Louis Nammoura

Louis,

There is something nobody tells you about the nights you spend gaming with people you love: they are not really about the game.

The game is just the table you all sit around. The reason everyone stays. But what actually happens in those hours: the jokes that make no sense to anyone outside the group, the chaos of a lost round and the noise of a won one, the way time stops meaning anything when you're all in it together. That is something else entirely. That is just being young and alive and surrounded by people who feel like home.

You were part of that for me.

Those nights with you and Fadi and Charbel were some of the freest I've ever felt. Not because life was simple then (it never really is) but because when I was in that room with you all, nothing outside of it had power. The only thing that mattered was the next round, the next push, the next reason to lose our minds laughing at something that wouldn't translate to anyone who wasn't there.

I have carried that feeling with me. The specific kind of ease that came with being around you. You never made friendship feel like work. You just made it feel like showing up and being met exactly where you were.

That is a gift, Louis. More than you know.

I hope wherever life takes you, you still find rooms like that. And I hope you know that one of the best things about those nights, for me, was that you were in them.

With love,

Elia