Page 29 of King of the Crease

Weekends when Brody isn’t staying with me are the roughest. My home feels too quiet, the sound of silence cranked up to full blast. It’s as if I’m constantly creeping around a haunted house right before a jump scare. Every creak of the stairs, every time the heat kicks on, every cough that comes out of my mouth echoes through the empty rooms.

Brody isn’t loud when he’s here. He reads, he studies, he does who-knows-what on his laptop, he watches TV. All normal things at normal decibel levels. But his presence somehow quiets all the deafening silence.

I guess I’ll have to get used to this silence permanently once he’s off to college. You spend all this time, energy, and effort raising a child into an adult, and then one day they just leave. Pretty cruel, if you ask me.

When it’s quiet, that’s when the lonely thoughts seep in. The thoughts that make me question if I’m destined to be alone forever. What happens to the funny best friend after the main couple get together? Do they ever find love? Sure, I don’t want a spouse because of how my marriage ended, but I also don’t want to live out my days haunted by all these silences and echoes. I promise, my thoughts make perfect sense.

To beat back the quiet, I try to spend my weekend with people as much as I can. I go sledding with Griffin, Jack, and Griffin’s daughters. I order in Thai food and watch Four Christmases with Mitch and his husband Charlie. Charlie boasts that he was in elementary school when this came out. I tell him if I’d flunked a few more tests, I also would’ve been in elementary school when it came out.

The funny best friend is there to provide punchlines and good spirits to his coupled friends.

On Saturday night, after Mitch and Charlie leave, the deafening silence is at a fever pitch. I turn on The Holiday, another Christmas staple. I flop into my recliner and text Nick, the glow of my Christmas tree lighting up the living room.

Hank: Nervous about tomorrow?

Nick: Very much so.

Hank: You’re going to crush it!

Nick: My legs are still sore from our practice.

Hank: Keep icing them. Keep stretching.

Nick: I hope I don’t make us lose. Your teammates will hate me.

Hank: No, they won’t. You’re too sweet to hate.

Was that a flirtatious comment? I feel my face. Am I red?

Hank: We’ve all messed up a play that’s cost us a game. Losing sucks, but it’s something every team has to go through. No player has a perfect record.

Hank: Plus you learn more from your losses than your wins.

Nick: You’re quite the optimist.

Hank: I just have experience.

On TV, Cameron Diaz is singing the most offkey version of “Mr. Brightside” in history, yet seeing her use a CD player makes me nostalgic.

Hank: So if The Holiday was never released, do you think Airbnb would exist?

Nick: What?

Hank: I was switching topics.

Nick: Doesn’t switching topics require a segue?

Hank: How do you segue when you’re texting?

In my mind, one of the signs of a comfortable friendship is being able to jump around topics in a text chain because you trust the other person gets you enough to keep up. Even though I’ve only known Nick for a few days, topic switching already feels completely natural.

Hank: I’m watching The Holiday. Have you ever seen it?

Nick: I have not.

Hank: It’s a good thing we met. The Holiday is a classic about two ladies who go on holiday, which is British for vacation.

Hank: But not with each other.