Original draft: May 1, 2016

We road trip really well together, he and I, because we both like to talk and we both like to listen. The trips have become one of my favorite parts of our relationship, trading stories about the time before we met, college and childhoods, talking about things in the future like our upcoming Scandinavian adventure. I was regaling a particularly ridiculous story on the way to CT recently, about [atlantic city story]. I sat quiet after that story ended, in that odd space of nostalgia where you can’t tell if you’re happy or sad, and A peeked over at me briefly. “So really, between everything in the last year and then M&N moving, isn’t that your whole like, ‘core’ group of friends?” I stared out the window for a minute as his words washed over me and took a deep breath. “Yeah,” I told him. “I suppose it was.”