Sunday Brunch

“We are all doing spectacularly well,” I declare with a raise of the icy glass.

We’d gone for coffee after brunch, but stopped at a bar instead of a café and ordered cocktails instead of espresso. I was deep into my third at this point, the early afternoon pouring hot over us as we sat and stared at passing strangers and reflected on how simultaneously odd and natural it was that school had ended a few years ago and that we were still all kind of together despite the jobs and break-ups and graduate programs that have been pulling us back and forth through time zones.

And yet here we sat in this nexus of a city, sipping and talking, as casually and comfortably as we’d had so many times in the past. We examined each other, commenting and complimenting on weight lost, new freckles, longer hair. We made fun of our quirky constants: Looney’s accent, my tardiness, Jeremy’s nose. We repeated jokes. Jeff did his Kramer impression. The ever-absent Elijah was summoned, as well as the other old friends: brisket and sickly-sweet Manishevitz and Jorge Ramos and strange roommates and Looney’s bourbon-soaked accent (yes, worth mentioning again).

“We’re 25 going on 50,” Jeff jokes; a fact effortlessly confirmed moments later when Looney mentions The Atlantic, William Jennings Bryan, and Bill Buckley all within one sentence and is met with a hearty laugh from the rest.

It didn’t matter that it had been so long or perhaps more since we’d seen each other. There was no need for catch up, really.

And Jeff noted that it felt like he’d been away for only a long weekend, and Looney and I murmur something about how we are happy and I think to myself how the little tricky months here and there just kind of seemed to have disappeared, melted away like the glistening drops of condensation slipping down the side of my glass.