“Holly is a million miles out of my league.” There was a sigh in Tara’s words that Miriam was certain she’d never heard directed at her. She was also certain that was exactly how she herself sounded when she talked about Noelle.

“I’m a little offended,” Miriam said. “It’s true, though, she is.”

They settled in a booth facing each other. The vinyl creaked under Miriam comfortably, and she stored this away as another memory she was going to miss: the incandescent bulbs in sea green glass fixtures swinging from the ceiling, the old mural, lovingly preserved, of a doe leaping over a field of flowers, the perfect tater tots.

“Are you okay? Your eyeliner wings are crooked,” she said to Tara, startled out of her reverie by this alarming incongruity.

“I left them that way on purpose when I messed them up.” Tara winced. “I’m working on this whole living-with-small-imperfections thing. I mean, I don’t leave wet towels on the floor or anything—”

“Of course not; it would ruin the hardwood,” Miriam mocked, gently.

“Thank you! Exactly.” This was a fight they’d had a hundred times, but now they smiled at each other about it, all the resentment gone. Miriam realized suddenly how many of their fights had really been them trying to say that they fit wrong. “But I’m trying to give myself an opportunity to practice being a little messy, so I don’t get my whole world so twisted around when things don’t go exactly as I planned them.”

“Wow, that’s huge emotional work for you,” Miriam said, impressed. “I’m proud of you.” She raised the mug of coffee that Holly had set down without their having to ask, and Tara tapped it with her own. “Cheers.”

“You, on the other hand, have been working without stopping, even for caffeine, for ten hours. Are you okay?” Tara asked. “I’ve never seen you go without a cup of coffee for more than three hours.”

“I’m both amazing and barely holding it together,” Miriam said. “When I was up at Carrigan’s, there was emergency after emergency, we were juggling the busy season, and I was navigating my mother.”

Now she had breathing room, and she had never been good at allowing herself to live inside of breathing room. But she’d meant what she said to Noelle about liking her new feelings. They were going to take a while to break in, but it was a good kind of discomfort, the growing kind. Miriam was grateful she was being given the chance to practice slowing down.

“You were falling in love,” Tara said. “It was exciting and distracting.” She winked, to show that she wasn’t still upset.

“I’m sorry,” Miriam said. “Yeah. I was. I didn’t mean to be.”