“I know that, sugar, or I wouldn’t be buying you strawberry cake,” Tara pointed out. She stirred an extra Splenda into her coffee, and then another, meticulously tearing the packages, tapping them three times against the side of the cup, and placing them exactly parallel with the edge of table.

“But now,” Tara continued, having sipped her coffee to find it suitable, “you’re here, and everything seems real, and final. It’s a lot of endings in a very short time. You’re feeling itchy and sentimental.”

This might be, Miriam reflected, the most honest conversation they’d ever had about their feelings.

“I lost Cass, and you, and Charleston. Cole is AWOL for who knows how long. It’s just so much.” The words burst forth from Miriam unexpectedly, and she managed not to stamp her foot at the end, but it was a close thing.

“You hate when things end,” Tara paraphrased Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

“Oh my gosh, that song! It was playing in the bar the night we met. We both liked it, and we ended up talking all night. Shit, we met over a breakup song. What did we think was going to happen?” Miriam laughed.

“Well, you did lose Cass, that’s true,” Tara said, back to enumerating her arguments. Miriam found it comforting now. “I’m right here though. Heck, someday, we might be real close, if we let ourselves be. Cole, well, I’ve known Cole as long as I’ve known myself, and I would bet my retirement stocks he’s going to be knocking on one of our doors before the summer is out.”

“You think so?” Miriam asked hopefully.

“Oh, he’ll be here. Sleeping on my couch and eating my food, even though he has a perfectly good apartment,” Tara assured her. “Charleston isn’t going anywhere, except maybe into the ocean when the sea level rises. And, you also gained a whole damned Christmas tree farm.”

“This is a weirdly good pep talk,” Miriam said. She took a deep breath and felt the darkness of panic receding back into its corners, like the Nothing in The NeverEnding Story, driven back into its cave.

“I’m a really good ex-girlfriend,” Tara said. “Now. Cake.”

When they left Emma’s, she stopped by the space that would have been Blum Again Vintage & Curios and peered through the windows. Seeing it empty was not as much a knife to the gut as Miriam had been expecting. It was hard, and it hurt, but it hurt because it was real.