Why it has to be people

She stops being cheerful, which is somehow worse.

“You can play alone,” she says. “Plenty do, and it is a fine thing, and it is not what this is. This is the other one. This is the evening where somebody's brother comes and is bad at it and nobody minds, and the pizza is wrong, and eleven years later that is the evening you can still describe the smell of.”

“You cannot buy that. You can only be given the room and told to invite somebody.” She rolls the map up and holds it out. “That is what this is. A room, and a nudge.”