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“Am I?” Zanetti pumped his eyebrows. “Or am I the best? Nolan, text me the name of whatever bar you guys end up at later, okay? I’m picking up Bennett at the airport in an hour. We’ll meet you guys there after.”
“Will do,” Nolan muttered to a retreating Zanetti’s back.
“Who’s going to the bar?” Eli asked.
“Me, Zanetti and Bennett, Prinnie, Hughes, CC, Bellamy, and Dabbs said he’d make an appearance.”
“Cool. I’m going mini putting with Deeley, Sandbaker, DeShawn, and Matty Coates. Maybe we’ll meet up with you guys after.”
“Sounds good. But first . . .” Nolan held out a hand. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” Eli asked, putting his hand in Nolan’s.
“To give Freddie his letters back.”
Eli gaped at him. “Wait, what? You know who he is? How? When? How? Jesus Christ, way to bury the fucking lede. We’ve been here for an hour.”
“The when was about ninety minutes ago. The how . . . I’m not sure, really. And I could be wrong.”
Nolan led them over to where Roman Kinsey and his husband Cody were laughing with Assistant Coach Friedle and the woman Nolan assumed was his wife. Or rather, Cody and the woman were laughing hysterically, tears in their eyes, while Roman looked on with amusement and Friedle seemed more interested in chasing the remaining butter chicken sauce on his plate with a square of naan bread.
“Oh my god,” the woman was saying through laughter. “You had to take him to the ER?”
“He’d stuck that thing so far up there that we couldn’t get to it with normal tweezers,” Cody said amid guffaws.
“What’s so funny?” Eli asked.
Roman crossed one leg over the other. “We’re reminiscing about the time we had to bring our youngest to the ER after he stuck a felt button up his nose.”
Eli winced. “Ouch.”
“What’s up?” Roman asked. “You look like you’re on a mission.”
“We’re here to borrow him,” Nolan said, pointing at Friedle.
“We are?” Eli whispered in his ear. “Does he know who Freddie is?”
Ignoring him, Nolan said, “Got a sec?”
Friedle shrugged. “Sure. Be right back, Toni,” he said to the woman, who was still laughing. She nodded an acknowledgment and gave him a wave. Friedle came around the table. “What’s going on?”
“I think this belongs to you?” Nolan held the messenger bag out, which he’d refilled with the letters, the class notebooks, and everything else that had originally been in it—pens, the squished granola bar and pack of gum, the crumpled receipts, including the UVM Bookstore receipt, deodorant, headphones, and a Trailblazers water bottle with the old team logo.
But not the button Eli had ripped off Nolan’s shirt that day in the storage closet. That sat on his dresser at the townhouse like a reminder of what his life had been like before Eli had stepped into it with his existential dread and death-by-bagel and jumbo-sized couch.
Friedle stared at the bag blankly for so long that Nolan began to think he’d gotten it wrong.
But then Friedle let out a surprised laugh and reached for it. “Holy shit. Where did you find this?”
Nolan’s shoulders sagged as relief turned his body to Jell-O. “In the storage closet next to my dad’s office.”
“What?” Friedle looked from the bag to Nolan. “But I’ve been in there a zillion times and never seen it.”
“It was on top of a box on the top shelf,” Eli explained. “Tucked against the wall. We didn’t know it was there until we took the box down. But wait.” To Nolan, he said, “He’s Freddie?”
“Freddie?” Friedle raised both eyebrows. “How do you know about that name? No one except my wife calls me that and usually only in . . . ahem . . . usually on special occasions.”
Next to Nolan, Eli snickered.
