This is supposed to be where you look down on me from the Great Big Pub in the Sky and smile wisely and see I’ve done well, right? I think that’s how this works.
So why isn’t it working? Five years. Tara’s off in Australia, giving Realtors the kind of speeches you get to deliver through a little ear-microphone. Jenny Calligan is beautiful as ever, but I only see her through Facebook photos. Stacey left Chicago for Colorado, and again, Facebook is keeping us in contact, but she seems to be doing well. Joe is a divorce lawyer somewhere; somehow I got on his e-mail newsletter list. Hell, even the Dark Horse got sold to new folks.
Ev’s doing great. I call him Evvie Doug pretty much all the time, which I know would get out of you one of those loud, head-thrown-back guffaws. He’s incredibly intelligent, incredibly verbose. Plays with Lego all the time. Creates his own mighty machines. I wish you’d had a chance to play with him. I just know you’d be down on the floor in his toy area, laughing while he showed off his creations.
I got lost somewhere in there. I go to work, I come home 12 hours later, I play with the boy, I maybe have 30 minutes to myself after bedtime, and then I fall asleep. I don’t have friends. I don’t have a bar that I can walk to, that I can use as a launching point for our adventures.
Maybe that’s okay. Maybe I had my time, and now I can just let go and be a wallet and a chauffeur and work on your namesake instead of myself.
I don’t know. It’s lonely, you know? I miss your friendship, and your perspective, and your laugh.
