We ended up talking until the restaurant closed. Jake told me he'd worried about me long before I left, though he had never known how to say so without sounding like he disliked my girlfriend. I'd always canceled things at the last minute, he said, usually because the squad had an emergency or somebody needed a ride. He admitted he'd sometimes stopped inviting me because he assumed I wouldn't be available.
"I thought I was being flexible," I said.
"You were," he replied. "You just stopped getting any flexibility back."
The next weekend I went to a concert with college friends I hadn't seen in ages. We met outside a small venue where somebody had taped crooked posters to the windows, and the sight of familiar faces made me feel briefly twenty-one again. Nobody asked us to coordinate our outfits or stand in the rain while we took photographs, and we managed to find a place to eat afterward without consulting a group chat with forty unread messages. I realized halfway through the second song that I was smiling for no reason except that the music was good.
It would have been easy to say the whole experience proved I was better than the squad, but that wasn't the lesson. My friends had careers, partners, new apartments, aging parents, and obligations that sometimes conflicted with being together. One friend left early because she had to work the next morning, and nobody accused her of failing the group. Another couldn't attend at all because his partner was sick, and we sent him a photograph and said we'd see him next time.
A healthy friendship, I was beginning to understand, could survive an ordinary no. The person who couldn't make it wasn't automatically abandoning anybody, and the people who were disappointed could feel disappointed without turning that emotion into a demand. I wished Marissa had been able to see the difference before our relationship became another test of group loyalty. But wishing that didn't make it my work to teach her.
I was several weeks into my new routine when Jake mentioned Adrien at lunch. They worked for the same company in different departments, and Jake had run into him in the cafeteria. Adrien was engaged to his girlfriend Emma, Jake said, and the proposal had happened during a quiet weekend away. He looked happy in a way Jake hadn't seen before, the kind of relaxed excitement that made people start talking about guest lists before anyone asked.
I remembered Adrien carrying furniture up our apartment stairs and trying to mediate outside my building. Of all the friends, he had seemed the most aware that people could have needs beyond the group, even if he'd struggled to act on that awareness. I told Jake I was glad for him. I meant it, and the simplicity of the feeling surprised me.