When Shawn and I met in Japan, he had a girlfriend back home in Canada. He liked her a lot, that was clear, and so we were just friends for the first year we knew each other. But eventually time and space meant that they broke up. “Why?” I asked him the night he told me. “I never called her,” he said. “When I finally called her yesterday, she cried and said I obviously didn’t care about her if I didn’t ever want to call her.” He paused, thinking about it. I can still remember his face – he was contemplating his own actions. “She’s probably right,” he said. “I…