Saturday morning, and Kevin and I call Adam downstairs to cook. Kevin has been teaching Adam to make creamy garlic cheese grits for Saturday morning brunch, but we like to try different menus, and weeks have passed since they last cooked together. “Get your recipe,” Kevin says, gesturing with one hand toward the drawer where […]

We come to the table rumpled, our various work hastily scrubbed from our hands, the last of the day’s energy fading with the afternoon light. Life feels right when we finally arrive here together; it’s like our daily rendezvous at the meet-up point, like returning to base camp. This table, with its temperamental scars from […]

He doesn’t want to cut the bushes. “Please don’t cutting the bushes,” Adam says to me first thing when I walk in the kitchen on Saturday morning, bending low as though unless he’s close to my ear I might not hear, that voice of his deep and gentle. I glance at the white board where […]

Over the phone, I hear in Riley’s voice what I cannot see, the flush in her cheeks, the way she pushes imagined stray hairs away from her forehead, the way the tears spill and slide. Her words come out loud and rushing, like rapids overwhelming a dam. “Tell me what happened,” I say, wanting her […]

Think about the places where you feel like you belong, the book urges, just like that, plain and simple on the page, and I think of my friends, who are reading this book with me, of their faces and our seasons of meeting together on a screen, of the wildly wonderful way God has assembled […]

Darting forward to plant a four of hearts and score another point, Riley’s hand hits mine with enough force to toss my hand aside and send my own card flying. The impact stings, but even more the grim fact that she doesn’t even notice. In the moment, Riley cares more about that point–and the next […]

Robert Frost would be proud: Every night Adam roams and roams for miles before he sleeps, up and down the same stretch of hall, his heavy tread pressing the carpet flat, beating out a path. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. In muffled pilgrimage, he travels overhead, across the living room ceiling and back […]

When we get home from our trip, the package awaits, a kit Adam bought for Kevin’s birthday, a light-up speaker they can build together. Riley sits the box carefully at Kevin’s place at the dinner table so he can open it later, along with the rest of the mail that came while we were away. […]

“At least I’m doing something,” Zoe says, shadow-mumbling, making reckless half-spins in my office chair, turned to face Kevin and me, coffee mug cradled in her hands. “I mean, I’m trying.” I wait for a wave of hot coffee to crest and spill over the side of her mug, wait for it to drip from […]

In the morning, we friends gather on Zoom, collecting on a screen the way we once surrounded coffee shop tables, dropping handbags on the floor, dragging over extra chairs, only now new windows open into presence in front of us like blinking eyes, and here I sit at home with my wet-from-the-shower hair, and we […]