Four friends from different corners of Michigan agree to spend a weekend at Houghton Lake. They're all in their thirties now, with jobs, relationships, children, and complicated schedules.
The reunion has nearly failed three times. Somebody's child was sick in January. Someone else's work schedule changed. Angela offered to organize the whole weekend and then lost track of the hotel confirmation. But the four friends have shared too many canceled plans to let another winter pass. They arrive separately at Houghton Lake with bags of snacks that would sustain a small expedition, each insisting theirs are the only sensible provisions. On the first evening they spread old photographs across a table at the American Inn & Suites, beside a Some Assembly Required puzzle nobody intends to finish, and argue about the actual year a particular disastrous college party happened. Evan remembers the music. Janelle remembers the landlord. Angela remembers that nobody wanted to help clean. On Saturday they walk through Tip-Up Town USA, examining booths, cheering a competition they only half understand, and trading hats when someone gets cold. The pleasure is in doing nothing especially important together.
Angela has been dreading the weekend more than she expected. The others knew her in college, when her problems involved exams, late rent, and who had stolen the good frying pan. Now there's a career she doesn't always enjoy, a child who has just started middle school, and a house that seems permanently filled with things that need fixing. She worries she'll have nothing interesting to say. But when Janelle spots her in the hotel lobby, the first thing she does is make fun of Angela's enormous winter boots. Suddenly they're laughing about an old trip where Angela packed six pairs of shoes and no socks. The years since college haven't vanished; they simply stop standing between them. At the festival they stand together watching strangers cheer, and Angela realizes she hasn't thought about her email since breakfast. She starts to wonder how they made seeing each other seem so difficult.
At lunch a fifth chair sits empty at the end of their table at The Foxes Den, facing the frozen lake, though they've only booked for four. In college, their friend Marcus would always show up late and pull a chair in from another table, causing minor havoc. He's moved overseas, and they rarely manage a call. They send him a photograph of the empty chair and a message that says 'You're late again.' Ten minutes later he calls. They prop the phone against the ketchup bottle and spend half an hour shouting over one another. Afterward, the room grows quieter. Their lives have diverged more than they imagined when they were twenty, and the fact that they can still talk easily feels like luck and effort in equal measure. By evening they are tired from the cold and the walking. The Silver Dollar Saloon has live music down the road. They stay put, order something warm, split an absurd dessert, and finally discuss why they keep saying they'll get together more often without actually choosing a date. Angela doesn't make a grand declaration. She opens her calendar and passes it around. Everybody puts something real on it before the check arrives.
"We're not waiting another five years," she announces.
Setting artwork is illustrative; it does not depict the story’s cast or document an event.