"Hey!" He gave a yelp of protest. I laughed at their bickering, the easy rhythm of it, the obvious affection beneath the teasing. This was what a pack looked like, I realized. Not just the intense moments, the meaningful conversations, the charged glances. But this too, the mundane, the silly, the everyday.
It made something warm unfurl in my chest. Something that felt dangerously like hope.
As we made it outside, Garrett stood at an impressive grill, tongs in hand, looking more relaxed than I'd ever seen him. He wore a faded t-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders, jeans that had seen better days, and when he spotted me, his whole face lit up.
"Hey, you made it!" He set down the tongs and crossed to me, pulling me into a hug that smelled like smoke and sunshine. "How was the drive?"
"Fine. Uneventful…not very long." I let myself lean into the embrace for just a moment, drawing comfort from his solid warmth. "Something smells amazing."
"That would be the chicken. Oliver's been marinating them since yesterday." Garrett released me but kept one arm slung casually around my shoulders, guiding me toward where Micah sat in one of the patio chairs.
Micah looked up from the book he'd been reading—something thick and scientific-looking—and offered me one of his rare full smiles. "Daphne. I'm glad you came."
"So everyone keeps telling me." I settled into the chair beside him, hyperaware of how natural it felt. Howright. "What are you reading?"
He held up the book so I could see the cover:The Fabric of the Cosmos. "Brian Greene. It's about the nature of space and time." A pause. "I could explain the interesting parts, ifyou want. Though Oliver says I'm not allowed to lecture during dinner."
"I said you're not allowed to lecture for more than ten minutes during dinner," Oliver corrected, emerging from the house with a platter of vegetables. "There's a difference."
"A very slight difference." I told him.
"Enough of one." Oliver set the platter on a side table and took the chair on my other side, close enough that our knees almost touched. "How are you feeling? After Friday, I mean. Did you sleep well?"
The question was casual, but I heard the concern beneath it. They all worried about me sleeping, I'd noticed. About whether I was eating enough, resting enough, taking care of myself. It should have felt smothering. Instead, it felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket.
"Better than I have in a while, actually." It was true. Despite the late night, despite the emotional intensity of the stargazing date, I'd slept deeply and dreamlessly. "I think I was more relaxed than usual."
"Good." Oliver's hand found mine, his fingers interlacing with my own. "That's good."
The grill sizzled as Garrett added the chicken and Levi emerged from the house with an armload of dishes, and Micah started explaining something about quantum entanglement that I only half understood, and somehow, impossibly, I felt myself relaxing.
This was nice. This was really, really nice. Dinner was delicious—the barbecue chicken perfectly cooked, Levi's mashed potatoes, the vegetables charred and seasoned in a way that made me want to ask for the recipe. We ate around the fire pit as the sun sank lower, conversation flowing easily between bites, laughter punctuating the evening air.
I learned that Garrett had once tried to adopt a stray cat that turned out to be a very angry opossum. That Levi couldn't cook anything besides potatoes and breakfast food, a limitation the others teased him about mercilessly. That Micah had memorized the periodic table by age eight and still used chemical compound names as swear words when he was frustrated. That Oliver secretly loved terrible reality TV shows and would watch them late at night when he couldn't sleep.
Small things. Silly things. The kind of details you only learned by being close to someone, by being invited into the intimate spaces of their lives. They asked about me too. Not the big questions—they already knew those, had drawn them out of me during weeks of careful conversation—but the little ones. My favorite color, green, like the colors of nature. My most embarrassing moment, falling into the duck pond at the market when I was nineteen and helping Margaret.
It felt like being seen. Like being known. Like beingwanted, not despite my quirks and flaws, but including them. As the sun disappeared behind the trees and the fire pit was lit against the growing darkness, I excused myself to use the bathroom. Levi gave me directions, "Down the hall, second door on the left, don't go in the first door, that's Oliver's office and he gets weird about it". I made my way back into the house alone.
The bathroom was clean and simple, obviously shared by four men but not unpleasantly so. I washed my hands, splashed some cool water on my face, and took a moment to just breathe. In the mirror, my reflection looked different than I expected. Softer somehow. Happier.
You're doing this, I told myself.You're actually doing this.
On my way back to the patio, I paused in the living room, drawn by something I hadn't noticed before. On the bookshelf, tucked between a thriller novel and what looked like a manual for car repair, was a small framed photograph. Fourmen, younger than they were now, arms around each other's shoulders, grinning at the camera. Garrett without his long hair. Levi with longer hair. Micah looking almost exactly the same, serious even in a candid shot. And Oliver, younger and somehow softer, his smile wide and unguarded in a way I'd never seen.
They looked happy. They looked like family. I reached out to touch the frame, tracing the edge of it with my fingertip. This was who they were before me. This was the pack they'd built together, the bond they'd forged over years of friendship and trust and choosing each other again and again.
And now they were choosing me too. Making space for me, literally and figuratively. Hanging a hook for my jacket and cooking my favorite foods and asking about my embarrassing moments.
The thought was overwhelming. Terrifying. Wonderful. I turned to head back outside, and stopped. On the sofa, the throw pillows were arranged haphazardly, some leaning against the back cushions, others piled at one end. It looked comfortable but chaotic, the kind of casual disarray that came from actual use rather than deliberate styling.
For some reason, looking at it made my fingers itch. Before I could think about what I was doing, I was crossing to the sofa, picking up the pillows, rearranging them. Two against the left arm, evenly spaced. Two against the right. One in the center, positioned just so. The throw blanket folded neatly, draped over the back instead of bunched at one end.
Better. That was better. That was?—
I froze, a pillow still clutched in my hands.
What was I doing? This wasn't my house. This wasn't my sofa. I had no business rearranging their things, touching their belongings, making changes to a space that wasn't mine. What would they think if they saw me? That I was overstepping, presuming, trying to claim something I had no right to claim?
