My Two Best Friends and I Promised to Reunite on Christmas After 30 Years – Instead of One of the Guys, a Woman Our Age Showed Up and Left Us Speechless

She placed her bag beside her feet, folded her hands in her lap, and then unfolded them again.

“Rick died three weeks ago. He’d been living in Portugal. It was sudden, a heart attack.”

Ted leaned back against the vinyl seat like someone had punched him straight in the ribs.

“No,” he said softly.

“No, that can’t be right…”

“I’m sorry,” Jennifer said. “I wish I were here for a different reason.”

I stared at her, blinking once, trying to take in the shape of her words.

“He didn’t. That was part of the shock.”

The waitress came over then, cheerfully unaware, and asked if Jennifer wanted coffee before she decided on her order.

She declined.

The interruption felt cruel, like the world hadn’t received the memo that something had just shifted in ours.

When the waitress left, Jennifer looked back at us. “But Rick told me about this pact.

Christmas, noon, this diner. All of it. He said if he couldn’t come himself, someone had to come in his place.”

“And he picked you?” Ted asked, his jaw tightened.

“Why?”

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