Page 285 - A Little Life: A Novel

“Of course it’s because of what happened with you,” Willem had said.
“But that’s not a reason,” he’d said.
“Of course it is,” Willem had said. “There’s no better reason than that.”

He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how
slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship. Richard knows that
he and JB and Willem and JB don’t talk any longer, but he doesn’t know
why—or at least not from him. Now, years later, he no longer even blames
JB; he simply cannot forget. He finds that some small but unignorable part
of him is always wondering if JB will do it again; he finds he is scared of
being left alone with him.

Two years ago, the first year JB didn’t come up to Truro, Harold asked
him if anything was the matter. “You never talk about him anymore,” he
said.
“Well,” he began, not knowing how to continue. “We’re not really—
we’re not really friends any longer, Harold.”
“I’m sorry, Jude,” Harold said after a silence, and he nodded. “Can you

tell me what happened?”
“No,” he said, concentrating on snapping the tops off the radishes. “It’s a
long story.”
“Can it be repaired, do you think?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Harold sighed. “I’m sorry, Jude,” he repeated. “It must be bad.” He was
quiet. “I always loved seeing you four together, you know. You had

something special.”
He nodded, again. “I know,” he said. “I agree. I miss him.”
He misses JB still; he expects he always will. He especially misses JB at
events like this wedding, where the four of them would once have spent the
night talking and laughing about everyone else, enviable and near
obnoxious in their shared pleasure, their pleasure in one another. But now

there are JB and Willem, nodding at each other across the table, and
Malcolm, talking very fast to try to obscure any tension, and the other three
people at the table, whom the four of them—he will always think of them as
the four of them; the four of us—start interrogating with inappropriate
intensity, laughing loudly at their jokes, using them as unwitting human
shields. He is seated next to JB’s boyfriend—the nice white boy he had
always wanted—who is in his twenties and has just gotten his nursing

degree and is clearly besotted with JB. “What was JB like in college?” asks