Page 36
Instant friendship.
But what else was Nolan supposed to do when King had looked resigned to his fate? Not embarrassed. Not apologetic. Resigned. Like he’d known this was the last straw and he was about to be sent home.
To be fair, he’d been on his third three-strikes-and-you’re-out incident, a rule that had been reinforced from the get-go.
King had wanted to stay—it had been written all over his face. But the counselors had labeled him a troublemaker from day one, when King had accidentally, maybe on purpose set the camp frog loose in the mess hall. So King had done everything to live up to that troublemaker moniker.
Because of course he had. Tell a kid they’re a troublemaker often enough and they’ll start to believe it and prove everyone right. Hello, self-fulfilling prophecy, thy name is Kingston Raine.
“Why?” King asked now. “Did someone butt dial you?”
Shaking himself out of the past, Nolan checked his notifications for the call he’d ignored earlier. His dad. He’d followed it up with a text Nolan had missed.
Dad:
Dinner later? I’ll bring pizza and wings.
Nolan replied with a thumbs-up.
“I missed a call earlier. Thought it might’ve been you, but it was my dad,” he said to King, Eli’s letter in one hand. He didn’t want to let it go. It was a connection to Eli he hadn’t previously had, and letting it go would break that connection like confetti blowing in the wind. “What’s up?”
“I’m coming to visit,” King announced.
Nolan blinked away from the letter. “Right now?”
“What? No, not right now. Sometime in the next month.”
“Sure. Anytime. Check the team schedule though. I travel with the Trailblazers, so I’m out of town when they’re out of town.”
“Will do.”
“What’s the reason for the visit?”
“Can’t I just want to catch up with my best friend? It’s been a thousand years.”
Nolan rolled his eyes. “I saw you last month. I flew to Toronto and you fed me KD as a combination birthday and Thanksgiving dinner.”
“It’s a classic.”
“It’s Kraft Dinner, King. You couldn’t even shred cheese and make me mac and cheese from scratch? You know the boxed stuff makes me gassy.”
“You were farting all night.”
“Jesus,” Nolan said, dissolving into laughter. King’s laughter echoed in his ear, and they giggled like the eight-year-olds they’d once been, laughing over a dumb joke.
“Besides, you make the best mac and cheese, and I wasn’t going to try and compete with that,” King said. “And I wasn’t about to ask you to cook your own birthday dinner.”
“Fine, fine. So? What’s going on over there?”
“Not much,” King said. “Same old, same old. How about you?”
Nolan looked at the letter again. At the slanted lines of Eli’s handwriting. At blue ink on white paper. At the seemingly innocuous, I forget to perform around you.
If Freddie had been writing to someone he had feelings for, was Eli doing the same?
Nolan’s chest was alive with the beat of a thousand delicate hummingbird wings when he said, “Do you think it would be weird if I had feelings for someone younger?”
“How much younger?” King asked.
