59. End Game #3
Nobody responds immediately.
She looks almost embarrassed by the silence.
“I don’t mean living here. Obviously I lived here. And you invited me places and whatever. I just…”
She presses her lips together.
“This was yours.”
My chest tightens.
“Thursdays.”
Griffin’s hand moves to the back of her neck.
She nods.
“You’d been doing it forever. Same night. Same table. Same people.”
Her gaze moves around the room.
“And you made room for me.”
Micah looks down.
Dex doesn’t even pretend now.
A tear slides straight down his cheek.
Cami laughs shakily. “Fuck. Why is this so sad?”
“Because endings are weird,” Micah says quietly.
He looks at his rogue’s sheet.
“You spend years with something and then one day you just… finish it.”
Dex points at him. “That was not helpful.”
“I wasn’t trying to help.”
“Well, stop contributing accurately.”
Griffin laughs.
Cami wipes her eyes again. “You remember the fair?”
I do.
Of course I do. “The Whispering Fair?”
“The maze.”
Micah smiles.
Dex groans. “Oh my God.”
Cami points at him. “You were being an asshole.”
“I was being charming.”
“You tried to proposition the fair.”
“That was later.”
Griffin laughs.
Cami looks at me. “The puppet thing. It told us to choose a partner.”
I nod. “And you decided that instruction was optional.”
“It was a dumb instruction.”
“It specifically said choose a partner.”
“Yeah, but there were four of us.”
She says it so matter-of-factly that I almost laugh.
“We could all do it.”
Micah’s smile widens slightly.
Griffin says, “No splitting the party.”
Dex leans back. “God, we were codependent before we even knew why.”
“You are not using that word correctly.”
“Emotionally entangled, then.”
“Better.”
Cami’s thumb continues tracing the edge of her sheet. “We all held on.”
I remember.
The wooden puppet.
The ribbon.
The maze.
Her immediate solution to a challenge designed for two people.
All four of them.
No one lets go.
“You moved like one organism with too many hands and a shared pulse,” I say.
Her head snaps up. “You remember the exact line?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you do,” Griffin murmurs.
I remember more than the line.
I remember the catacombs beneath Miralen’s Keep and the glowing chalice Micah absolutely should not have touched.
The first mimic. The Whispering Fair. Cami’s first session.
Dex trying to seduce things that did not have anatomy.
Griffin treating dungeon combat like incident command.
Micah quietly solving encounters I expected to take two hours.
Cami discovering that Guiding Bolt solved an unreasonable number of problems.
The Headless Horseman.
The Reliquary.
The nights where we barely played because everything outside the game needed attention first, and the nights where we played precisely because everything outside the game needed attention.
I remember the years before her.
And everything after.
I take off my glasses and clean them, even though they aren’t dirty.
It gives me something to do with my hands.
Griffin notices.
“You okay?” he asks.
I put my glasses back on. “Yes.”
He waits.
I sigh. “I’m also sad.”
Dex gasps softly. “Holy shit.”
“Don’t.”
“Ronan has an emotion.”
“Everyone has emotions.”
“Not like this. Normally yours come with citations.”
Micah laughs.
Cami reaches across the corner of the table and puts her hand over my wrist below the tattoo, careful not to touch the healing skin.
I look down at her hand, then up at her.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
She gestures toward the table.
“This.”
It isn’t specific enough to answer.
Maybe that is the point.
I turn my wrist beneath her fingers and squeeze her hand once.
“You’re welcome.”
Dex looks around the table.
“So what the fuck do we do next Thursday?”
I stare at him.
He knows the answer.
His mouth twitches.
Maybe he needs to hear it anyway.
Maybe all of them do.
“Next Thursday,” I say, “session zero.”
Griffin smiles first.
Micah’s comes next.
Dex’s is the widest.
Cami’s eyes fill again. “Same time?”
“Obviously.”
Her laugh is watery. “So we’re not ending Thursdays.”
“No.”
Griffin leans back in his chair, his shoulders releasing.
Micah looks around the table. “New characters.”
“New campaign,” I confirm.
Dex drums his fingers once against the table.
Cami wipes her cheeks.
“Fresh character sheets.”
“Yes.”
“No haunted carnivals?” Griffin asks.
“No promises.”
Cami smiles.
And there it is.
The thing I have been trying to articulate since I started planning this ending.
The campaign is over.
The party isn’t.
Finishing one story does not require anyone to leave the table. We get to make something new—with different names, different maps, different mistakes.
Same Thursday.
Same table.
Same people.
Maybe family isn’t one story that lasts forever.
Maybe it’s the people who stay when one story ends and ask what we’re playing next.
Dex wipes underneath one eye and looks around the table. “Okay, but hear me out.”
Every instinct I have tells me not to let him continue.
I do anyway.
His grin returns.
“Or we do that other kind of campaign. I still have inspiration tokens.”