Ryan grabbed the boxes from the delivery guy while Angus barked at the door. “Thanks, man.” Ryan had paid with the app on his phone, so he nodded and kicked the door shut with his heel, barely keeping Angus from bolting down the stairs.
Since Christina had moved downstairs to the cottage, he’d rearranged the living room into a gaming setup with two enormous screens, a custom PC he’d built himself, and enough chairs for six people. Tonight, for the first time, those chairs would actually be full.
He set the pizza boxes on the table and checked the time. Ten minutes until everyone showed up. His hands were sweating.
He wiped his palms on his jeans. Angus tilted his head, brown ears perked forward. This was stupid. He’d been gaming with the same people online for months. Jake, Mason, and Tyler from school. DevNull and Spectre—whose real names were actually Derek and Maria—from the community college. They’d cleared dungeons together, trash-talked through team fights, and stayed up until three in the morning arguing about strategy. He knew them.
But knowing someone through a headset and knowing them face-to-face were different things. What if they decided he was just a sixteen-year-old kid who didn’t belong? What if the easy banter they had online turned awkward in person?
Angus pressed his cold nose against Ryan’s hand.
“Yeah, okay.” He scratched behind the dog’s ears, feeling the soft fur slide beneath his fingers. “I know, stop being weird about it.”
A knock on the door made him jump—but it was just Tara, balancing a tray of snacks in one hand and a pitcher of sweet tea in the other.
“Reinforcements,” she announced, squeezing past him into the apartment. She wore her usual paint-splattered jeans and a T-shirt. “I made those jalapeno poppers you like.”
“Mom, you didn’t have to?—”
“Hush.” She set the tray on the table next to the pizza, surveying the room with an approving nod. “You’ve got everything set up nicely. I like what you did with the lighting.”
Ryan had strung LED strips behind the monitors—nothing fancy, just enough to give the space that dim, cozy glow that made gaming more immersive. He shrugged. “It’s whatever.”
Tara turned to face him, and something in her expression made his throat tight. She was looking at him the way she sometimes looked at Christina or Ally.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I just remember when you first got here. You barely came out of your room. Now you’re hosting a party.”
“It’s not a party. It’s just gaming.”
“With friends. Your friends that you invited over.”
Ryan didn’t know what to say to that. After his mom died, after Harry made it clear he wanted nothing to do with him, Ryan had stopped expecting things to work out. Gaming had been safe—a way to be around people without really being around them. A way to have something that almost felt like friendship without risking the moment when everyone left.
But then he’d found Christina, and then they’d come here. And he’d met Tara and Will, and the rest of the family that had somehow adopted him. And somewhere along the way, he’d started believing that maybe he could have real things again.
“Thanks for the snacks,” he said finally, because that was easier than trying to explain any of the rest of it.
Tara squeezed his shoulder. “Have fun tonight. You deserve it.”
The door clicked shut behind her, and Ryan was alone again with the dog and the silence and the nervous energy buzzing under his skin.
Fifteen minutes later, the apartment was chaos—the good kind.
Jake had arrived first, all gangly limbs and nervous jokes, clutching a two-liter of Mountain Dew like a lifeline. Mason and Tyler showed up together ten minutes later, already arguing about whether their school’s basketball team had any shot at regionals. And then Derek and Maria walked through the door, and something in Ryan’s chest finally unclenched.
“Dude, your setup is sick.” Derek—DevNull—stood in front of the screens with his hands on his hips. He was twenty, with a scraggly beard and a faded t-shirt from some band Ryan had never heard of. “You built this yourself?”
“Yeah. Took about three months to get all the parts.”
“Respect.” Derek held out his fist, and Ryan bumped it.
Maria had already claimed the best chair—the one with actual lumbar support—and was scrolling through Ryan’s game library. “You got the new expansion? Nice. I’ve been wanting to try the necromancer class.”
“The necromancer’s busted,” Tyler said, grabbing a slice of pizza. Cheese stretched in a long string as he pulled it from the box. “I saw a video where some guy solo’d the final boss with just minion spam.”
“That’s because most people don’t know how to counter it.” Maria shot him a look. “You just have to?—”
