The last time I’d seen Cal in that doorway was the day before he left for Brooklyn. He’d come over to make one last appeal, and he’d used the same argument I’d tried on Bob. “Give it a year. If we don’t make any progress you can come back and go to Berkeley. What do you have to lose?”

I had assured him I would give that serious thought and, to make us both feel better, told him I’d probably be in Brooklyn by Christmas.

I could see the internal debate on his face then, and the concern. “Harp,” he’d said, “promise me one thing. Promise me that no matter what happens, we’ll always be best friends.”

“I promise.”

The Pelican Inn opened in the late 1970s and is meant to look like a cozy medieval pub. The walls are brick and white plaster; the floors thick, wide planks of five-hundred-year-old redwood; and in the back corner of the restaurant there’s a walk-in fireplace with a big cauldron in the middle of it.

It was Friday, and the place was packed when we arrived. Right away I could see that all the people waiting in the entryway made October uncomfortable. She didn’t take her eyes off the floor, and she kept snapping the elastic hair band she wore around her wrist. I wondered to myself if we should go somewhere less busy, but Cal didn’t seem fazed by October’s behavior, and I didn’t think it was my place to step in and say anything if he didn’t.

There wasn’t a table for three available, but Cal sweet-talked the hostess, and she said that if we didn’t mind squeezing in at a table meant for two, she could seat us right away.

“Bloody brilliant,” Cal said in his Noel Gallagher brogue.

“Sounds fantastic,” I said as Liam.

October looked at us like we were two strangers she’d picked up on the side of the road.

The waitress led us to the back corner of the dining room, to a small table right beside the fireplace. The table had a chair on one side and a bench on the other. The bench was actually a section of an old church pew. It faced the room, and right away Cal took the single chair so he could sit with his back to the other diners.