The living room was dead silent. The hum of the refrigerator seemed aggressively loud. Eight pairs of eyes were locked onto Ryan, watching the rigid set of his shoulders against the backdrop of the New York skyline.
Ryan didn't pull his hands from his pockets. He let the silence hang for another beat, letting the gravity settle over the hardwood floor.
"My dreams died fairly early in life," Ryan started. His voice was low, devoid of the sharp, commanding edge he usually carried. It was rougher, scraping against the quiet of the room.
Danny frowned slightly, his pen going still.
"In fact, just one year after college, and I had begun to become comfortable with the idea of doing nothing relevant with my life." Ryan looked down at the floorboards, remembering the sterile cubicles at Meridian, the endless lines of code written for men who didn't know his name. "I came to this realization that I would leave no imprint in this world, and somehow... I was fine with it."
