I pause before I dial, allowing myself a brief existential crisis over the potential complications here, too. This is hardly the time to worry about our very painful friendship breakup, but it’s also not a great time to miss another one of Zari’s concerts.

Zari was not a fan of me moving across country. Especially when it meant missing her cello audition for the Pennsylvania Youth Orchestra, a highly selective orchestra she’d been trying to get into for years. She didn’t make it, and, though she didn’t technically blame me, it started a fight. Things were said, and a few months of silent treatment followed. We made a slow, tentative patch-up effort this summer that was supposed to culminate on December 26, when I’d be attending her postholiday breakfast concert.

Except now I’m not sure I’ll make it. When I do get home—whenever that will be—my mom and I have a lot to talk about. The Phoebe stuff was one thing, but now that I know about Daniel…

Ugh.

Zari and I have been best friends since we were kids. And the whole fight was completely dumb and ancient history now. But Zari can be tense about stuff like this and—you know? I probably shouldn’t call her.

I call her.

And—dang it, Zari—she answers.

“Black pants or gray?” she asks instead of saying hello.

“Gray,” I answer with a grin.

“Hang on,” she says, covering the mouthpiece and yelling at one of her brothers.

I missed this. We met when we were nine and our moms started working the same shift at the hospital. Most of those years, we shared what felt like an endless conversation—a rapid-fire back-and-forth with no need for hello or goodbye or small talk. We’d just pick up at whatever random place we’d left off the last time we talked.

And then I moved, and the long pauses made the conversation weird.

And then Phoebe got cancer, and there were more pauses than conversation.

And then there was the missed concert and the fight. She said I was distant, acting like nothing mattered. I said the things that mattered to me were bigger than cello concerts and finding the right New Years’ dress.

We were probably both a little bitchy and a little right. But that’s what distance does. I didn’t see her in the hallway at school. We didn’t bump into each other at the coffee shop. It was just radio silence until a few texts this summer.

And now…maybe, finally, a reunion.

The speaker rattles, and Zari huffs into the phone. “Sorry. You said gray?”

“Definitely.”

“Good, the black pair is too tight.”

“It’s probably not.” I’m determined to keep us back in this verbal volleyball match.

“Eh, I don’t know. Wait—are you here? I thought you landed later.”

I sigh. “Yeah, well, guess whose flight was canceled?”