Our descent from the craggy chain of peaks known as Los Frailes — The Friars — is a harrowing rollercoaster of elevation losses and gains and more losses, pretzel switchbacks, curves sans guardrails and avec little memorial crosses, traffic lumbering around blind corners, rockfalls across the pavement. The emerald coastline far below is spectacular if vertigo-inducing, and above us the ruggedly scenic mountainside is leaking talus, even boulders. My stomach sinks into the gas pedal when the road soars across a wide chasm on a one-lane bridge missing chunks of concrete.

In the passenger seat Nooshin pushes the radio’s seek button with a chipped pink fingernail, chasing signals that fade in and out like stars in a cloudy darkness. The station callsigns are unfamiliar to us, but their formats are instantly recognizable — saccharine Top 40 crap, cryin’-in-beer ranchero, Mexican oldies. The aural landscape of Sinaloa.

Just looking at her my heart leaps a little, and not only because it’s Russian roulette to take my eyes off the road. Nooshin is coiled into the seatbelt, a bare foot tucked underneath her, sparking with frisson. Her rolled-up jeanshorts make her coltish legs seem even longer, and her high-necked tanktop is the color of unchurned butter, setting off the darker caramel tones of her arms and throat. But best of all, the inky waterfall of her hair is pinned back in a banana clip, revealing —

“Nick!” she shrieks, pointing at a car-sized boulder dead ahead.

I veer into the oncoming lane and back again. The boulder vanishes around a corner behind us. “I love it when you wear your hair up. You’re so fucking beautiful.”

Nooshin blushes into her lap. Half-hidden under batting eyelashes, the movement of her dark eyes reminds me of skittish animals slipping through the underbrush — then suddenly veering apart in flight. “I can keep one eye on you and one eye on the road,” she laughs, making fun of herself.

Some of my favorite memories are just like this — riding in the truck with her, enjoying the back-and-forth. Walking and talking on long rambles into Canyon Sin Nombre, or down Avenida Revolucion in Tijuana, or across the timeless blocks of Chirbampo. Mumbling into each other’s soft breathing as we fall asleep. And all the hours we spent on the phone, back when we were just friends separated by four states and one marriage.

I never expected to totally love talking with Nooshin. Yeah, I’ll fess up — I was a grad student snob, convinced I’d be bored by any chick who didn’t have multiple degrees and couldn’t understand the death march that is the Ph.D. process. After all, I had four years of proof with Phoebe, who bored me whenever I wasn’t staring at her tits. If a globe-trotting lawyer couldn’t hold my attention, how could a housewife with a high school education? But conversations with Nooshin are fascinating. There’s something about her brave resilience, the way she’s brainy but grounded, her compassionate take on life, that trademark Nooshball goofiness. And I could go on, but why? There’s just something about her, period.

A thumping noise echoes through the Explorer. The wedgie sandals I bought her in Tijuana, knocking around on the floormats where she kicked them off. She struggles against the seatbelt, reaching down to hook fingers into their straps, then tosses them into the folded-down backseat with our luggage and camping equipment.

“You know a funny thing about Chirbampo?” Nooshin says, settling into her seat again. “Everyone told us we’re the first Americans who’d visited there in a decade — but half the town has immigrated to America and become naturalized citizens, so when their relatives come back to visit it’s the same difference, you know? Except the locals don’t see their relatives that way. As Americans, I mean. They still think of their relatives as Mexicans.”

“That’s how they persist familial and cultural ties. Persistence by insistence. Otherwise their American relatives might redefine their identities and stop sending money back to Mexico.”

“Yeah! Bi-nationalism, right? I remember when you were trying to explain that concept to me, back when…” Her smile is a brief glimmering thing. “Back when I was in Kansas City, with Saman. Anyway, it’s starting to make sense now.”

I muscle the truck through a series of hairpin curves, then relax as the asphalt unrolls into a steep but straight drop through the remaining foothills. “The funny thing I’ll remember about Chirbampo — I prayed to God. Like, when you were unconscious. I was promising all this shit about renouncing my atheism, anything the big guy wanted, as long as you were okay.”

Nooshin is covering her mouth — her laughter — with a hand. “Really? You were going to lie to God like that? For me?”

“Can you quit making fun of the situation? I’m being serious here.”

“I know you are,” she says, composing herself. Momentarily. “But omigod, that’s just so you, Nick! Lying to get what you want, even to God!”

“It wasn’t a lie, for chrissake. It was…an insurance policy.”

“Then pull off at the next Catholic church. We can go to mass together.” When I don’t laugh with her, a scrawny arm reaches across the front seat to my right thigh. Her squeeze is still weak, barely felt through my jeans. “I hope you’re not really an atheist, because then we can be together for all eternity.”

A fucking eject! eject! eject! moment if there ever was one. A girl I’ve known for less than four months — some Iranian dude’s WIFE — wants to be with me for all eternity. I fully expect to freak out in a way that would make for a legendary YouTube video.

But nothing happens. Hurtling toward the palm-draped backside of the coastline, I discover I’m weirdly okay with the eternity thing. Getting a hard-on for it, even. Nooshin’s palm is still resting on my upper thigh, close enough to stir me into erection. She glances away shyly, a beauty in profile — a profile I first pictured on a pharaoh’s tomb, back when she caught my eye on Avenida Revolucion.

Admitting to myself that I’m in love, stupendously utterly crazy in love, this is the only thought that fills my head:

Always grab the beguiling girl who can hold up her end of a witty and wide-ranging conversation. Life is a long, long walk together. If you’re lucky.