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Two to three plates. Per person.
Hockey players were a weird species.
“Here.” Matty Coates pulled out the chair across from Eli, then handed Nolan back his laptop. “Take my seat. I want to pick Zanetti’s brain about something anyway.” He scooted past a server into the restaurant and returned a second later with an extra chair.
The blonde server Eli had collided with earlier stood nearby, a plate in each hand and a third balanced on her forearm.
Servers were also a weird species.
Eli took one look at her and slouched in his seat. Slouched some more until he was practically horizontal. If he kept going, he’d be underneath the table.
Nolan sat and wiped a hand over his mouth to hide his smile.
“Blueberry pancakes, pork belly Benedict, and a side of avocado toast,” Samantha the server announced.
Matty Coates deposited his chair at the end of the table between Kyle Dabbs and Bellamy Jordan and raised one hand. “That’s me.”
“Which one?”
“Which one,” Matty Coates repeated with a laugh. “Oh shit, you’re serious. All of them, obviously.” He patted his stomach. “I’m a growing boy.” His smile was very look how charming I am.
She wasn’t buying it. She deposited his plates in front of him and departed with a mutter about returning with cutlery.
“Buuuuuurn,” Sandbaker and Deeley joked in tandem.
Matty Coates flipped them off and bit into his toast.
“I’m so sorry about them,” Eli whisper-shouted at Nolan. “They’re usually better behaved than this.”
“Lies,” Deeley said.
“Fake news,” Sandbaker corroborated.
Eli looked from one to another, then turned back to Nolan with another whisper-shout. “They’re sometimes better behaved than this. They’re kind of like kindergarteners, and if given the option, I’d rather be surrounded by kindergarteners. How about you?”
Nolan blinked. “How about me . . . what?”
“Would you rather spend an hour in a room full of kindergarteners or a room full of hockey players?”
“Hockey players,” Nolan said instantly. “One of them might pay for my meal.”
Eli laughed as Deeley leaned around him to say something to Sandbaker.
“Wait,” Nolan said. “You’d choose the kindergarteners?”
Eli toasted him with his water glass. “Sure. They’ll ask weird questions, tell me I run funny, then decide I’m their best friend ’cause I can draw a dinosaur.”
Matty Coates rose from his spot at the end of the table and clapped his hands once. “Hold up! Guys, we forgot . . .” He waved both hands like he was conducting an orchestra. “Happy birthday to you.”
Nolan joined the rest of the guys in a rousing chorus of the birthday song, to which Eli blushed to the tips of his ears, making him look younger than twenty-six. When the song ended with a loud cheer, Eli jokingly shouted at his teammates to “shut the fuck up and eat your food” while Nolan tried to reconcile this Eli with the Eli of a decade past.
And found that it actually wasn’t that difficult. Eli had always been friendly and talented, always encircled by a horde of friends, and he’d always been whip-smart.
“What are you studying these days?” Nolan asked. “Still doing your certificate program? What was it again?”
“Ecological Foundations of Agroecology,” Eli told him, slicing into fluffy ricotta pancakes. “And no. I completed that in May. I just started a sociology class, though. Sociology of Sport. Right now we’re studying the relationship between social capital and sport as it pertains to migrants and refugees. It’s fascinating.”
Nolan blinked at him. Eli was studying sociology?
