I’d been overseas awhile. When I returned to my condo, it smelled like that nice air freshener the maid service uses to make sure my place isn’t musty when I get home.

I like homecomings, and I like the way everything’s spic and span when I return. It feels like a clean slate and a fresh start, every time. No matter how long I’ve been away, it feels like everything is good and solid and unchanged. It feels like time has stopped for me and my world.

But, of course, time hasn’t stopped. Victories have been recorded and failures swallowed hard. I’ve been absent again, and the world has changed.

***

The evening of return demands wine, and I opened a bottle while I waited for the pizza to arrive. I swirled and sipped a Malbec, while clearing voicemail. Nothing was important but one stuttering call.

A man who’d become my friend had left a message. One might equally call it a plea, for that’s how it sounded. It had the scary copper taste of desperation, and it set my hair on end.

Worried enough not to be as selfish as I usually am, I shrugged my jacket back on. Left pizza money with the door staff so they’d enjoy a pie with extra meat, and hopped a cab.

***

I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen someone cry as hard as Evan did.

He looked like a man with something vital pulled from within him. Deflated and lessened somehow. He’s a big man, my height, but he seemed small. Hands holding his head, fingers in his hair, rocking on the sofa in his apartment, he spoke quietly.

Evan is younger than I am. Shy of 30. I liked him the first time I met him, at a business conference. He was smart and talented. Ambitious, but idealistic, too. Full of masculine power and potential. Ready to take on the world, but free of desire to own it. He was what I hoped I was a few years ago. We’d spent many grinning and laughing hours together, and that’s why I was here this night.

His woman had left suddenly, without warning, and it was the forever kind of left. There was another man, and she said the new man was better.

Evan repeated it slowly. “She said… that he's better than I am.”

I don’t know, and I can’t know the truth of it. I know Evan, and I think he’s good. I’d seen the couple together, and I thought they were good. I’d noticed the way their eyes flashed affectionately when they teased each other and reached for each other’s hands. I was certain they’d marry.

Evan collapsed into tears again, gripping his head. “Why?” he keened. “Why? Why? I loved her so much!” He looked up, and I put a hand on his back. Red eyes looked into mine for answers. “I wanted to marry her,” he pleaded.

“I know,” was all I said, because I had no answers.

His eyes were streaming and his body was shuddering, and I hugged him hard. His head was buried in my shoulder, and I searched for some consoling words. I found none.

He lifted his head and looked out the window of his apartment. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all this,” he said, wiping his nose.

“No, buddy, don’t you dare apologize.”

He put his head down again and shook some more against my shoulder. I looked out the window, my heart heavy for him, and thought he was a man of character.

There was a bit of frost on the window glass. My thoughts passed through the glass. Across the city and across the ocean, to somebody that I used to know. I held my friend and admired him.

And I wondered why the hell I wasn’t a man of character.

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