After dinner we had huckleberry ice cream and played a board game called Taboo. The object was to get your teammate to guess a word on a card within a limited amount of time, but there were five other words on the card you couldn’t say to trigger them to guess the main word. Cal and I played against Sid and Maggie, and our ability to finish each other’s sentences, coupled with all the inside jokes we shared, made us unbeatable. For example, during the first round, Cal pulled the word “tofu.” He couldn’t say “meat,” “bean,” “curd,” “Japanese,” or “healthy.” He didn’t have to. Sophomore year there had been a kid in our class who played bass like a boss, and we let him join our band for three days. Everyone in school called him Tofu because his family was vegan, which theoretically wasn’t an issue for me or Cal. But after Tofu lectured us on the hazards of dairy products while I was making mac and cheese for dinner one night, Cal fired him, claiming that the burden of touring the world with a guy who was prejudiced against cheese would be too great to bear.

When Cal saw the card, all he had to say was “Tommy Preston,” and I immediately said, “tofu.”

We were playing to fifteen points, and when the score was 14 to 5 in our favor, I pulled a card, rolled my eyes, and said, “This isn’t even fair.” Cal looked at me and I said, “Your mom used to call us this,” and he said, “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.”

Cal high-fived me and said, “Bam!”

Maggie said, “You guys suck.”

Cal and Maggie stayed out on the porch and played with some ephemeral social media app that put animated special-effects filters on their faces and voices while Sid and I went inside to do the dishes.

Sid and I had developed a system over the years. Sid washed, and I dried and put everything away. He was old-school about it, filling the sink with water and dishwashing liquid, putting on his rubber gloves, and scrubbing everything by hand with a two-sided, yellow-and-green sponge. Something about the slow, meticulous way he worked always felt artful to me and made me think October would have appreciated his ability to be present, patient, and fully committed to the task.

Sid was elbows-deep in sudsy water, scouring the pan Maggie had used to make the cornbread, when he said, “That’s a good friend you’ve got out there. Came a long way to extend the olive branch.”

“Interesting you say that, considering what my face looks like,” I joked. “I guess sometimes you have to beat your friends with the olive branch.”

“You know what I mean.”

I did, and I nodded. “I’m glad you got to meet him.”

“I like him very much. He’s quite a character.”