“Pretty much,” Noelle said. “I quit drinking and they didn’t. They always kind of felt like I was abandoning them.” She took all the menus and stacked them precisely on top of each other, lining up all the corners.

Ernie came back with a massive platter of fried foods. Miriam coordinated with Hannah on their complicated childhood dance of mixing the side of ranch with hot sauce and testing it carefully for taste. That familiar ritual, done without thought, opened a door inside Miriam she’d forgotten even existed in the past decade.

You can be known, her heart whispered to her. You can be at home in your skin and stop running.

“Does anyone have functional, happy parents?” Cole asked, waving a fried pickle at the table. “I know Tara and I don’t!”

“I do!” Hannah said, snagging the pickle from him and eating it. “I mean, they dragged me all over the world as a child and now I have crippling panic attacks about the very idea of leaving Carrigan’s, but that has more to do with my anxiety than anything they did wrong. They were doing their best. How were they to know I’d develop a desperate need to control my surroundings?” She laughed hollowly, and then said, too brightly, “Let’s change the subject. Cole! What’s a movie you’ve watched so many times you could recite it start to finish, and none of your friends will watch it with you?”

They played the time-honored xennial game of getting to know each other through beloved nostalgic pop culture (Cole’s answer was My Cousin Vinny, Noelle’s Drop Dead Gorgeous).

They were still arguing about the relative merits of Madonna versus early Green Day when their meals came. Hannah and Noelle stood firm with Tara on the side of Green Day, while Miriam and Cole threatened to burst into “Like a Prayer.” Cole stole half of Miriam’s onion rings, Hannah stole half of Cole’s sandwich, and Tara and Noelle swapped pickles for tomatoes.

“How did you guys meet?” Hannah said, gesturing between Miriam and Tara. Tara nodded at Miriam, giving her the reins of the story.

“Cole and I met the first day of freshman orientation, in college,” Miriam said, “and were inseparable ever after. When I needed a place to stay after things exploded with my parents, I went to Cole’s place in Charleston. Tara was at Duke Law but kept coming home for family obligations. They have all the same friends, so we kept running into each other.”

She realized it was more a story about Cole than it was about her and Tara, which probably said something. But how did she explain that she and Tara had seen kindred spirits in each other, each needing a safe harbor in another person who would not press too hard on their open wounds?