Roast!, Part 1

Lunch on the terrace started in the best tradition of competitive banter: every seat grabbed before the last guest even finished brushing sand off their calves, the big table bowing under the collective weight of muscle, height, and the shared momentum of a dozen people all pretending not to eye the food arrayed at the center. At least half the crowd had drifted in from the finish line, which meant a high background hum of dust, sweat, and the rich afterglow of very recent violence. Mark Garret and Laura Black arrived first, both still dust-covered and lightly scuffed from the brawl at the Spur, neither making the least effort to downplay the state of their clothes or the feral grins they wore.

Andy drifted in behind them, threading a path through the bodies with the instinctive caution of a man who’d learned never to be first, but never last either. Sam had claimed a chair near the head of the table and was already stacking plates for the group, doing it loudly enough to serve as a subtle signal to the room to hurry the hell up. Harper, eyes bright, walked in on Andy’s left, her hair only slightly less composed than her voice, rearranging itself subtly as she compared notes with Kevin Burgmeyer about the odds of Mark’s horns taking out a light fixture before the day was over. Mildred had a seat at the far end, a neat black dress absorbing the sunlight, and was the only one who didn’t look winded or hungry; she just waited, hands folded, eyes on the horizon.

By the time Nick, Van, and Felix shuffled up—Felix still with no shirt, Van looking like he’d spent the whole walk doing the math on how many more of these meals he’d have to survive—the rest of the guests had claimed their places, most by jostle or sly negotiation. Matt found a spot next to Andy, and Kevin McAllister took his between Harper and Mark, which put him directly in the blast zone of any first-course food fight.

Once all but the slowest stragglers were seated, Sam finally stood on her chair—doing it with zero ceremony—and clinked a fork on the rim of her glass. The sound, clear and hard, dropped the volume in two beats. She looked over the heads of the table, took a second to decide which story to start with, and picked the most obvious one.

Sam leaned into the moment, the rim of her glass leveled at Mark’s temple like a rangefinder. “First off, huge props to Mark for maintaining a rigorous commitment to the ‘no-powers, all-muscle’ pact for at least two, maybe three seconds at the base of the climb.” She let that hang just long enough for Mark to start nodding, self-satisfied, before following with, “At which point he made the first legal play in the rulebook: flagrant sabotage.”

Mark didn’t blink. “Look, I have to use the tools Cass gave me. I never said I’d take the scenic route.”

“You picked up a seven-foot woman and yeeted her off the wall,” Sam clarified, for the benefit of those not watching the replay in their head. “You are the scenic route.”

Laura Black grinned. “If you don’t want to see a woman take flight, don’t target the dragon.”

Matt, already a fan from the earlier banter, chipped in: “I just want to know how you stuck the landing.”

Laura Black shrugged, rolling her neck as if popping a stuck vertebra. “You grow up getting bounced off enough glass ceilings, you learn to land on your feet.”

The table lost it. Even Kevin Burgmeyer, whose expression normally hovered between mild skepticism and mild regret, nearly snorted water through his nose. Mark—relishing the escalation—simply said, “Hey, she threw me, too. It’s called reciprocal escalation. Any therapist will tell you it’s healthy in a relationship.”

Sam didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, I was about to congratulate both of you on the healthiest inter-season brawl I’ve ever witnessed.” She pivoted, eyes cutting to Andy. “Speaking of escalating, there’s a brief interlude in the recap where someone—” she pointed at Andy, “—let the whole top tier of the challenge devolve into a literal, actual rock fight. Did you even notice that Robert and Felix nearly got brained by flying boulders?”

Andy deadpanned, “There was never any danger. I was monitoring the situation for emergent risk.”

Robert West, soft-spoken but always paying attention, raised a tentative hand. “Um. In the moment, did you think you’d actually get hurt?”

Andy shook his head. “No. Worst case, I’d have to put Mark through the wall instead of over it.”

Mark made a “bring it” face, while Matt hawk-eyed the table for someone to outbid the bluff. Van, who had been mostly quiet, muttered, “You could have at least gone for the suplex.”

Andy grinned at Van. “You sound like you have strong opinions on technique.”

Van shrugged, “Not really. Just like to see follow-through.”

Sam’s gaze swept past Andy and landed on Harper. “And let’s not forget the one standing right next to him for the whole thing, supposedly keeping the peace.” She pressed a hand to her chest, all false concern. “Harper, your job was crowd control. From where I was sitting, it looked like you enjoyed the chaos a little more than ‘crowd control’ really requires.”

Harper just shrugged, a smirk breaking loose despite herself. “Someone had to make sure Mark didn’t take out half the island.” She didn’t try any harder than that to deny it.

Sam, delighted, looped it back: “That’s what I’m saying. And yet, Robert, Van, and Felix here were the only ones who actually finished the course while the rest of us were engaged in mutual destruction. I know I labeled your team the Regular Joes, but I think that undersells the performance.”

Felix tried to fold into himself, but his lack of shirt made it hard to hide. He shot a look at Van, like maybe Van could intercept the attention for him. Van refused. He just nodded, all business, and said, “We just followed the rules. Didn’t want to get stuck in the crossfire.”

Robert, caught in the sweep of attention, smiled, “It was actually really nice. We just walked and talked. No one tried to drop a building on us.”

Harper, suddenly invested, asked, “What did you talk about?”

Felix, bashful but not unfriendly, muttered, “Strategy. Whether the box at the finish was a trap. And whether we’d have to arm-wrestle someone else for it.” Van offered a small smile. It was weirdly wholesome.

Sam set down her glass. “Anyway, since the rest of us were busy acting out a kaiju movie, I’d like to officially recognize Team Regular Joes for getting the only actual win of the morning.” She raised her glass, this time with no irony. “To the guys who kept their heads. Even when the rest of us were losing ours.”

Van, Felix, and Robert exchanged a “should we actually drink to this?” look, and then did, in sequence. Robert looked genuinely moved.

The table was caught in the warmth of the moment when the terrace doors swung open behind Sam, and three Mildreds appeared in synchronized formation, each with a stack of trays balanced like a physics experiment on her arm. The lead Mildred’s heels were silent on the stone, but her presence alone dropped the room’s decibel level by a third. She swept to the head of the table, deposited the first round of food—charcoal-grilled skewers, a bowl of tropical fruit cut with geometric perfection, and a pitcher of something that looked like a chemical weapon but smelled like pure sugar—then, without even making eye contact, swept away for round two.

The second Mildred, two steps behind the first and with a crisp efficiency that suggested both ancient training and a fondness for spectacle, laid down her payload with a flourish: a ziggurat of toast slices, a precise fan of cheeses measured to the millimeter, and a bowl of black olives so glossy they caught even the weakest light from the terrace roof. If the olives were intended to be a joke, no one said so, but the entire table leaned in to gawk at them anyway, as if some clue to the day’s later happenings might be hidden in their depths.

The Mildred retreated before anyone could ask, gliding on silent feet in the opposite direction, already half-vanished into the chill and shade of the lobby beyond.

The third Mildred slowed just enough to make eye contact with each head of the table—starting at Sam and ending on Andy—then set down a cake that was less a dessert than a geological event: a craggy mound of chocolate and black fondant, piped with smudges of red-gold icing and ringed at the base with fondant boulders, two of which were shaped like tiny people mid-brawl, one with unmistakable wings unfurled and another, much taller, locked around its middle. The entire room paused; even Van, who had not stopped eating since sitting down, set his fork aside to examine the thing.

No one clapped, but the performance was appreciated. Mark broke the silence. “I am honestly a little afraid to eat that.”

Sam studied the cake in silence, her brow furrowed in what looked like genuine concern, then said, “It’s the Spur. If you don’t eat it, the volcano erupts and the whole wedding is ruined.”

“That’s what I heard,” said Harper, who had not stopped smiling since the food arrived.

At the far end of the table, Mildred-as-guest hadn’t moved. She was listening, eyes sharp, her posture an echo of someone used to being invisible, or at least uncatalogued. When Sam caught her gaze, the two held it; Mildred leaned in, voice low. “You still have time to change your mind, you know.”

Sam, not to be outdone, fired back, “You still have time to admit you’re the funniest person in the room.” It was said with a smile.

The moment lingered, then broke, as both looked away in perfect unison—an unspoken détente.

Food disappeared at a rate that would have alarmed any dietician, with skewers going first, then the toast, then, inexplicably, the olives. Andy watched the cycles of feeding and joking with equal parts awe and post-brawl fatigue; he’d spent most of the meal’s first act as a spectator, hands folded under the table, until Sam caught him, wrist and all, in midair over the fruit bowl.

“Not so fast,” she said. “You need your strength. There’s a second course to this, and it’s not food.”

Andy groaned, but let her heap his plate high with kiwi slices and skewered pineapple. He considered making a show of resisting, then remembered who he was dealing with and simply started eating. “I know you’re saving your best lines for whatever’s about to happen,” he said, as Sam topped up his glass with something neon yellow.

“Nothing’s about to happen,” Sam said, deadpan. “We’re in a lull. I’m gathering my energy for the aftershock.” She leaned in, eyes bright and unblinking. “But if you think I’m letting you off the hook, you’re wrong. Every good party needs a proper roast, and you are dangerously behind schedule.”

Andy considered objecting, but the fruit tasted like sugar and sunlight and demanded nothing in return; he decided to pick his battles. “Let me know if there’s a safe word,” he said, quietly enough that only Sam and maybe Harper could catch it.

Harper, a few seats down, angled an ear his direction and stage-whispered, “There is a safe word. It’s ‘please don’t.’ But she never listens.”

The table roared, with Kevin McAllister nearly spitting out his drink in the process.

The lunch rolled on, a parade of stories and digressions, with the food dwindling and the wine multiplying, until the terrace was thick with the sound of old friends making new jokes and new friends being inducted into the same. Even Felix, who had started the meal with the haunted expression of a man confronting a cheese plate for the first time, was laughing and launching olives at Van, who caught them in his mouth with a precision that seemed almost unfair. Andy caught himself smiling at the back-and-forth, which was weirdly soothing and almost, for a moment, familiar.

The bench on the garden path was less a piece of furniture than a waypoint, the kind of place that existed just outside the edges of mingling and event, a small outpost for those who either needed a break from the flow of conversation or, more often, had never mastered the art of sustaining it in the first place. It was here, with the lunch’s commotion receding to a polite dull roar beneath the terrace eaves and the heat of the sun settling into the stone and the wood alike, that Adrien finally allowed himself to stop performing the role of “wedding guest.” He sat with his knees together, hands folded in the lap of his trousers, posture ramrod-straight as a marble statue, eyes fixed on the threadbare canopy of clouds above. The breeze, when it came, only pressed the garden’s silence deeper rather than disturbing it; every so often, a small rustle of leaves would mark the passage of a Mildred, but otherwise the space belonged to Adrien and the slow, meticulous process of not thinking about anything at all.

He’d been good at this for a long time. After a life measured out in lost cities and burned manuscripts and the slow, bitter entropy of civilization, Adrien knew the exact recipe for detaching himself from the moment: first, catalog the immediate physical sensations—the grain of the bench, the faint stick of his skin to its varnish, the temperature gradient where sunlight met the outline of his calves. Then, listen for the furthest audible noise, working backward until every other voice or laughter had been mapped and dismissed. Finally, exhale. Not a dramatic sigh, but a gentle settling of the lungs, as if to say: nothing here will touch me unless I let it.

It was not his preferred method of existing. But it was reliable, and Adrien had long since learned to trade preference for reliability in all the things that mattered.

He didn’t see the approaching Mildred until her shadow obliterated the sunlight at his feet. She was wearing—a blue-gray sheath dress, sleeveless, with the kind of seamwork that made it look simultaneously generic and bespoke—but walked with none of the inviting deference most Service Mildreds cultivated. She kept her head slightly inclined, eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance. Not a threat, but not an offering either. When she stopped, it was with the precision of someone measuring out a chemical reagent, exactly two steps from the edge of the bench, hands at her sides.

“Would you like to sit?” He gestured, not looking at her, at the empty half of the bench.

She sat without comment. They were quiet, until Adrien, in a tone dry as bone, said, “You remind me of the ones in my season. The obsidian golems. They never speak, but are always there. I suppose Amabilis—Arabella—has a type for her staff.”

Mildred’s gaze tracked the garden, never quite landing on him. “There was something inside. There was always something inside.” She looked at him then, the black of her eyes refusing to reflect even the white glare of the terrace behind them. “But it could not speak, or choose, or refuse. It could only watch the body move when Amabilis commanded.” A pause, precise and controlled. “I was the passenger. The golem was the sphincter.”

Adrien absorbed it with neither surprise nor judgment. “You remember Amabilis, then.”

“I remember.” said Mildred, flatly.

He was silent for a time, then he asked, “Does that mean you know how it ends?”

She watched him, and there was a break—small, but real—in the mask she wore. “Yes. I do.” She pressed the tray closer to her chest. “But the Host has forbidden me to speak one word of it, to you or to any flesh-being still living out their own season. She wishes you to choose freely.”

This drew a real smile from Adrien, sharp and brief. “Freely. As if it makes a difference.” He didn’t push for more. Instead, he asked, softer, “Do you ever lose track, when you’re in a place like this for as long as you have been? Or does every day stay as sharp as the one before it?”

Mildred’s answer was careful. “At first, time was only instructions. The body did not matter. But now—” she exhaled, almost a sigh, “—it does not go away. Nothing fades.” The words were soft. “It is not what I prefer. I am not built for it. But the Host has arranged for me to be permanent. I do not believe I will ever return home.”

Adrien watched her for a long moment, then said, “I am sorry for that.”

Mildred shrugged, and for an instant she looked less like a servant and more like a prisoner adjusting to her chains. “It is not necessary. Most flesh-beings envy the chance to endure forever. I do not wish to be a person.” For a moment, it looked as it she were about to qualify that statement, but then she turned, scanning the path behind her. “If you require anything—”

“No,” said Adrien, “but thank you.”

Mildred bowed her head in a gesture of respect, picked up the tray, and turned toward the kitchen door with a precision that would have been at home on any parade ground in any age. She didn’t look back, and by the time Adrien returned his gaze to the garden, he wasn’t sure whether she’d ever been there at all.

He sat a little longer, alone, until the noise from the terrace crept back into focus and he let himself rejoin the world.

Lunch had hit the leisurely stage—plates half-abandoned, arguments looping in three parallel tracks—when a Mildred leaned down at Andy’s shoulder. Her voice was nearly silent, pitched for him alone. “There is a guest who has come to the doors for you, Master Cooper,” she said. “He is late, but wishes not to interrupt.” She straightened, hands smoothing the apron that didn’t need it, and faded a half-step back.

Sam’s head whipped around at “guest,” then swiveled from Andy to the Mildred and back, blue hair catching the sun. “Who the hell shows up to a bachelor party this far behind schedule?”

The Mildred didn’t blink. “A late guest, Harem Queen Collins.” She left it at that, gaze carefully blank.

Andy said, “I’ll check. Sam, keep the table from burning down.”

She made an “I’m not finished with you” gesture, but let him go. The others at the table looked up with varying levels of interest or confusion, but with the food and company, no one pressed. Andy followed the Mildred’s lead through the doors, the sudden drop in sound and heat like stepping through a soundproof wall.

The lobby was empty, the terrazzo floor echoing each step. The man standing just inside the main entrance could have blended into any urban landscape: jacket, dark jeans, no obvious tells, but he held himself with the stillness of someone who’d trained for years in not being noticed. His hair was black, cut short, graying at the temples. He was around six feet tall, athletic-looking, broad-shouldered, but it was the face that caught Andy—something about the jaw, the gray eyes, the mildness of the mouth—though he couldn’t place it to any page, memory, or rumor.

The man in the lobby watched Andy with the levelness of a chess master seeing the opening move before he’d even sat down at the board. He looked like he’d be more at home on a city street, maybe leaning on a bus stop, blending in with the other quietly competent men of the world who fixed things or broke them, but never did either for attention. They locked eyes, just for a moment.

He did, after a heartbeat, offering his hand. “Arthur Penn,” he said, with a soft British accent, “but everyone calls me Art.” He smiled, open and apologetic, then offered a hand. “Sorry for the late arrival. I was told by N—” a pause, then, “Arabella?—that you’d be here, and that I should introduce myself before the wedding. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I thought it better to be late than to miss it entirely.”

Andy took the hand, which was firm and precise. “Andy Cooper. You’re not late. We’re just ahead of schedule.” He was aware, for a moment, of the size of his own hand, the strength in it, and the odd way the man’s handshake didn’t try to match it, but met it with exactly what it needed to be.

There was an awkwardness in the pause, but not for lack of comfort. More like both men were trying to decide which book they were supposed to be reading from.

Art gave a smile, and it was real, not a social feint. “Thank you. I apologize for the last-minute arrival. Travel was… complicated.” He glanced at Mildred, who bowed her head and vanished, then back to Andy. “She told me you’d be easy to spot, but I didn’t expect you’d be even taller than the reports.”

Andy half-laughed. “I get that a lot. The rules here seem to lean toward the excessive.”

Art’s eyes went sharp, just for an instant, then softened. “They do. It’s a theme that comes up in every version, though most don’t survive the escalation.”

A flicker of something, maybe memory, crossed his face. “Anyway. I wanted to meet you in person.” There was a faint self-mockery in his voice, the kind you got from a man who’d spent decades working with people who didn’t always listen. “If I’d known there was an actual lunch, I’d have brought a bottle.”

Andy shook his head. “It’s not that formal. Sam would probably just roast you for the wine selection.”

Art smiled again, warmer this time. “Good. She sounds like my Lottie. Or…” He caught himself, then said, “Anyway. I’m sorry if I’m intruding. I just thought, with what’s coming tomorrow, it made sense to pay respects before the chaos.”

There was a click inside Andy, a click that lined up too well to ignore. “Artorius,” he said, the name catching in his own throat even as he heard himself say it. “You’re the one from her story.”

The effect was immediate. Art didn’t flinch, didn’t show surprise, but his eyes narrowed in something like delight, like a poker player being called on a full house and finally getting to show it. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long time. How did you come by it?”

Andy shrugged, choosing honesty over theater. “She told me. Around a fire. She called you the only other one who made it all the way through with your harem intact, harmonious, and that you were the only one who ever passed the test she wanted.”

Art’s face relaxed, just a fraction, as if some muscle had finally stopped bracing itself after centuries of use. “She’s too generous,” he said. “I didn’t pass anything. I just made sure the ones who came with me got what they needed, not what I thought they were supposed to want. It was a close thing.”

Andy said nothing, letting the man speak.

Art continued, “The sword was never the point. If I’d tried to carry it myself, or asked one of them to do it alone, the whole thing would have collapsed. The only reason it worked at all is because I stopped trying to be the shield for all of them, and let the ladies figure out their own way through. I trusted them.” He met Andy’s gaze, and there was no challenge in it, just a quiet hope that the words would find the right place to land. “The Hosts—whatever else they are—they notice the difference, eventually.”

The words hit closer than Andy wanted to admit. He felt the weight of it in his own chest, the echo of every argument he’d had about whether to save, or fix, or let go. For a second, Andy thought about the story Arabella had told him, about the sword, about the cost of power and the danger of carrying it alone.

He realized he hadn’t replied, and that the silence was stretching, so he gathered himself and said, “It’s a good lesson. I think that’s where I’m supposed to be, eventually. I just haven’t figured out how to trust the process yet.”

Art nodded, as if he’d been waiting for that answer. “Nobody does, the first time through. If you want my advice, let the table carry its own weight. Trust the ones who came with you, even if it means watching them get hurt. They’re stronger than you are, sometimes.” The advice was given lightly, with the faint edge of someone who had seen it happen a hundred ways, and only once or twice seen it go right.

Andy found himself grinning, helpless. “If you start quoting Merlin at me, I’ll have to bring you back to the table and let Sam handle the rest of the training.”

Art’s laugh was low, and real. “God, no. Merlin died long ago, as far as I know. Now I leave the magic to Nimwen. Or whatever she wants to be called now. I just wanted to shake your hand, and let you know you weren’t alone in this.”

Andy hesitated, then said, “You should come out and meet the others. I think you’d like them.” He was already heading for the terrace doors, knowing Art would follow.

They moved together, neither ahead nor behind, and Andy felt the tension in his chest ease, just a fraction. It wasn’t the sword, or the Gate, or the harem, or even the challenge. It was the knowledge that he wasn’t the first, and wouldn’t be the last. And that maybe, if he listened, he’d get his own table through to the other side, just like the man beside him had.

The heat of the terrace doubled when Andy pushed the doors open, the sound of laughter and forks on china rolling out to meet him and his guest. At the table, Mark and Laura Black were locked in a contest of who could out-eat the other with less visible strain; Kevin McAllister, Harper, and Sam argued over whether ancient history or oceanography counted as a “real” science; Kevin Burgmeyer was sitting quietly, not far from Nick. And, at the far end, Matt was telling a story with his hands while Felix, Robert, and Van watched him like they weren’t sure if he was going to land the punchline or confess to murder.

Andy steered Art toward an empty seat near the head of the table. Nobody at the table looked up with more than passing interest—a new guest at a party is hardly news—but Art’s arrival carried a charge that made the back of Andy’s neck go tight, like he’d just been seated between two barely incompatible software versions and was waiting for the patch to fail.

Art sat with the self-contained posture of a man who’d spent a lifetime as the only adult in the room. The moment he did, though, his eyes swept the table once, then caught—hard—on the man sitting four seats down: Adrien, whose own gaze, previously fixed on the line where the horizon met the sky, snapped over and held.

The two regarded each other with the unsettling intensity of people who’d both lived through a coup, the peace afterward, and the decades of silence that followed. Neither smiled, neither blinked. For a second, Andy was sure he was about to see a real-deal swordfight played out with salad forks, but then Adrien, visibly surprised yet without raising his voice, said, “Artorius.”

The name was not loud, but it was the kind of word that changed the gravity in the room. Andy heard it. So did Matt, whose glass hovered an inch above the table as he recalculated everything he’d just heard in the last hour. Kevin Burgmeyer looked up, clocked the word, and stored it away in the big cold storage unit in his mind where he kept all interesting data until the pattern shook out.

Art winced at the sound, checked the table for fallout, and—seeing no one else caught the import—gave Adrien a look of surprise, and exasperated respect. “Myrddin,” he replied, with a careful nod. His voice was not quite fond, but the history in it made Andy wonder how many times they’d stood in a room like this, on opposite sides of whatever passed for a game board in their day.

Adrien broke the stare first. “You’re supposed to be dead,” he said, tone mild as tea.

“Lost track of it,” Art replied, not missing a beat. “Retirement’s never simple.” The two said nothing for a while, but it was the nothing of a well-worn conversation that only needed to be restated to feel alive again.

Sam, sensing a shift but not yet sure where the fault line was, craned over. “Andy, want to introduce your plus one?”

Andy glanced at Art, who gave a subtle nod, as if to say, Go ahead, but don’t gild the lily.

“This is Arthur Penn,” Andy said. “Friend of Arabella’s. He’s joining us for the rest of the festivities.”

Sam extended a glass, “To Arthur!” The table followed, the clink running down the line.

Art smiled, took the glass, but set it down untouched. His focus was on Adrien, who had resumed his silent watch over the garden but had not relaxed an inch. Matt, ever the close reader, let the silence stretch, then broke it with a gentle, “You two know each other?”

“Old friends,” Art said, which, in the moment, was the only safe answer. Adrien’s mouth curled at the edge, and he raised his glass—not quite in toast, but in acknowledgment.

Harper, sharp-eyed as always, leaned in to Kevin Burgmeyer and said, “You’re seeing this, right?”

Kevin nodded. “Not sure what it is, but it’s worth watching.”

Harper smirked, then returned to her cheese plate.

Art shifted his chair half a turn, eyes on Andy but always keeping Adrien in the corner of his vision. “You mind if I sit next to him?” he asked, quiet but clear.

Andy shrugged. “Be my guest.”

Art got up, crossed the table, and settled beside Adrien. For a moment, there was an electric uncertainty in the air, but the two men only nodded, and, after a beat, fell into low conversation, voices pitched so low nobody else could make out the words. Andy watched as the two leaned in, their heads close, the world beyond their huddle ignored. He didn’t have to guess what they were talking about—he could feel the shape of it from where he sat.

At the far end, Matt looked at Andy, and for the first time that day, Andy saw a kind of settled understanding in Matt’s eyes—like he’d finally matched the name to the face, the story to the person, and was okay with both being real.

Sam caught Andy’s glance and, grinning, raised her glass in a private toast. “Hell of a party,” she mouthed, and Andy smiled back.

For the rest of the lunch, the noise on the terrace never dipped below happy riot. Mark, Laura, and Felix staged a rapid-fire eating contest, Robert refereed and kept score on a napkin, and Van spent most of the meal quietly swapping out plates so nobody would see him taking seconds. Sam told her best story yet, about how the first time she met Andy, she’d nearly run him over with a bike and then helped him pass an entire semester’s worth of math in a single three-day cram session. The story changed every time she told it, but it was the core of it that matterwd.

At the head of the table, Andy leaned back, letting the sun bake the tension out of his arms, and watched as Art and Adrien’s conversation went from tense, to cautious, to finally relaxed, the way only old soldiers—or old survivors—could manage.