It was Blake who stepped up. He drove me home and went to the funeral with me. He bought me a new sport coat and helped me knot my tie. When we got back to school, and I was ready to pack my room and return home to work and enroll in community college, it was Blake who guided me through the morass of financial aid forms, helping me find a scholarship that allowed me to stay in school. I wouldn’t have made it through all that without him. And I wouldn’t have the life I had now if I hadn’t stayed in school.

And he’d stood up at our wedding as my best man. It felt like he’d been by my side through many of the most important events of the past ten years.

“What do you need?” I asked.

Blake carefully picked up his coffee mug and moved it to the side of the wooden table. Then he leaned forward so his head was more than halfway across the table. There was something about someone doing that in a public place that seemed odd but also inviting. So I leaned forward to hear him.

Why so much solemnity for a request he’d already made once before?

Blake spoke in a low voice. “When I say that Samantha and I have figured things out, that we’re really going to make it work this time and work for real, I mean it. I really mean it. I need her. And I think she needs me. It just . . . feels right between us.”

“I believe you.”

Up close his lips were cracked and dry, his teeth not quite as shining bright as I remembered.

“Well, the thing is, there’s a problem . . . ,” he said. “A loose thread. One that could turn into a noose around my neck if it isn’t taken care of.”

I tried to make sense of what he was saying, but I couldn’t. The confusion must have shown on my face, because Blake went on.

“You know I haven’t always been perfect, Ryan. I’ve really struggled with the idea of committing and settling down. It works for me up to a point, but then when we get engaged, and we start to talk about wedding dates, I start to get itchy. My skin literally crawls.” He shrugged. He seemed to be admitting defeat in the face of the kinds of problems most of us outgrew or pushed aside as we got older. “That’s why this is our third go-around. I haven’t quite been able to take that last step, to just accept my good fortune and happiness with Sam and go for it.”

“I know, Blake.” I held his gaze, seeing in his face the college kid I’d met ten years ago. “But I’m not sure what that has to do with me.”