“How about a chair? You’ve . . . you’ve helped me a lot and I feel guilty.”

“You do have resting guilt face.” He fondled a dark blue chair. “Is this velvet?”

“Take it.”

“We’ll have to ship it to you,” the clerk said.

“That’d be great,” Josh told her.

“Well, thank you, Joshua!” Radley said. “You’re so generous.”

Josh looked at his watch, as the day had been endless. Almost six. “I can buy you dinner, too.”

When they got home, the furniture guys were already there with the bed, and the mattress was waiting in the lobby. They carried up the boxes and mattress, then helped Radley and Josh with the couch. He tipped each guy a twenty, turning down their offer to assemble the bed. If there was one thing Josh was good at, it was putting pieces together, being an engineer and all. The mattress slid on top, a mattress Lauren had never slept on.

Josh opened the packet of new sheets he’d bought and remade the bed, not caring if he should wash them first. They were blue. His and Lauren’s sheets had been white. He opted not to replace the bed’s throw pillows. What was the point of useless pillows you just put on the bed, then took off the bed? It looked more . . . masculine this way. And since he had no woman in his life, masculine it was.

“Sorry,” he said to the dogwood tree/Lauren’s ashes. “This is what you get for dying.”

Radley was doing something he called zhoozhing in the living room. Josh wandered in, and the room looked different. Pebbles had already made herself at home on the couch, which was the color of sand, not red, like their old one. He felt a momentary stab of panic. What had he done? Lauren had loved that couch! He hated change! Then Pebbles wagged, her head resting on a fuzzy throw pillow, which would absorb her drool nicely. Radley had moved a chair, repositioned the coffee table and added the little touches. The new floor lamp looked cool. The ugly-ish shelf had gone up with the DNA thingy on it.

“Are you going to cry?” Radley asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. He wasn’t sure.

“Let’s watch something violent and uplifting,” Radley said. “Mad Max: Fury Road? What food goes with that?”

“Everything,” Josh said. “Should I get some beer?”

“That sounds great.”

“I appreciate you being nice to me.”

Radley tilted his head. “Josh, you’re easy to like. We’re friends, buddy.”

“Good. Good. I thought I was sort of like a test client for you.”

“There is that. But no! I mean, I like you. You’re decent. You have no agenda. You seem to like me.”

“I do. And that’s . . . that’s enough? To be friends?”

“It is for me.” He raised his eyebrows.