.

Guys like us—

Yeah, shut up, Harvey.

What with the pop-up thoughts and Harvey’s interjections, Ethan never gets a word in.

Lately he’s been thinking about the time in Year 7 when he accidentally kicked a soccer ball into the back of a scary Year 11 kid’s head. “ Run, Ethan!” cried his friends, so he did. It might have been better to have just said sorry? He’ll never know. The scary kid didn’t chase him, but word got out that he was planning to “get him.” It was a terrifying time. Like knowing the Mafia had a hit out on you. Kids kept telling Ethan he should “watch his back” and consider leaving the school, leaving the country. Fate intervened and the Year 11 boy broke his leg snowboarding and by the time he came back he seemed to have forgotten all about Ethan.

It had become a funny story, but in truth there had been nothing funny at the time about waking up each day in fear of imminent but unspecified danger. Is his thirtieth year going to be a grown-up version of those two weeks in Year 7?

He is not having a thirtieth birthday party. He always assumed he would have one, most of his social circle seems to be doing them, but it just hasn’t felt right.

There is the absence of Harvey, although the truth is that if Harvey had been alive and said he couldn’t make it to his thirtieth, Ethan would never have canceled. Your status really improves when you die. There is also the fact that all his friends know about the psychic prediction, and none of his family do, so he doesn’t want to risk getting them together in the same room. (He never told his parents or sister about the scary older boy either.)

Various small celebrations are planned in lieu of a party: a work lunch on the day of his birthday, drinks with one group of friends at a bar on the Friday night, a family dinner on the Saturday night and a dinner with another group of friends, his old high school friends, the ones who will never forget the ball-to-the-back-of-the-head story, on the Sunday night.

When Jasmine found out he had no plans for the night of his actual birthday she said she would make her “famous nachos” (this is the first he’s heard of her famous nachos, but okay) and they could watch the first episode of The Sopranos together. A while back they discovered that neither of them had seen the series and both are sick of people making them feel inadequate about it.

Harvey had been a Sopranos fan. He had lots of Sopranos quotes. For example, whenever he saw Ethan wearing shorts he’d say, in his best Italian-American accent, “A don doesn’t wear shorts.” Harvey never wore shorts, although that was because he was self-conscious about his chicken legs, not because he was a member of the Mafia.

Ethan is looking forward to nachos with Jasmine more than he knows is good for him.

Carter will not be in attendance. Hallelujah. He has a regular Monday poker night with friends, so Mondays are blessedly Carter-free in the apartment.

He’s been trying his best to like Carter. Jasmine could have any guy on the entire planet so Carter can’t be as bad as he comes across. Ironically, the night of the incident in the kitchen, when Carter turned on the light with that murderous expression, ended up being the night that it first seemed possible they could become friends. Or at least friendly acquaintances.

Carter had said, in a tone of voice that honestly made Ethan’s blood run cold: “Is there something going on I should know about?”

If Jasmine’s blood was also running cold, she sure didn’t show it. She appeared unbothered. She didn’t take a step away from Ethan, although Ethan moved a little away from her. She clearly felt no guilt about possibly harboring a secret crush on her flatmate, so that was depressing.

“A psychic predicted Ethan’s death at thirty,” Jasmine explained. “And some of her other predictions have been coming true.”

This seemed to really cheer Carter up. “Seriously?”

When he learned Ethan’s thirtieth was only a few weeks away he became positively chipper.

“Sorry, mate,” he said. “About my reaction. It just looked…for a moment, like something was going on between the two of you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jasmine with mortifying speed and conviction. Ethan agreed it was ridiculous.

The three of them ended up having English muffins and Sleepytime tea together, and Carter watched the video of the car accident and said, “You must be scared out of your mind.” Then he paused and said, “But has it made you kind of grateful to be alive?”

Ethan admitted it really had not made him grateful to be alive, just occasionally nervous that he might soon be dead.

Then Carter became unexpectedly animated and informed Jasmine and Ethan that he regularly contemplated his own mortality. One of his poker buddies has gotten Carter into “the ancient philosophy of Stoicism.” There was something charming, well, almost charming, about the self-conscious way Carter used the words “ancient philosophy,” like when the school jock suddenly pipes up with an earnest contribution in English to the discussion about Romeo and Juliet. Carter even went to Jasmine’s room and came back with a prop to demonstrate his point. It was a gold coin he “carries everywhere” inscribed with the words Memento Mori, which mean “Remember Death.” Carter told them about the Roman generals who, after winning a big battle, would ride triumphant in their chariots, with some poor sod in the back, whose only job requirement was to whisper in the general’s ear, over and over, “Remember thou art mortal. Remember you must die!”

“So that the dude didn’t get a big head,” explained Carter. He slurped his Sleepytime tea and said he looked at the coin every day to remind himself not to waste time thinking about trivial shit. (Like hanging up your bath towel, thought Ethan.)

“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Carter, in the manner of someone about to pass on something incredibly profound. “You’ve got to treat every day like a gift because it might be your last.”

It was like he honestly believed he was the first person in the world to say that.

Then Jasmine talked about how her life coach (different guy from her therapist) got her to write her own obituary, which really clarified what she wanted out of life (success, fame, adulation), and how she’d once done this really cool death meditation workshop in LA, where she learned all about a Buddhist tradition where you visualize your dead body, like rotting and decaying, with maggots (she creepy-crawled her fingers across her beautiful face to demonstrate). The idea, she went on, was to help you lose your attachment to the material world. Afterward she’d just felt so alive, and by the way, the pancake station at the breakfast buffet at the Beverly Wilshire was amazing and she’s experienced some pretty amazing pancake stations in her time.

“But didn’t your friend die recently?” Carter asked Ethan delicately. “Doesn’t that make you…I don’t know, grateful it wasn’t you?”

“No,” said Ethan. “It just makes me sad it was him.”

The three of them talked until dawn, at which point Jasmine and Carter went back to bed, secure in the knowledge that all their days were gifts, and Ethan got ready for work.

Since then there have been the deaths of the two elderly doctors, which Jasmine believes is further proof of the lady’s special powers, but which Ethan doesn’t find especially impressive. Anyone could have predicted those deaths. He could have predicted them. They don’t count. Sorry, old doctors.

Carter is still staying over just as much but seems convinced that Ethan is his friend now. Whenever they come across each other, Carter offers Ethan a solemn fist bump and says, “Bro.”

Sometimes there is more than one fist bump a day, which is excruciating. He’s like that work colleague who brightly greets you every time you pass in the corridor, when everyone knows you should avoid eye contact after the first time, or at best exchange pained smiles.

Carter has also asked Ethan, on more than one occasion, to remind him of the exact date of his thirtieth birthday. Is he planning to get him a gift? Yeah, good one. Bro is gleefully counting the days.

The woman next to him nudges him, tapping at the bus window to indicate another cherry blossom tree.

“Beautiful,” says Ethan again.

It actually is quite beautiful.