Steven pushed through the entrance and the warmth of the place hit him imdiately.
The bar and grill was exactly what Callum had described and nothing more than that, which was a recomndation in itself. Dark wood, exposed brick, the sound of conversation layered over a music track that was present without demanding attention. The lighting was warm and low without being theatrical.
Steven scanned the room and found his friends’ position almost imdiately.
They had pushed two tables together near the far wall, away from the bar crowd, and the group was already assembled and mid-conversation. He counted eight people before Jas looked up.
Jas stood up before Steven had taken three steps toward the table.
"There he is," Jas said, loud enough that the table turned as one.
What followed was the chaos of a group of people who had not been in the sa room for years and were suddenly in the sa room. Steven was pulled into it before he had fully arrived at the table — a handshake from Jas that turned into a brief embrace, Callum standing and gripping his shoulder, Priya saying sothing he couldn’t quite hear over the noise but that was clearly warm, Marcus extending a hand across the table with a wide grin.
He made his way around the table, taking each greeting as it ca, nas and faces clicking into place with varying speeds. So were imdiate. So required a second or two of internal calibration before the na arrived.
By the ti he sat down, the table had already moved back into conversation and he had been absorbed into it without ceremony.
A server appeared and Steven ordered a drink without looking at the nu.
"Right," Jas said, turning to Steven. "Talk."
"Where do you want to start?" Steven said.
"The beginning would be conventional," Callum said, from the other side of the table.
Steven smiled, realising that Callum had barely changed. Sa flat delivery, sa expression that gave nothing away until he decided to let sothing through. Two years had done nothing to it.
"The phone," Priya said. "Hannah told . You lost everything."
"Everything," Steven confird. "Contacts, photos, all of it. A week after my mother’s funeral."
The table went quiet for a mont, as everyone that what Steven had said deserved a mont. Losing sothing of extre importance right after a major tragedy was sothing very terrible.
"That’s brutal timing," Marcus said.
"It was," Steven said. "And then life moved and I got buried in it and the longer it went, the harder it felt to explain. It’s not a good reason. It’s just the reason."
Jas nodded slowly. "I’ll accept it on behalf of everyone." He looked around the table. "Anyone who doesn’t accept it can say so now."
Nobody said so.
"Good," Jas said. "Now tell us everything else."
"Not yet," Steven said. "I want to hear from everyone first. I’ve been off the grid for two years. You all have a head start on ."
There was a brief exchange of glances around the table, as they all were genuinely unsure who should go first.
Priya decided to be first to go, as she spoke.
"I’ll go," she said. "It’s my third year at Rice. Biochemistry. Which sounds impressive until you’re in a lab at eleven at night trying to explain to yourself why you thought this was a good idea."
"It was a good idea," Callum said. "You were always going to end up in a lab."
"That’s a very kind framing of what is currently a very difficult degree," she said.
Everyone at the table laughed.
"I’m doing fine though," she added, more genuinely. "I like it. I just complain about it."
Jas went next without being asked. "Graduate program. UT Austin. Communications, which everyone in my family continues to believe is not a real subject." He spread his hands. "I keep showing them my grades. They keep asking when I’m going to study sothing useful. We have reached an impasse."
"It’s a real subject," Steven said.
"Thank you," Jas said, pointing at him. "Soone finally."
Marcus was working at a logistics company in the Galleria area, had been there for fourteen months, and described it with the tone of soone who was grateful for the stability and aware that it wasn’t permanent.
"It pays well enough and I’m learning how the actual world works, which nobody tells you is different from how school tells you it works."
"That’s the realest thing anyone has said tonight," Callum said.
Sasha was studying nursing at HBU, two years in, one clinical placent already completed. She spoke about it with a directness that made it clear she had found her direction and didn’t have much patience for the parts of the journey that were getting in the way of it.
"The placent was the first ti it made sense. Before that it was a lot of morising things and hoping they’d eventually connect," she said.
A woman nad Dani, who Steven had needed a mont to place and then rembered clearly once her laugh arrived, was working at a marketing firm downtown. She had started as an intern and been taken on full-ti six months in. "It’s fast and slightly chaotic and I like it more than I expected to."
Another mber of the group, Olu, was between things. He said it straightforwardly and without the self-consciousness that the phrase sotis carried. He had left a construction managent role three months ago, had sothing lined up for the following month, and was using the ti in between to visit his family in Lagos. "Which everyone treats like I’m in crisis. I’m not in crisis. I just made a decision."
"You’re not in crisis," Jas confird. "You’re between things. There’s a difference."
Olu pointed at him. "Exactly."
Callum, predictably, had given the least information with the most words. He was doing a part ti course in computer science while working tech support at a firm in Midtown. The firm was fine. The course was fine. He wasn’t sure yet what the combination was building toward, but he was in no particular hurry to find out. "I figure if I stay curious long enough, the direction will beco obvious. Or it won’t and I’ll adjust."
"That’s either very wise or you’re just winging it," Priya said.
"Both," Callum said.
"Sa," Steven said.
They looked at each other across the table, understanding each other without requiring much explanation.
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