One evening, Will and I made plans to go bowling.
The alley near my apartment was closed for open bowl on Mondays, so I met him at his apartment. By the time we got there, our usual competitive banter was already in full swing. We spent the entire drive talking trash and debating who was about to come out on top.
When I pulled my own bowling shoes and ball out of the trunk, he couldn’t stop laughing.
“Of course you have your own ball,” he teased.
I laughed.
“Nervous?” I asked. He just shook his head.
We grabbed a drink before starting, which only fueled the friendly rivalry. I won the first game, he took the second, and then I came back to win the third by nearly double.
For the record, he shouldn’t have won game two. One of his frames was mis-scored, but I decided to be gracious and let it slide.
At least that’s the version of the story I’m sticking with.
After bowling, we headed back to his apartment and ordered pizza. We settled onto the couch with SportsCenter playing in the background and spent the rest of the night talking.
At one point, Will told me the story of how he found his couch online from a family in Brooklyn. It was one of those random conversations that somehow turned into something more meaningful. He explained that when his brother moved out, he had given his living room furniture to him instead.
The more I got to know Will, the more I noticed a pattern.
He consistently put his family first.
Without sharing details that aren’t mine to tell, I learned a little more about what his family had gone through during his parents’ divorce. It hadn’t been easy, and much of the responsibility had fallen on his shoulders. His younger brothers had still lived at home, and Will often found himself helping to keep things together in ways that most people his age never have to.
He rarely talked about it and clearly didn’t enjoy revisiting that chapter of his life.
I respected that.
I never pushed for more information than he wanted to share.
But from what I did learn, it was obvious that he had sacrificed a great deal to make things easier for the people he loved.
That said a lot about his character.
It made me admire him even more.
As the weeks passed, though, life became increasingly busy for both of us.
Will was working a significant amount of overtime while also preparing for his team’s championship, leaving him with very little free time. Between our schedules and competing priorities, we found ourselves seeing each other less and less.
There wasn’t a fight or a single defining moment that changed everything. Life simply got busier, and we started seeing each other less often.
But as the distance grew, I couldn’t shake the feeling that some of the wounds Will carried from his past were beginning to surface in our relationship.
The responsibilities he had taken on and the experiences he rarely talked about seemed to have left scars that were hard to ignore.
I understood. I had my own baggage and scars that were still healing.
I didn’t blame him for any of it—in many ways, it made me admire him even more—but I could sense that those old demons were quietly shaping the way we connected, even if neither of us was ready to say it out loud.
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