Alexis Diaz, an Atlanta-based comedian, teaches an improv class multiple times a year. Natasha registered seconds after the link was active. She doesn’t like improv (okay, it actually terrifies her) but she kept reading that learning how to think spontaneously helped a lot of comedians with their stand-up. Plus, Alexis Diaz is her idol. Natasha’s been following her career for two years and waiting for the chance to meet her. The class sign-up was first come, first serve, and when Natasha got the confirmation e-mail, she took it as a sign that things were finally clicking into place. She was on the right path now. In months, she’ll be performing and proving everyone wrong. Mom will be in the front row whistling and tapping the person next to her in excitement. That’s my daughter!

Natasha’s phone buzzes three times in a row. She’s missed the first part of a conversation on an Instagram group thread with her two closest friends from college: Payal and Ifeoma. They met in the dorms after first-year orientation and instantly connected over a craving for Taco Bell. Payal, the only one with a car, drove them to the nearest one an hour later.

The plan was to pick up food and then get some sleep before the first day of classes. But Natasha convinced them to open the giant bottle of Prosecco she had taken from Suhani’s apartment. The three of them sat on Natasha’s hard, cold dorm floor, drank from red Solo cups, and drizzled hot sauce on a pile of bean burritos and chalupas. They made it halfway through the bottle when Ifeoma told them her mother was leaving her father and moving back to Nigeria.

Natasha wasn’t sure if it was the jarring sense of freedom from no longer being under Mom and Dad’s roof or the pangs of missing her siblings, but she found herself opening up to the girls about her family in a way she hadn’t known was possible.

They kept talking in that hushed, free way that’s only possible during conversations that happen in the middle of the night. When Payal noticed it was six a.m., they walked to the shared bathroom and stood at adjacent sinks as they washed their faces with Clean & Clear.

They lived together for the rest of their time at Georgia State. Every other month, Ifeoma and Payal went home with Natasha and spent the entire weekend in their pajamas, eating Cape Cod chips and watching Sex and the City.

The last message in the thread is from Payal, who sent a post from her favorite account, betches: One cannot drink cheap wine.