The toast you'd give if you'd actually had time to write it.

There's a sound my best friend Sam makes when something is actually funny. Not the polite chuckle he uses at work. The real laugh. It comes from somewhere deeper. Like the first time he heard it himself and decided to keep using it. I've been listening for that laugh for fifteen years. I heard it on a golf course in Scottsdale at 6am, when I shanked my drive into a saguaro and he watched the ball ricochet for what felt like an hour. I heard it the night his car broke down four hours from my apartment, and he showed up with a U-Haul anyway, three days early to help me move, just so we could spend Sunday eating bad pizza on a floor that wasn't his problem. And I heard it the first time he told me about Jess. Not the laugh. Something quieter. The one that says you've stopped looking for something and you've just found it instead. So here's to Sam — who shows up when he doesn't have to. Who laughs like he means it. And who finally found someone who makes him laugh harder than I do. To Sam and Jess.