Page 283 - A Little Life: A Novel

friend, wrapping and unwrapping her necklace, until she looked up at him
and he looked away.
“Jude,” JB began, “I wanted to tell you—completely sober—that I’m so

sorry. It was horrible. It was—” He shook his head. “It was so cruel. I can’t
—” He stopped again, and there was a silence. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m
sorry.”
“I know you are, JB,” he said, and he felt a sort of sadness he’d never felt
before. Other people had been cruel to him, had made him feel awful, but
they hadn’t been people he loved, they hadn’t been people he had always
hoped saw him as someone whole and undamaged. JB had been the first.

And yet JB had also been one of the first to be his friend. When he’d had
the episode in college that had made his roommates take him to the hospital
where he had met Andy, it had been JB, Andy later told him, who had
carried him in, and JB who had demanded that he be seen first, who had
made such an upset in the ER that he had been ejected—but not before a
doctor had been summoned.

He could see JB’s love for him in his paintings of him. He remembered
one summer in Truro, watching JB sketch, and he had known from the
expression on JB’s face, his little smile, and the lingering, delicate way his
large forearm moved over the page, that he was drawing something he
treasured, something that was dear to him. “What’re you drawing?” he’d
asked, and JB had turned to him, and held up the notepad, and he had seen
it was a picture of him, of his face.

Oh, JB, he thought. Oh, I will miss you.
“Can you forgive me, Jude?” JB asked, and looked at him.
He didn’t have words, he could only shake his head. “I can’t, JB,” he
said, finally. “I can’t. I can’t look at you without seeing—” He stopped. “I
can’t,” he repeated. “I’m sorry, JB, I’m so sorry.”
“Oh,” said JB, and he swallowed. They sat there for a long time, not

saying anything.
“I’ll always want wonderful things for you,” he said to JB, who nodded,
slowly, not looking at him.
“Well,” JB said, finally, and stood, and he stood as well, and held his
hand out to JB, who looked at it as if it were something alien, something
he’d never seen before, examining it, squinting at it. And then at last he
took it, but instead of shaking it, he lowered his lips to it and held them