He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship.

He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.

My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.

This isn't fair, he would think in those moments. This isn't friendship. It's something, but it's not friendship. He felt he had been hustled into a game of complicity, one he never intended to play.

The previous Friday, Andy had come over, and they'd told him, and Andy had stood and hugged them both very solemnly, as if he was Jude's father and they had told him that they had just gotten engaged.

I was aware that I had been looking for him on every street, in every crowd.