As if hearing my thoughts, his eyes found mine.
“Listen, Brian, I’ve got to go,” he said into the phone while closing the distance between us. “I’ll catch you later.”
I wondered if that was one of his teammates, though I couldn’t think of any Coyote player with that name.
And I was very familiar with the roster.
“So hi,” he said, putting his phone into his pocket and smiling down at me.
“So hi,” I replied, feeling geekily nervous as I smiled back up at him. “I can’t believe you just walked with that clump of people and no one recognized you.”
“I’m telling you, it was us together that brought on the attention the other night,” he said. “Because of the show. I manage to blend in most of the time.”
“Sure you do,” I said as I watched a few people behind him do a double take.
“So did you pick up Dale?” he asked as we entered the building and got our tickets scanned. “Is he all in alignment now?”
“My dad got out of work early, so he grabbed the cat, thankGod,” I said. “Dr. Monica—the kitty chiro—reminds me of a hippie preschool teacher. Like the woman never stops smiling while she tells you all the ways you’re making your cat stressed out, and I can’t deal with her judgment.”
“Tony likes her?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“Oh, my dad thinks she’s an oddball, but he also thinks she’s like the cat whisperer.”
“Your dad is a complicated guy, isn’t he?”
“He contains multitudes, that’s for sure,” I said with a laugh.
It was so strange, the way we chatted as we walked through the huge facility, because he felt like a friend.
It didn’t feel like it was only the third time we’d ever met in person, that was for sure. We shared more about ourselves as we grabbed hot dogs and beers at one of the many snack stands. He told me about how things had been going at practice, which gave me such strange insight, learning what life looked like for him on a daily basis.
I told him about my job and the exams and how I was waiting for my first set of results.
“It’s somehow not surprising that you’re a math person,” he said, reaching for his beer.
“What does that mean?” I asked around a bite of hot dog.
“I’m not exactly sure, but I think it has to do with your sense of humor. You’re smart funny, not stupid funny.”
“Oh, the compliments; how ever shall I handle all the flattery?”
“It’s a lot, I know.”
“ ‘Not stupid funny’ is the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Wiseass.”
“Keep ’em coming, yes,” I teased.
“So what about your brothers—what do they do?” he asked. “Are they math people, too?”
“Those guys,” I said, rolling my eyes. “All three of them wear suits to work every day and have people who report to them; a trio of successful brainiacs. It’s super annoying. Ty’s the VP of a consulting firm, Matty’s a data scientist, and Joe’s a developer at a start-up. Like, how do you follow siblings who all bought their first houses before they turned thirty?”
I took a gulp of beer to stop myself from oversharing. I’d beenthis closeto saying I had mountains of student loan debt, which was something I definitely didn’t need to share with a millionaire.
“Yeah, but you have a really good job, too,” he said. “If the slacker in the family is a CPA, Tony knew what he was doing.”
“Not a CPAyet, and Tony doesn’t know anything—it was all my mom,” I said with a laugh. “She was a teacher who knewexactlywhat she was doing.”