The one who had lots of contacts and no one to call.

A Sunday afternoon. No plans.

You pick up your phone, you scroll through your contacts. Two hundred, maybe three hundred names. And you put it down without calling anyone. Not because there's no one there. Because there isn't the right person. The one to whom you can say just «"I'm not doing anything today, are you?"»

That's the paradox. We all have more contacts than before. LinkedIn, Instagram, film shoots, colleagues from old jobs, people you meet while traveling who told you «"We'll see each other again, that's for sure."» And yet. Because there's a huge difference between having people in your life and having people available in his life. Adult friendship isn't just affection, it's mutual support. And that's built over time, through shared daily experiences. Exactly what we lose when we move on.

When you move away, you keep your friends, but they're out of sync. The connections remain, but they become sporadic. You reconnect intensely when you see each other, and in between, you exist through each other's news without truly being there. And when you come back, you think you'll find everything intact. But they've carried on. They have their routines, their circle that has slowly closed without you in it. Not out of malice. Just out of necessity.

The strange thing about adult friendship is that you're not really allowed to talk about it. If you say «"I'm looking for an apartment"» : normal. «"I'm looking for a job."» : normal. "« I'm looking for friends.», And then there's a silence. As if it were an admission of something. Too much need, too lonely, too… I don't know exactly what, but too much. So we go anyway, to the girls' get-togethers, to the events organized for that. And it's both courageous and a little strange because friendship isn't usually forced, it's found. Except that at forty, in a city where you're starting over, waiting for it to just happen on its own is a rather optimistic plan.

Perhaps the lesson is this: adult friendship is less a given and more a choice. We choose to reach out. To make the first move. To stay even when it's easier to disappear into the comfortable silence of those we love from afar. And a Sunday with no one to call might not be a failure. It's simply the moment before. Before it's built, once again, elsewhere, in a different way.

So the phone was placed back on the table. Sunday passed. And perhaps next week, there would be one more name to write to. «"Are you free?"»