The loft dinner was Schmidt’s doing: a Thursday-night production that had somehow escalated into a full sit-down affair with placemats and a wine selection.
The chicken was roasted.
The potatoes were crisp.
The table was set with a precision that bordered on religious.
Robby sat at the end nearest the kitchen, which put him farthest from the conversation’s center.
The geometry was accidental: Schmidt had assigned seats based on “energy flow,” but the effect was immediate.
The bit was already running by the time he’d settled, a Winston-led escalation about whether Furguson had opinions on the wine.
“A cat cannot have opinions on wine,” Cece said.
“That’s not how palates work.”
“I’m not saying he’s sommelier-certified,” Winston replied, stroking Furguson’s chin with exaggerated seriousness.
“I’m saying he made a face at the Chardonnay.
That’s data.”
“The face was at you, not the wine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually.”
Winston turned to the table, his expression grave.
“Cece is trying to discredit my primary witness.”
“Your primary witness is a cat who just tried to eat a napkin.”
“A cat with discerning taste.”
“A cat with a napkin fixation, which is a different diagnosis entirely.”
“You’re not a vet.”
“I don’t need to be a vet to see a cat eating linen.”
“You’re both missing the actual data point,” Schmidt said, pouring himself more Chardonnay.
“Furguson’s opinion doesn’t matter.
What matters is that I selected a wine sophisticated enough for a cat to have an opinion about it at all.
That’s the win.”
“That’s not a win, that’s a humble-brag about a Trader Joe’s bottle.”
“It’s a nine-dollar bottle with the confidence of a thirty-dollar bottle.
That’s called curation.”
The table laughed.
Schmidt refilled glasses.
The bit crested and passed, and Robby watched it go the way a man on the shoulder watched traffic, present, adjacent, not in the flow.
He tried to enter on the next beat.
Winston was recounting a story from his LAPD shift, something about a man who’d called the police on his own reflection, and there was a natural pause where someone could add a dry note.
Robby opened his mouth to say something about the particular loneliness of calling the cops on yourself —
“It’s the mirror’s fault, clearly,” Nick said.
“The mirror started it.”
The table laughed again.
The beat moved on.
Robby closed his mouth, the unspoken line settling back into his chest like something swallowed wrong.
“You okay down there?” Schmidt asked, refilling Robby’s water without being asked.
“You’ve got a face like you’re doing taxes.”
“Just chewing.”
“The chicken doesn’t require that much concentration.”
“Apparently it does tonight.”
Schmidt gave him a look that lasted half a second too long, then moved the bottle on to Cece’s glass and let it go.
Jess was three seats away, between Cece and Schmidt, engaged in a side conversation about the wine’s origins.
She laughed at something Schmidt said.
The sound was real and warm and directed elsewhere.
She hadn’t looked at him since the chicken was served.
He could feel the shape of his own silence, the particular texture of being present but not part of the room, a guest at a table where everyone else was at home.
He thought about trying again.
A comment on the wine.
A self-deprecating note about his own limited palate.
Something that would signal he was still here, still trying.
He thought about the eleven-recipe rotation and how it had felt, weeks ago, like a renewable engine, a reliable way to earn a seat at this table.
The recipes had been honest work, a measurable contribution the loft could point to and say, he did this.
Winston had tracked it.
Schmidt had graded it.
Even Nick had eaten it without complaint, which counted as a review in this house.
But even that engine was finite.
He was running out of dishes.
Running out of angles.
Running out of the small competent gestures that had carried him this far, and the silence at the end of the table was proof the engine had no emergency tank, no reserve he could dip into when the goodwill ran dry on a random Thursday for no reason he could point to.
The reflex to perform, to fill the gap with a gesture, rose in his chest.
A joke.
A toast.
A bid for re-entry loud enough to cut through.
The impulse was almost physical, the pressure of a silence that felt like failure.
He didn’t take it.
He recognized, with the clarity of a man who’d spent weeks reading this room, that a grand gesture from near-empty would land as desperation.
The loft would feel the reach, and the reach would confirm what the tracker already knew: that he was trying too hard and landing nowhere.
So he didn’t push.
He sat, the table’s laughter washing past him, and let the bits route around him.
Schmidt told a story about his marketing firm’s latest absurd client, a man who’d insisted his brand colors be “louder.” Winston escalated it into a full sketch, complete with voices for the client, the account manager, and a hypothetical intern caught in the middle.
Cece dropped a deadpan line that leveled the room, something about how “louder colors” was just a man’s way of saying he wanted a midlife crisis he could put on a business card, and Schmidt nearly choked on his wine laughing at his own client being mocked.
“You’re not allowed to enjoy that,” Winston said.
“He pays your rent.”
“He pays a third of my rent, and only if the invoice clears.”
“Still.
Loyalty.”
“Loyalty ends where ‘louder colors’ begins.”
The conversation moved like water around a stone, and Robby was the stone: smooth, unobtrusive, entirely avoidable.
Nick glanced at him once.
The look was quick, not hostile, just registering that Robby was there, that he was quiet, that the quiet was a new data point.
Then Nick looked away and rejoined the bit about the marketing client, and didn’t glance back a second time, which felt like its own kind of verdict.
Winston, a few minutes later, pulled out his phone and tapped something into the shared tracker.
The gesture was so casual, so habitual, that Robby almost missed it.
But he caught the screen for half a second: a column of numbers, a cell that had been green slowly shifting toward yellow.
The dessert came.
Schmidt’s panna cotta, which was excellent.
The conversation turned to weekend plans, to work stories, to the small machinery of lives that ran smoothly together.
Jess talked about a lesson plan she was building.
Cece asked about a new photographer she’d met.
Winston proposed that the tracker needed a “dessert participation” column.
“A dessert column feels punitive,” Schmidt said.
“It’s not punitive.
It’s granular.”
“Granular is a nice word for punitive.”
“Everything’s a nice word for something, Schmidt.
That’s language.”
“Fine.
What does the column measure?”
“Enthusiasm.
Timing.
Whether you asked for seconds or just took them.”
“I always ask for seconds.”
“You do.
That’s why you’re leading the dessert column currently, by a wide margin.”
“As I should be.
Someone has to set the standard.”
“You set the standard for dessert consumption.
That’s not the same as setting a standard.”
“It’s a start.”
Across the table, Jess laughed again.
The sound was the same one he’d fallen for on the first date, bright and unreserved, but it was aimed at something Schmidt had said, something he’d missed entirely.
She was having a good night.
He was having a night in the same room.
Those were two different things, and no amount of recipe rotation or DNA-test mythology closed that particular gap.
The food was warm.
The company was good.
The night was exactly what a loft dinner should be, for everyone else.
And Robby, eating his panna cotta in silence at the end of the table, understood he was, for this night and maybe longer, the bland one again.
Pleasant.
Background.
The man the bits routed around.
He’d felt the failure-floor of this whole stretch of weeks, and he couldn’t say the fall was unfair.
He set down his spoon.
The room laughed at something he hadn’t heard.
“Good?” Jess asked, finally turning his way, nodding at his plate.
“It’s really good.”
“Schmidt outdid himself.”
“He always does.
You’d think the bar would drop eventually.”
“It won’t.
He’ll die before the bar drops.”
“That’s a very specific prediction.”
“I’ve known him a long time.”
She smiled — a real one this time, aimed at him instead of past him — and then Winston said something that pulled her attention back across the table, and the window closed as quickly as it had opened.
The longing to try again was still there, but the fuel was gone.
He’d spent it all on the last few weeks: the coffee-shop gamble, the casserole defiance, the meal he’d cooked with his own hands.
The tank was empty.
And maybe the real work, the part he’d been avoiding, was learning how to sit in the empty without breaking the table trying to fill it.
hey — quick one before you close the tab.
if the cliffhanger is killing you, the future already exists.
you just need a ticket through.
every chapter the second i finish writing it.
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P.S.
— in a parallel timeline, the rest of this story runs completely free on unwrittenrealm.com.
just saying.
that timeline also has more chapters.