Ellie sat cross-legged on the garage floor, her hands moving methodically over the plastic casing of an old board game. She adjusted the battered box, now held together with strips of duct tape that were peeling at the edges, barely doing their job. Her brow furrowed, focused on aligning the game pieces inside. In the dim light, her young face seemed older, worn, like she had skipped a chapter of her teenage rebellion for this—restoring a game no one seemed to care about anymore.

From the doorway, Gabe leaned against the frame, chewing a thread from his hoodie. “Ellie, you know that thing’s beyond fixing, right? It’s not even fun. We had it in the attic for years. You said yourself it was dumb when we played.”

Ellie didn’t look up. Her voice was calm but stubborn, as though refusing to let him start the argument he had walked in ready to win. “It’s not about fun. It’s about…” She glanced at the board in her lap as if it might clue her in. “It’s about fixing something before giving up on it.”

Gabe exhaled loudly and stepped inside. “Listen, this whole martyr-with-duct-tape-and-charity-act thing you do is getting unbearable. Let the dead board game die. We could be, I don’t know, on the couch, playing that multiplayer shooter right now. But no, duct tape has to save the day.”

Ellie smoothed down a particularly stubborn wrinkle on one edge of the tape and finally glanced up. There was bitterness there, but not the sharp kind—more like a quiet ache stretched too thin to break. “Funny how multiplayer games never felt like one with you,” she said, only half-joking.

For a moment, Gabe said nothing, his hands stuffed into his hoodie pocket like they might retaliate if he let them free. Then, with a scoff, he slid down the wall to sit across from her. “You know,” he started, “the duct tape? Not enough. You can’t just patch over… everything. Cards are lost. The spinner’s warped. No one even remembers how the rules worked. You’re trying to… what? Recreate something? Nostalgia isn’t real, Ellie. You didn’t even like the damn game.”

Ellie bristled. “It wasn’t about the game,” she snapped, holding up one of the warped plastic pieces, stained a faint orange from some untraceable past accident. “It was what we did while we played. Mom would sing to herself in the kitchen. Dad would get the rules wrong and then swear up and down he wasn’t cheating. You…” She hesitated, her voice dropping. “You used to laugh more.”

Gabe shifted uncomfortably but didn’t look away. There was something sharp in the air now, not the piercing pain of an argument but the slow sting of awkward truths. “And what,” he said finally, “you reckon duct tape will bring all that back?”

Ellie shook her head but didn’t answer immediately. Her fingers traced the edge of one of the fraying corners. When she spoke, her voice had softened, quieter now, not to him but to herself. “It’s not duct tape. It’s… repairing something the best you can. So maybe it’s not the same—maybe it’s something else entirely. But you try.”

For a long moment, neither spoke. The silence was almost loud enough to drown out the faint hum of crickets outside. Then, reluctantly—almost sheepishly—Gabe pulled his hands from his pocket. “Give me the stupid tape,” he said.

Ellie looked at him, surprised. Her lips twitched into something almost grateful but carefully restrained. She handed him the roll, and Gabe tore off a piece, sticking it over a random gap in the box, unskilled and careless.

“You’re terrible at this,” Ellie muttered, but there was no venom.

“Yup. And you’re insane. But fine, let’s save this… relic or whatever.” He gestured at the game pieces.

They worked in mostly silence after that, the occasional Chuckle escaping from one of them—a teasing comment here, a playful jab there—until the clumsy restoration was as complete as duct tape would allow.

When they finished, Gabe leaned back, staring at the patched-together game. “You realize we’ll never play this, right?”

Ellie nodded, but her hand lingered on the box, wistful. “Maybe that’s not the point.”

And Gabe, for once, didn’t argue. But he didn’t leave either.

Later, when Ellie found the missing yellow piece under the couch and taped it squarely where it belonged, she smiled to herself, though she wasn’t sure why.

Behind her, the impossible question hung in the air between them: Can things be fixed when there’s no rulebook for how? Or are we just playing a game no one can win?

Neither could give the answer, and maybe that’s what they would live with—the sound of duct tape unspooling, holding fragments together for however long it lasted.