Free The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch Page A

you. You can’t leave me. But I don’t know who else to talk to about this stuff.” I was crying now, and we were three minutes from my parents’ house. I’ve got Asperger syndrome, but it doesn’t have me!
    “Dave,” she said, “first of all, do you know me? You have to know that I will never leave you. For any reason. And second of all, I’m not going to judge you for what’s on your mind. I’m willing to talk about anything, especially something that’s important to you.”
    I nodded and watched as the pavement, trees, and rooftops melted and blurred through my tears. “So, it’s not crazy to talk to you about my insecurities?”
    “No crazier than pretending to be a talk-show host all day long.”
    I kissed her hand. “I love you so much.” We drove a few more minutes, circling the neighborhood in silence while I pulled myself together. There was so much to say, so much to thank her for, and yet, at that moment, so few words I needed to use.

Chapter 3
     
    Get inside her girl world and look around.
     
    N ow that Kristen and I were talking more, it was becoming increasingly clear just how much we had lost touch with each other. Our conversations were often emotional and cathartic, which was necessary for rebuilding our partnership. But there’s a lot of friendship to be gained in the little stuff—what’s your favorite cheese, how is your project coming along at work, that sort of thing. We needed a respite from therapeutic discussion, but often we found ourselves groping for viable topics.
    “Did I tell you that I had lunch with April?” she’d ask.
    “Yep.”
    Half an hour would pass, and Kristen would laugh about something she was reading on her computer.
    “What are you reading?” I’d ask.
    “Oh, just this thing.”
    We couldn’t seem to find the common ground on which our relationship had begun. I couldn’t bring myself to discuss my job, as I never particularly cared for it to begin with. When I did have a story to tell about work, she’d stumble over people’s names (“Wait, Ben and Benjamin aren’t the same person?”), or she’d get lost in the technical terminology (“So, anyway, I had to discuss thermal dynamics vis-à-vis semiconductor operation with this Six Sigma engineer”). I may as well have been barking like a seal. My standard line of questioning relating to her day usually sounded so mechanical and awkward that she could never quite get into it: “Yeah, it was a good day. Notable? I wouldn’t say notable. Quantify it how, Dave? You mean, score it on a scale of one to ten? I guess my day was, like, a six or seven. No, ten being the best. Listen, can I call you later?”
    In such chilling moments, when I’d found myself hoping—praying—to get carjacked by Charlie Sheen so that I’d have something to share at dinner, I had to wonder what had gone so wrong. Are we really this out of sync with each other? When did that happen?
     
    When Kristen and I were friends, being compatible was easy. We loved driving around, trying to get lost. We loved watching people trip and slam into things. Common ground, it seemed, was everywhere.
    As friends, it didn’t matter much that Kristen was a girl with very girly interests—things that I knew nothing about. No one in my life was as girly as her. Not even former girlfriends had been so girly. The girls I had dated before Kristen tended to be artsy, outdoorsy—they weren’t the sorts of people who would rapidly fan their faces with their hands whenever they became emotional or who enjoyed shopping.
    Kristen’s girl world was foreign and curious to me, so I paid close attention to it. It was cute, in a way. My God, how many ponytail holders does a person need? I wondered once, rooting through her coat pocket for a stick of gum. Spending time with Kristen was one thing, but whenever she threw her girlfriends into the mix, I felt as though I were visiting some remote civilization I’d only read about in National