“Long story,” I mumbled.

I walked back over with the ice cream and beer. Cal tossed his arm playfully around Maggie’s shoulder and said, “But it’s a good story. I’ll tell you about it over dinner.”

Maggie looked up at him. “You’re staying for dinner?”

“My flight doesn’t leave until 6:00 a.m. tomorrow. So, yeah, I’m staying.”

A few days before it came to pass, I dreamed I was having dinner with Cal, Sid, and Maggie on Sid’s porch. I didn’t recall the dream until I was at the table, and then it hit me as hard as Cal’s fist in my face. Specifically, I remembered Cal sitting across from me with a bottle of Big Sky IPA in his hand, leaning back so far in the wrought-iron chair he was on that its two front legs were a foot off the ground, and I worried he was going to tumble backward. I remembered Sid cutting his steak into unusually small pieces like he always did, chewing slowly as he told Cal about the writing workshop, and Cal pointing at me with his beer, saying, “I better be a hot topic in this class, or we’re breaking up for good.” And before it happened, I knew Maggie was going to ask Cal to take a photo with her so that her friends would believe he was really there. But that’s where real life strayed from the dream, because instead of posing for a picture, Cal took Maggie’s phone, switched it from camera to video, and serenaded her with the entire first verse of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie Mae” while she giggled and blushed.

“Congratulations,” he said after he handed the phone back to her. “You just won Instagram for the day.”