By every logic of how these things are supposed to work, it should have been reversed.

The people with years of stored-up love and obligation should have been the ones at my side, and the near-stranger should have been the one who politely kept his distance.

Instead, the years of love turned out to be worth nothing when it counted, and the near-stranger turned out to be the whole of my rescue.

And I have come to believe this is not the exception people imagine it to be, but something closer to a rule we are all reluctant to learn: that the depth of a relationship’s history tells you very little about whether the person will actually show up when you are on the floor.

Some people accumulate years with you and never once intend to carry any weight.