I first met Aiden on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. He showed up wearing faded jeans, a black T-shirt, and sunglasses, carrying a six-pack of beer like he'd been invited over to watch football. Which, technically, he had.

At the time, he was just my dad's friend. Well... my dad's old friend.

My parents had moved to Northern Virginia just over 3 months earlier, almost two years after I started college. I was heading into my junior year now, majoring in political science at Georgetown, and somehow my parents had become those parents. Not the helicopter kind. Just... close.

Mom had always stayed home, and Dad's consulting job let him work from pretty much anywhere with decent Wi-Fi and a halfway reliable coffee maker. They'd spent years talking about wanting a change from Connecticut anyway. Being within driving distance of me had simply tipped the scales.

A few months after settling in, Dad got a message from someone he hadn't spoken to in almost twenty years.

Aiden.

Apparently, they'd been inseparable in college before life got in the way. Careers. Marriage. Kids. Cross-country moves. One missed Christmas card became ten, then twenty, until one random Facebook message turned into weekly phone calls that sounded like they'd never stopped talking in the first place.

I'd heard the name enough that it barely registered anymore.

"Aiden says—"

"I was telling Aiden—"

"Aiden remembers when..."

To me, he was just another one of Dad's old college buddies. So when Dad yelled through the open back door, "He's here!" I didn't exactly rush outside.