Jimmy’s eyes shone as I laughed at his joke. It wasn’t the best one I’d ever heard—definitely not something that would make it into a stand-up set—but it was funny enough to earn a chuckle. And a man like Jimmy deserved someone to laugh at his jokes. He had that kind of energy about him—the warm, easygoing charm of someone who’d seen a lot, endured more, and still found reasons to smile.
After three beers shared at the worn-down bar, I had learned a surprising amount about him. He was fifty-eight, proud of it, and ran a small but steady construction firm that he had built from the ground up. One of his sons worked alongside him, and another was off on a football scholarship, chasing a dream Jimmy never got to chase himself. His daughter, the youngest, had just opened her own salon in the
