The first is that she was, for twenty-two years, better at friendship than I was.

That is not modesty.

I am not a warm person and I know it.

Michelle remembered birthdays and asked follow-up questions and drove to airports.

I was the one who was always slightly late and always a little in my head, and she absorbed it for two decades without complaint, and every so often she would say, “You know you’re a nightmare,” and I would say, “I know,” and that was our entire arrangement.

The second is a night in 2011, before either of us was married to anybody.