The Friends 1994 [ FRESH » ]

Paul was holding a coffee mug. It was chipped, blue, with a faded picture of a walrus. Claire’s heart did a small, familiar ache.

“What would we tell them?” Leo asked, staring at the photograph. “The twenty-two-year-old versions of us?” the friends 1994

They didn’t say goodbye when they left the storage unit. They said “next Thursday.” And for the first time in ten years, Claire believed it. Paul was holding a coffee mug

“Remember?” he said, not looking at her, but at the mug. “The night you tried to make clam chowder from a recipe in The New Yorker ?” “What would we tell them

Claire looked at the photograph. Then she looked at her friends. Maggie’s hands were dry and cracked from too much dish soap at the restaurant she now managed. Leo’s hair was thinning. Paul had a small scar above his eyebrow from a bicycle accident last year. They weren’t young. But they were here.