And missed his buzzer-beating shot.

And his almost-crushed empty beer can clinked and clanked on the packed snow and finally settled behind the bag.

And Randy made the sounds of an imaginary crowd booing.

And the guys laughed.

And their laughter melted away and they slid into another sad silence. Which Chad tried to pull himself out of by laughing. And his laugh sounded like a dying animal.

Randy looked at Chad, wondering what the heck the sound he just made was. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. Just … sometimes I don’t know why I bother goin’ out. I don’t like it, Randy. I hate it. I hate goin’ out on these … dates.” Chad’s voice was getting high and phlegmy. “I mean, why do I wanna spend my Friday night with some girl I might maybe like, when I could be spendin’ it hangin’ out with someone I know I like, like you, you know?”

“Yeah,” Randy laughed, and wondered why they put so much effort into the ‘big maybe’ that was dating.

“I mean … that was rough tonight,” continued Chad, and he kicked at the snow and started pacing. “In the middle of Sally tellin’ me how she didn’t like the way I smelled … I got sad.”

“Yeah, well, you’re always sad.”

“No. This was different. This was a new kind of sad.”

Randy really didn’t want to hear about Chad’s new kind of sadness.

But Chad really wanted to tell Randy about it. So he did. “And all I could think about was how not much in this world makes me feel good or makes much sense anymore.”

Randy stopped breathing for a second and hoped Chad wasn’t going to tell him that he wanted to kill himself or something.

“And I got really scared,” continued Chad, still pacing. “’Cause there’s gotta be something that makes you feel good or at least makes sense in this world, or what’s the point, right?”

“I guess…” Randy was trying to figure out what he was going to do if Chad said he wanted to kill himself.

“But then…” Chad stopped pacing and continued, “I kinda came out of bein’ sad and actually felt okay, ’cause I realized that there is one thing in this world that makes me feel really good and that does make sense, and it’s you.”

The words flew out of Chad’s mouth—before the thought they were trying to describe had even been fully formed.

So Chad wasn’t quite sure what he meant by what he had just said.

And Randy wasn’t quite sure what he had just heard Chad say. Or what Chad meant.

And the guys felt like everything had stopped—like some kind of cosmic shutdown had occurred.

And they sat in the midwinter northern Maine silence and stillness.

And Chad started to feel a strange lightness suddenly grow inside him. It made him feel warm and weightless—like the gentlest fireworks ever were going off inside him, and like helium was filling his body. And—like he had been released from a great sadness.