Page 2 of From A to Us

Nolan hummed an acknowledgment and sipped his beer. “So. Your turn.”

Eli’s eyebrows knitted together. “To . . . get engaged?”

“No.” Nolan laughed again. “Unless . . . Are you seeing someone you want to get engaged to?”

“Nah. Haven’t dated anyone in a while. I’m single.” Eli straightened. “Very single.” He met Nolan’s gaze, his cheeks brightening.

Around them, other patrons laughed and ate, and the televisions played highlights of tonight’s Trailblazers hockey game against Pittsburgh. Every once in a while, Eli appeared on screen, the subtitles dictating his post-game media interview.

But for whatever reason, all Nolan wanted to do was catalog Eli’s freckles.

Nolan hadn’t known Eli well back then. He’d dated Michelle for six or seven months, so he’d only dined with the Parkers a couple of times, and he’d rarely visited the arena when his dad was coaching. There’d been no reason to. He remembered Eli as bright and friendly and gangly, but aside from that, he’d given him as much thought as he had his sister in the past ten years.

He was certainly giving him more thought now and probably would long after he returned to San Francisco. There was something about the way Eli looked at him so intently when he added, “Super single,” that slipped under Nolan’s skin and stayed there.

“Not that I have a lot of time for dating,” Eli continued. He leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table. “But I’d make time for the right person. Are you seeing someone you want to get engaged to?”

“No. Well, I am seeing someone but I don’t want to get engaged yet. We just started dating.”

And that was the fourth problem—Nolan was seeing someone, and although it was new, there was potential there.

The smile slipped off Eli’s face before he pasted it back on. “Oh. You have a girlfriend. How wonderful for you.”

Squinting at the odd note in Eli’s tone, Nolan said, “Uh, I guess?” Girlfriend was going a little far for someone he’d only been on a couple of dates with, but the semantics weren’t important. “She teaches astrophysics at Stanford.”

“Wow. Astrophysics. I could teach astrophysics. I mean, once you get comfortable with stellar nucleosynthesis and why iron is basically the universe’s dead end, the rest is just details.”

“Um . . .” Nolan blinked. “What?”

“I love astrophysics. It’s physics but with better visuals and more existential dread.”

“Existential . . . dread.”

“Yeah. You know. Like, how important am I in the grand scheme of things? Look at me compared to this building, compared to a skyscraper, compared to this country, compared to a continent, compared to the earth, compared to the solar system, compared to the vastness of the universe.” Eli tossed back the last of his beer and signaled to the server for another. “I’m a blip. I could help my team win the Stanley Cup, but considering the breadth of the universe, what does that really affect? And if I can’t affect anything, what’s the point of . . . well, anything?”

Nolan was about to ask him if he really believed that when the server arrived with Eli’s third beer.

“Thanks,” Eli said. “Can I order a chicken Caesar wrap and a bowl of clam chowder?” He sent Nolan a charming smile that made Nolan’s heart stutter a beat. “Sorry. I left the arena after the game without my post-game meal and I’m starving. Want anything?”

“I’m good with the pretzels.”

The server left, and Eli swallowed half his beer. “Okay. Tell me about your new job.”

“Okay, wait. Wait-wait-wait-wait.” An hour and a half later, Nolan sat back in his seat and waved his hands, cutting Eli off. “You’re saying that if you had the option to know how you die, you wouldn’t take it?”

Eli’s grin was a little tipsy. Nolan had lost track of the number of beers Eli had consumed to Nolan’s one, but as Eli went to rest an elbow on the table and missed it entirely, Nolan mentally revised tipsy to most of the way drunk.

“Noooooo way,” Eli said, red-cheeked from too much booze but not slurring his words. So there was that. “If I knew how I died, I’d be constantly thinking about the future, just waiting for that day to come instead of living in the moment, and that would suck the joy right out of life. Would you want to know?”

“Yeah. I think so. That way I could avoid the thing that eventually kills me and maybe prolong my life a little longer. Do the things I want to do, accomplish what I want to accomplish, say the things I need to say.”

“But what if the thing that kills you is cancer or some other disease? Can’t avoid that.”

“Maybe not, but I can get screened earlier than I might’ve otherwise and try to catch it early. You really wouldn’t want to know?”

“Absolutely not,” Eli said. “Because what if I die, like, choking on a bagel or something? Then breakfast becomes a high-stakes event for the rest of my life.”

“You could cut the bagel into small pieces,” Nolan offered.