Another weekend, another party. That’s how the past four months of Damon’s life had gone. Being a late twenty-something in New York meant his weekends were an endless array of birthdays, engagements, book signings, readings, bachelor parties, and weddings, and frankly, it was draining on the soul.

He promised himself that this weekend would be different. He’d show his face at Cassandra’s Out with the Old Party (whatever that was) so he could show the world that his social calendar was booked and how he was SUCH a good friend, and then maybe a half an hour later, he’d be so out of there, riding the L trading home to his couch and his Netflix, his true love.

That’s how he thought it would go, anyway. When he showed up at Cass’s party, the apartment left him in awe. It had been completely decked out with silver garland stemming from the living room chandelier and branching out to all corners and walls, wrapped delicately around small stringed lights. Small crystals hung from the garland, and in the light, they looked like thousands of sparkling snowflakes. The couches had been covered in a decadent purple velvet and eve the floors shined with exuberance.

Along the kitchen breakaway wall was a long asymmetric table, draped elegantly with a pristine white tablecloth topped with rows upon rows of glasses of white wine.

And there, just behind the last row of glasses, stood the woman who would someday be his wife. Damon loved Charlie since they were children. And it wasn’t because she was so beautiful and perfect that flowers bloomed in her wake. She was beautiful, yes, but that wasn’t what drew him to her.

Charlie was a reader. She spent her childhood and adolescence suspended somewhere between reality and fantasy—living the lives of the heroines in her pages. She had a Rory Gilmore air about her with an ever-present desire to devour every written tome around her and spend all moments of her life that weren’t devoted to reading learning from the world around her.

Charlie was erudite in sensibility, but not in nature. She never dared to condescend to people because they couldn’t possibly fit as much information in their brains as she. Charlie was all things—smart, poised, kind, confident, sarcastic, and hilarious.

She was strong and independent. She had integrity and grace. And it was her character that intrigued and intimidated him so fiercely that in their youth, he could barely put his words together coherently when speaking to her, but that never stopped them from being great friends.

Charlie and Damon’s friendship grew out of mutual appreciation for history, literature, and wine. Some golden Saturday afternoons were spent wandering the halls of the Museum of Natural History, nursing a good buzz with the wine that she smuggled from her father’s cabinet, kept in a flask in her bag. Afterward, they’d always grab double cheeseburgers from Cheri’s on their way to Cassandra’s house for those only-fun-for-teens parties that her mother allowed her to throw in the basement of their brownstone on the grounds that no one ever throw up or get head injuries.

They kept in touch during their college years. Charlie went to Columbia on a full ride and Damon had shipped off to Pepperdine University. They wrote letters, emails, and texted when that became a thing. They sent goofy Facebook stickers and weird internet memes. It was the DEFINING FRIENDSHIP for millennials.

But life happens. After college, he came back to New York and she went off to Ireland to pursue a master’s degree in Irish literature. They fell out of touch . She met, fell in love, and got engaged to an Irishman named James. Her life seemed to be firmly cemented int he Emerald Isle.

Damon had serious girlfriends and not-so-serious girlfriends. He enjoyed life as a single young man in Brooklyn. He rarely thought about Charlie because the years of distance pushed her so far out of his life that his conscious self nearly forgot she existed, but his inner self never did.

He saw her and she saw him. He saw that she was alone and ringless. She saw that he saw. He approached her with a glass of wine and said, “Cheers, my dear, to the years spent away and here!”

She smiled and clinked his glass, and as they drank, the years of distance melted away and they once again became those kids who gave voices to the scenes of native peoples of the world in the museum. Charlie laughed so hard at Damon’s impression of Teddy Roosevelt that she snorted wine out of her nose all over his shirt.

And that was it. That was his chance. Covered in nose wine, Damon took her hand, took a sip of wine, looked deeply into her eyes, and squirted the mouthful into her face through pursed lips and puffed out cheeks.

They fell over laughing on the velveteen-draped couches, spilling wine all over Cassandra’s perfection, falling in love for the last time, the forever kind.