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I turned 39 on April 14. I didn’t care much about turning 39 — it’s a throwaway age in my mind. But when an opportunity to have my best friend visit for my birthday weekend came up, I took it. As she unpacked her suitcase, she handed me a Tupperware. I already knew what was inside.

Whenever my best friend comes to visit, she brings me a container of rainbow cookies. She knows they’re my absolute favorite, and it’s hard to find good ones in Los Angeles. Staten Island, where I grew up, is overflowing with Italian bakeries in a way that LA simply isn’t. The Italian culture in LA is more European Italy, less Little Italy. Especially when it comes to bakeries and, more specifically, rainbow cookies.

Since 2023, my best friend visits approximately every six months. It’s never intentional, it just kind of happens that way. Sometimes we have reasons, like a concert, but sometimes she just wants to get away and come see me. As long as we have a couch, there will always be room for her here. And without fail, there will always be a Tupperware full of rainbow cookies in her suitcase.

For the entirety of our adult lives, we’ve never been in the same stage of life at the same time. She had a kid and got married while I was away at college. We would talk on the phone, me regaling her with stories about the boys I was hooking up with while she sat next to a sleeping toddler. During visits home, I would sit on her couch watching preschool television instead of hitting the clubs and bars like I did with other friends. I never minded. Then I got a boyfriend and moved away, so I didn’t have time for her domesticity.

Things changed when I came back to New York with a baby of my own. Her daughter was eight, but that didn’t stop us from hanging out all the time. We didn’t speak for a year before I moved back to LA. She got divorced, I came out, and while we were both single, we lived on opposite sides of the country. I had a kid in kindergarten, she had a kid practically in high school. Then I settled down and got engaged, and she was out living the life she didn’t when we were in our twenties.

I don’t even remember how she got into the habit of bringing me cookies. I must have mentioned how the ones I found here had chocolate sprinkles on them (blasphemy!) and the next time she came, it was a surprise. This year, she brought me a special rainbow cookie filled with cannoli cream. They’re always a surprise; I never expect her to bring them, and yet she always does. And that’s basically how our friendship works. I never expect her to be there, and yet she always is.

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