Noah had learned, over the course of a three-year friendship, that Josh Sullivan's approach to emotional support could best be described as "concern disguised as comedy with plausible deniability."

  It was effective, if occasionally exhausting.

  They were walking across campus after what the university optimistically called "lunch"—a designation that required a very generous interpretation of both food and timing. Noah had acquired something that might have been a turkey sandwich in a previous life. Josh had committed to a carton of fries with the kind of dedication usually reserved for blood oaths.

  "So," Josh said around a mouthful of potato. "Thanksgiving."

  Noah glanced at him. "What about it?"

  "My mom asked if you're coming this year." Josh delivered the line casually, staring straight ahead like he was asking about the weather. But Noah had known him long enough to hear the actual question underneath the delivery: Are you going to be alone again?

  Noah felt a complicated knot tighten in his chest—gratitude and guilt in roughly equal measure.

  Josh's family had effectively adopted him during his first year out of the house. They hadn't done it formally, or with any particular ceremony. It was just a quiet, persistent insistence that Noah should come over for dinner on Sundays, that he should learn to cook something more advanced than "pasta with regret," and that kids in high school shouldn't spend holidays eating cereal in empty apartments.

  Josh's mom had taught him how to make a proper risotto. She had taught him how to truss a chicken, and how to wield a wooden spoon with the kind of vague, terrifying authority that commanded immediate obedience from both teenage boys and the laws of thermodynamics.

  She also texted him once a month—usually an innocuous recipe she thought he'd like, or a brief reminder that their door was always open. Noah had never quite figured out how to explain that those texts meant the world to him, mostly because any attempt to verbalize his gratitude sounded like a Hallmark card written by someone who had never actually met a human being.

  "I have plans, actually," Noah said.

  Josh's eyebrows rose with the kind of theatrical surprise usually reserved for stage productions. "Plans? You? Since when do you acknowledge federal holidays? I thought you just treated Thanksgiving as an obstacle course of closed grocery stores."

  "I contain multitudes," Noah said dryly.

  "You contain exactly one personality and it's 'responsible to a fault,'" Josh corrected. He squinted, assessing Noah with the narrowed eyes of a scientist observing an anomaly. "Wait. Is this a neighbor thing?"

  Noah felt the back of his neck warm slightly. "It's a neighbor thing."

  Josh stopped walking entirely. "Hold on. You're doing Thanksgiving with the neighbor? The one you've known since—" He paused, calculating. "Since, like, July?"

  "Late June," Noah corrected calmly.

  "Oh, my apologies. Late June. A much more reasonable timeline for integrating a near-stranger into major holiday infrastructure," Josh said, gesturing wildly with a French fry. "Are you taking her somewhere? Are you cooking for her? Did she finally realize you're basically a 1950s housewife trapped in the body of a STEM major?"

  "We're going to my family's place," Noah said.

  Josh tossed his half-eaten fry back into the carton, the gossip completely overriding his appetite. "Hold on. Let me just recalibrate my entire understanding of the universe. You are taking a girl you've just started dating to see your mother."

  "That is the itinerary."

  "Your mother," Josh repeated, staring at him like he was a stranger. "The one you communicate with exclusively via formal, hostage-proof paragraphs? The one whose house you haven't slept in for more than one night in a row since you were in grade ten?"

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Noah kept his pace steady, though the reminder tightened his chest slightly. "That would be the one."

  Josh stopped walking. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped furiously with his thumb for about five seconds, and shoved the device back into his coat.

  When he looked up, the theatrical shock had vanished, replaced instantly by the sharp, protective concern he usually kept hidden behind the humor. "Dude. Are you sure about this? Is she pushing you to go?"

  "No," Noah said immediately, cutting off that train of thought before it could leave the station. "She's going because I asked her to."

  Josh stared at him for a long moment, watching Noah's face. Slowly, the tension bled out of Josh's shoulders. "Damn. You really like her."

  Noah didn't bother offering a verbal confirmation. He just looked at his friend, letting the silence carry the weight of the admission.

  Josh exhaled a long breath, dragging a hand down his face. "Okay. Wow. So we've officially bypassed 'pretty neighbor I make excuses to run into' and jumped straight to 'emotional anchor for complex family trauma' in a couple months."

  "Things accelerated," Noah admitted.

  "Yeah, I'm getting that." Josh picked his fries back up, his expression turning thoughtful. He chewed, swallowed, and delivered his next line with the careful precision of someone walking through a minefield. "My mom would want me to remind you that feelings are great, but the human brain does weird things when it's stressed. And you've known this girl for exactly one fiscal quarter."

  "I know."

  "And," Josh continued, gaining momentum, "moving at lightspeed into a high-stress family situation can make people feel things—or say things—they aren't actually ready for." He pointed a fry directly at Noah's chest. "Important things. Things involving the letter L."

  Noah’s step faltered fractionally.

  Josh caught it. Of course he did. He noticed everything when he actually bothered to pay attention.

  "Oh, no," Josh said, stopping dead on the sidewalk. "Oh, my god. You're already there, aren't you?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "You didn't have to! Your face just did this whole—" Josh gestured wildly at Noah's head. "This whole thing. You went completely soft and stupid-looking."

  "I don't have a stupid-looking face," Noah said flatly.

  "You absolutely do when you think about her," Josh countered. "It's deeply embarrassing for both of us."

  Noah felt the heat crawl up the back of his neck. "Can we drop this?"

  "Absolutely not. I've stumbled onto a goldmine." Josh resumed walking, practically bouncing with the energy of a man holding premium blackmail. "I'm going to watch this unfold like a nature documentary."

  "I didn't say I was in love with her," Noah muttered, even though the protest was about thirty seconds too late to be convincing.

  Josh gave him a look of profound pity. "Okay. Sure. You're just taking a casual acquaintance into the psychological thunderdome of your family home for fun. Because that is a very normal, low-stakes activity."

  Noah didn't have a defense for that.

  They reached the heavy glass doors of the science building. Josh pulled the door open and held it with his shoulder, his tone dropping the theatrical glee and settling into something grounded.

  "Look," Josh said. "I'm genuinely happy for you. You deserve a win. Just... be careful. High-stress environments make people do crazy things. Don't drop an L-bomb while you're actively navigating family trauma."

  "I'm not an idiot," Noah said.

  "Debatable," Josh replied easily. "But I trust you not to completely self-sabotage." He paused, his expression shifting into real, unshielded concern. "For real, though. If you need anything—before, during, or after this weekend—you know where I am."

  There it was. The actual caring underneath all the mockery. The quiet assurance that if things went sideways, Josh would show up with terrible jokes and a distraction, and wouldn't force Noah to talk until he was ready.

  Noah’s throat tightened unexpectedly. "Yeah. I know."

  A muffled buzz interrupted them. Josh pulled his phone from his pocket with his free hand, glanced at the screen, and grinned.

  "Good," Josh said, looking back up. "Because my mom will literally murder me if I let you navigate a crisis alone."

  Noah Nodded. “Understood."

  "So, I informed her you were skipping Thanksgiving for a girl," Josh said, tapping the screen once before sliding the phone away. "She just replied entirely in uppercase letters. She is currently demanding a name, dietary restrictions, and a firm date for when we are dragging her over for Sunday dinner."

  Noah huffed a quiet laugh, the tension in his chest easing into something incredibly warm. "Tell her thank you. For the Thanksgiving invitation. And for... everything else."

  Josh’s expression flickered—a brief flash of discomfort. He never knew exactly how to handle Noah's sincere gratitude without deploying his usual deflection tools. He stepped back, letting the door rest against his shoulder, and punched Noah lightly in the arm. The kind of affection that could only be safely expressed through minor violence.

  "You're such a sap," Josh said. "This girl ruined you."

  "Probably," Noah agreed.

  Josh grinned, stepping backward into the building. "Honestly? It's a pretty big improvement."

  He let the door swing shut, leaving Noah standing on the sidewalk with a half-eaten sandwich and the heavy, grounding awareness that he had good people in his life who cared about him, even when he was too deep in his own head to realize it.