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“Shit, wait, you’re driving.” In the next moment, Hughes removed the shot glass and replaced it with an empty one and a can of 7UP. “Who’s going first?” he asked before Nolan could thank him for his thoughtfulness. “Not you, Zanetti,” Hughes barked as Zanetti opened his mouth. “You cheated last year.”
“How does one cheat at two truths and a lie?” Nolan asked.
“He gave us three lies,” Matty Coates said.
“It was kind of genius,” Eli added. “I’ll go first. And I’ll make them good. You ready?” He cleared his throat. “One time I went parasailing and lost my water shoes in the ocean.”
Deeley nodded. “Seems likely.”
Eli flipped him off. “I lost my watch over the side of a hot air balloon while we were above the Yarra Valley in Australia.”
“Also seems likely,” Deeley said with another nod.
Eli flipped him off with both hands.
“Why would you take your watch off in the first place?” CC asked.
Eli shifted his middle fingers toward him, and CC snorted a laugh.
“And when I was ten, I celebrated my birthday at Dave & Buster’s, and I choked on pizza crust while running from the pinball machine to the Hot Wheels Ultimate Speedway.”
A discussion broke out then about how Eli could possibly lose a watch in mid-air—“Maybe it was a clasp closure, and it came loose?” Zanetti theorized—and when they’d all agreed that was the lie, Eli looked at Nolan.
“Dave & Buster’s is the lie,” Nolan said.
“Agreed,” Bennett said from where he was munching on chips at the counter.
“And the award goes to the significant others,” Eli said. “Drink up, boys.”
The players groaned in unison while Nolan’s stomach was still up somewhere in his throat.
Significant other?
That had an eerily nice ring to it.
Eli kissed his cheek. “How’d you know?”
Nolan turned his head toward him. “There’s no Dave & Buster’s in Saskatoon. All the Canadian locations are in Ontario.”
“Logic.” Eli poked at Nolan’s temple. “I like it.”
“Also, those other two things really sound like something that would happen to you.”
Gasping, Eli clutched his chest. “Rude.”
Several hours later, Nolan pulled up to Eli’s house and walked a very drunk Eli up to his door. He’d somehow lost a sock as the day had worn on—it was, according to Zanetti, an improvement over last year’s Hughes Thanksgiving, when Eli had lost a shoe—and Nolan was pretty sure he’d left with someone else’s scarf wrapped around his throat.
“I thought we were going to stop at McDonald’s on the way,” Eli said with a pout.
“So you could puke it up in my car? I think not.”
“I never puke when I drink. Like I said, I’ve got an iron stomach.”
“You’ve never said that.”
Eli squinted as Nolan unlocked his front door. “Sure I did. Last Thanksgiving.”
“I wasn’t here for that.”
