Otto threw a party.
Not for me specifically. He would say that. He would say it was a gathering, not a party, and that the distinction mattered, and that he had simply invited some people to his apartment to eat food and that things had grown organically from there.
The things that grew organically included: twelve people in a two-bedroom apartment, two very large platters of food from three different restaurants, and a situation I was not prepared for.
He had not told me about it in advance.
He had texted me on a Thursday morning: *come over tonight, there's food, bring Zevran.*
Which I had interpreted as dinner. Possibly with Tobias, who had become a fixture in Otto's life with the reliability of someone who had found his people and intended to stay.
What I found when I arrived at
