It was the three of us for a few months. The amigos. We ate together, joked together, shared our good and bad. We were far apart in every way but friendship, so of course we met online.

I still remember all the jokes: about the real meaning of “Swedish,” or what it meant to go to the ribcage, all that crap. I’m still not even sure what we shared apart from a sense of humor and a sense that things were awfully wrong outside our friendship.

Two of us made the mistake of sharing an apartment and it broke. Now I have two friends who don’t speak, and I’m still not sure why. We were and are all wounded creatures. So of course we met online.

I’ve always wanted good times with friends, and always wanted stereotypes busted, and always wanted a handshake in the middle of a war. Anti-romantic that I am, I’m an awfully sentimental guy when it comes to human relations. Hit me with a heartwarming story of principle over greed or friendship over hate and I fall right over. That’s what I wanted from us, and in retrospect it was my own failing. I didn’t let them own their own darkness.

There’s the real world where they live, and then there’s my little movie in which we’re still back at the crappy chain restaurant. You’re hitting on the waiter, you’re cracking a joke a minute, and I’m having my third beer and my tenth spoonful of bad chili and loving you both.

Is the remembrance enough to kill the pain of the end of the thing, I wonder?