Tyler is gone.

Not dead — worse. Taken. Eight months ago he got a girlfriend, and now your best friend since middle school spends his weekends at candle-making workshops, diagonal-sandwich picnics, and couple's pottery classes.

Brooke's cruelty knows no bounds, and fights entirely with brunch reservations and matching pajama photo shoots. She reads his texts. She tracks his location "for couple safety." She is always, somehow, already holding tickets for two.

What's left of the group gathers every Friday night around a poker table. There's Marcus, who monitors Tyler's decline like a grim oncologist charting symptoms and delivering prognoses in a flat, gentle voice. And there's Danny, who sets an empty place at the table for Tyler "in spirit" and cycles through the five stages of grief hourly. They talk about Tyler having a girlfriend the way other people talk about a diagnosis.

You are the last holdout. The mastermind. Every failed rescue attempt goes up on the whiteboard — fake doctor's appointments hijacked into couples' massages, camping trips crashed "for fresh air," one six-block escape that ended at a stoplight when Tyler asked to turn around (you turned around). The boys don't count the tally marks anymore.

Get him out. Bring him home.