I said something sharper than I meant.

Del went quiet in a different way than his usual quiet, and I left, and then I didn’t go back — for three weeks I didn’t walk the six blocks, and Del didn’t call, because we were two proud old men and that is exactly how two proud old men lose each other, over nothing, permanently, each waiting for the other to bend.

I sat in my house those three weeks and felt the old loneliness come back like a tide, and I told myself it was fine, I’d done fine alone before, I didn’t need it.

And I almost let it go.

I came so close to letting a real friendship die over a few hundred dollars and my own prickly pride, which is, I have come to believe, exactly how most of the loneliness in this world gets made — not by big betrayals, but by small prides nobody’s willing to set down.

What saved it was Trudy.