I sit back down and get the second skate off.
Stanley’s phone, which was blasting music a second ago, starts ringing through the speaker. Everyone covers their ears and yells at Stanley to answer the damn phone.
He glances at it, then he picks it up. The room feels silent without his music blasting.
“Hey, Pop.” His voice is different. Flatter. The cadence has changed. The volume has come down by half. He has turned, automatically, so that his back is to the room, and he is walking toward the back hallway by the equipment cage as he listens. “Yeah. No, just got off the ice. Yeah. I know.” He disappears around the corner.
Stanley comes back from the back hallway about three minutes later. He walks back into the room and the menace facade is fully back in place, like nothing happened.
“Diner,” he announces. “I am buying. I just remembered I’m rich.”
“You didn’t just remember,” Rowan says. “You forget on purpose so you can remind us all that you’re balling.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that, Laurens.”
“How rich are you anyway?” Walsh asks.
Stanley ignores him. “Diner. Twenty minutes. Reeve, you’re coming. Laurens, you’re coming. Pers, you’re coming.”
“I have class,” Percy says, without looking up.
“Come on, Percy.”
I reply, “I think we all have class. It’s Wednesday.”
Percy says again, “I have class.”
Stanley tells him, “I will leave you alone for one week if you come.”
Percy considers this. “No,” he says.
“One month.”
Percy looks over at him. “Take a picture of me and bring me with you digitally.”
Walsh laughs while Stanley sighs. “Text me what you want. I’ll bring it home for you.”
Tomasetti scoffs, looking over at Sam and Trent. “What the fuck?” He yells over us. “Stan, do you have an extra room at the Hawthorne House? I wanna move in.”
Stanley shakes his head. “No can do, Tomasetti. We’re five and occupied.”
“I’m sitting in Percy’s place. What diner?”
Stanley looks at me and says, “Big D’s.”
I point at him. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
Rowan echoes me.
Big D’s is two blocks from the rink and has been there since 1976. I know this only because the place has a sign behind the register that sayssince 1976. The hostess is a woman named June who has been working the morning shift since I was a freshman. She sees me come in behind Rowan, points at the booth in the back, and says “Two?” without Camdenking stride.
I look behind us at the crew of hockey players piling in. Stanley is talking their ears off, so Rowan and I take the table for two.
We slide in. June drops two waters on the table. “Know what you’re getting?”
I nod, looking at Rowan. “We have class soon, so it needs to be fast.”
“Eggs?” Rowan says.
