“Try me.” I don’t usually push, when he goes dark like this.

He never wants to talk about it anyway, and seems to appreciate that I can just sit and sip and let him claw his way out of whatever pit the whiskey shoved him into. Today, though, I can’t shake my own maudlin, my own depression. I’ve tried to fake it, hanging out with Nathan. A glance here and there from him, though, tells me he sees through it and is just being polite enough to ignore it.

“I will if you will,” he says, his voice a low, bumpy grumble.

I sigh. Flick a finger at the bartender at the other end of the bar; she nods, brings over the bottle. “Breaking the mold here, my friend,” I say. “But you’ve got a deal.”

He waits until our tumblers are full again, two ice cubes each tinkling around the amber. “Truth is, I’m thinking about my wife.”

This has me rocking back on my stool. “You’re married?” I cough around a startled mis-swallow. “I’ve known you almost four years, and you’ve never told me you’re married.”

“Was.”

“Past tense.”

“Yup.” A hefty slug from the tumbler. A hissed growl as it burns on the way down; this is thick, bold scotch, with a rough burn that only turns honey-smooth after you’ve swallowed it.

“Divorced?”

He shakes his head. “Nope.”

“Shit.” This hits close. “She, um…she passed?”

He harrumphs. “Hate that bullshit phrase. She passed, like she just sorta moved on, nice and easy. She died.”

I take a more tentative sip. “You, uh. You want to talk about it?”

He’s silent for a long time. “I’ve talked to a shrink. After she died. Every week for six months. Helped, I guess. Very least, I started to understand what I was feeling. Which is…it’s a fucking lot.”

My face burns. The whiskey is unsettled in my belly. I can’t look at him—I’m scared he’ll see the nature of my curiosity. “I imagine it is a lot.”

“No. You don’t imagine.” His forefinger, the size of a frankfurter, if not thicker, taps rapidly on the bar top. “It’s just so much, man. And it’s all tangled together like one big rubber band ball of fuckedupness.”

I go for a sideways bolt of honesty. “I don’t know how to navigate this conversation, Nathan. I want to ask, but not if it’s going to hurt you more. You want to talk, talk. I’ll listen.”

He humphs again, snorting into his whiskey, a narrowing echo of sound as he brings the tumbler to his lips through the snort. “You don’t know what to ask?”

“What not to, more like.”

He chews on the inside of his cheek. “Ask me about her.”

“What was her name? What was she like?”