“Get outta here. Man, you’ve always been like this. I’d win like forty-seven times in a row, but then the second you finally won you never wanted to play again. The game was barely over and your happy ass was already running down my driveway headed back home. Remember that one time you finally beat me at Raiders and Warriors 2? And you were so afraid you’d never win again that you broke your own controller?”

We both crack up.

And he holds up his hand, offers me a high-five palm, which I happily meet with my own. “Hey, even back then I knew, you should always go out on top.”

And you know how these four-hour windows go.

They tell you they’re gonna make the delivery between ten and two.

That they’ll call you when they’re on their way.

But of course, they never call.

And without fail they always show up at 1:59.

This time I’m thankful it’s last-minute.

Instinctively, I take Q’s hand, Ms. Barrantes takes his other. Whit takes mine, Autumn hers, Bri closing our circle. We stay that way until . . .

“So, can I just say this whole dying-in-a-few-minutes thing has me thoroughly bummed out?”

I nod my head. “Umm, I’m pretty sure you get to say whatever you want, Q.”

“Okay, cool. I’m gonna make this quick.” Q hops up in the middle of our circle, dusts the sand off his butt. “Now you guys are gonna think I’m crazy, but don’t laugh, okay, because this is real.”

“Baby, I don’t mean to rush you, but . . .” Ms. Barrantes makes that open-hand circular-wave gesture that says come on, get to it, please.

“Right, right, my bad,” Q says. “But first y’all all gotta promise not to laugh.”

“Ohmigod, Q, who cares if we laugh, man?” I groan.

“Mm-hm. Everything you say is sorta hilarious, so that’s a tough ask,” Bri agrees.

“Damn, y’all not even gonna try to honor a dying man’s final request?”

“Okay, okay, we swear we won’t laugh,” we all say in almost freaky unison.

We all laugh, Q the hardest.

“Okay, here’s the thing I’m mad about.” He shakes his head in disgust. “That I won’t get to be a grandpa. You know, the kind that makes up stories and expressions that seem really wise and enlightened even though most of the time you have no idea what they mean? Like, I want that so bad, y’all don’t even know. I always imagined my grandkids walking around saying to their friends, to their teachers, to their stylists, “well, it’s like my grandpa used to say.” But nope. Not gonna happen. Definitely in the ‘bummer’ column.”

Q sits back down, between Bri and his mom, so he’s directly across from me.

We’re quiet for a moment as a plane flies by.