Carter had learned, two years ago, that love was not a zero-sum game. That it was more like a language — the more fluently you spoke it, the more you found you had to say. He'd read that somewhere, maybe, or possibly made it up during a late-night conversation with Cass that ended with her calling him sentimental and then kissing him for twenty minutes. Either way he believed it.

What he had not yet mastered was the art of the invitation.

He set out the board at the kitchen table — Settlers of Catan, because Cass was ruthless at Ticket to Ride and Jackson always won at Pandemic and neither would play Monopoly with him anymore since the incident — and found the good mezcal in the cabinet above the fridge and arranged five glasses on the counter before he remembered there would be four of them and put one back.

Jackson was on the couch with his laptop open, reading something about mixed-use zoning that had aged him visibly over the past three weeks. Cass was in the armchair with her feet over the side, a notebook balanced on her knees, pencil moving in that quick distracted way that meant she was actually working even though it looked like doodling.

Carter loved this room with a particularity that still surprised him. The way it smelled on Thursday evenings — woodsmoke from someone else's chimney, coffee, a faint trace of the cedar soap Cass bought in bulk from the farmers market. The way Jackson's socks didn't match. The way Cass's pencil went still when she landed on something real.

"She texted," Carter said. "She's five minutes out."

"Who?" Cass, without looking up.

"Jessica. The neighbor I mentioned." He adjusted the board. "She's bringing wine."

Jackson looked up from his laptop. Not all the way up — halfway, the look that meant he was processing. "The one from the taqueria."

"Yeah."

"The landscape architect."

"Landscape architect," Carter confirmed. He tried for casual. He mostly got there.

Cass set her pencil down. She looked at him with the dark, level attention that he had once, two years ago, described to his college roommate as the most unnerving thing that has ever been directed at me and his roommate had said marry her and Carter had said it's complicated and both of those things were still somewhat true.

"You told me about her on Tuesday," Cass said.

"I did."

"You said she was designing a pocket park."

"She is. Three blocks from here. She's—" He stopped. He could feel himself about to over-explain. He had a habit of over-explaining things he was nervous about, which was annoying because it announced the nervousness. "She seemed lonely. It's game night. I thought."

Cass looked at him for another beat. Then she picked up her pencil.

"She better not be good at Catan," she said.

The doorbell rang. Carter's hands moved automatically to straighten the board, which didn't need straightening.

Jessica Park stood on their porch with a bottle of mezcal that was better than the one Carter had pulled down from the cabinet and a smile he hadn't quite remembered being as good as it was.

"I looked up the game," she said, holding up her phone. "I've been studying for an hour."

Carter stepped back to let her in. "You're going to destroy us."

He said it lightly, to the room, to all of them. He didn't look at Cass when he said it. He should have, but he didn't.