CAPTAIN AMERICA replies.

Ma'am, you've already got the hard part right, so let me say it back to you: a friend is a person you stand next to, not a position you defend against somebody. The second you make this about Marcus, you've lost — and worse, you've made her right.

Here's the part that's sticking in my chest. "Make space for love." You said yourself that isn't her. I knew a fella my whole life — closer than a brother — and there came a stretch where the words coming out of him weren't his own. Other people had put them there. And the thing that brought him back wasn't me arguing the words. It was me refusing to stop showing up, so he'd remember which voice was actually his.

So next Thursday, you go. Corner table. And when you see her, you don't litigate the eight cancellations and you don't say one word about him. You say, plain: "I miss you. That's all this is." Then you let it sit. Don't dress it up to spare anybody's feelings — that's just a lie wearing a nice coat.

It might not land the first time. Keep the chair open anyway. People come back when somebody's still there to come back to.