Lucas is juggling four coffees, Talia’s media badge somehow around his neck.
“Why do you have that?” Talia asks.
Lucas grins. “You dropped it.”
“You stole it.” Talia puts her hands on her hips.
“I rescued it.” Lucas rolls his eyes.
Fuze comes up beside me. “Update,” he says confidentially. “McKenna’s in his courtship era.”
Across the table:
Lucas pushing fruit toward Talia like a Victorian man trying to survive winter. “You need potassium.”
“You learned one nutrition fact and made it everyone’s problem,” she says.
“Why does he have six bananas?” I ask.
Talia looks up from her coffee. “That’s not even his record.”
Across the buffet, Fuze is carrying two plates stacked with waffles at a height that violates structural engineeringprinciples. Anthony trails behind him, holding three tiny yogurt parfaits for reasons no one understands.
“Those are decorative,” Talia says as he passes.
Anthony looks offended. “Food is food.”
Trey sits at the center table with black coffee and the expression of a man who has made his peace with public humiliation. “This team embarrasses me publicly,” he says as I sit down.
“Daily,” Toni agrees cheerfully. “I watched Lucas put whipped cream on bacon.”
Talia gasps faintly. “Was it good?”
Lucas points at her from across the room. “Thank you. It's called culinary innovation.”
“It’s a felony,” Trey says.
I am only carrying one plate and positive energy. Because instead of sitting in the empty chair beside Anthony, I drop directly into the seat next to Toni.
“Morning, coach,” I say. My leg brushes hers under the table, and every thought I had leaves without notice.
“You’re late.”
“I’m thirty seconds late.”
“You were supposed to meet Briggs downstairs at eight.”
“I did.”
She narrows her eyes. “When?”
I point toward the buffet. “During pancake acquisition.”
“That’s not a meeting.”
“We discussed penalty minutes over hash browns. It was collaborative.”
Across the table, Talia watches me, with the expression ofsomeone who’s certain about what she's looking at, then says into her coffee, “Good morning to Toni specifically.” Toni kicks her under the table. She barely reacts.
