The table went slightly quiet.
Knox put his fork down.
"Say it to my face," Knox said.
Searcy looked at him. "What?"
"Tell me you're scared of a goalie," Knox said, at a volume that caused the family at the next table to look over. "To my face. So I can remember this moment for the rest of my life."
"I'm not scared," Searcy said. "I'm statistically—"
"Statistically," Knox repeated, like the word had personally offended him.
"Andrew," Matthew said, without looking up.
"I'm calm."
"You're pointing."
Knox looked at his hand. He was, in fact, pointing. He put it down.
Jenkins raised his hand. "Can I ask what save percentage has to do with—"
"No," Knox said.
"I was just—"
"Jenkins." Knox picked his fork back up. "Eat."
Jenkins ate.
From the far end of the table, where he'd been sitting since breakfast started without saying a single word to anyone, Foster looked up from his coffee.
"Is he always like this?" Foster asked. To no one in particular. To the table. Deadpan, the way people spoke when they genuinely didn't understand what they were witnessing.
The table went quiet.
Knox turned his head very slowly toward the far end.
"Like what?" Knox asked.
Foster looked at him. "Like that." He gestured at Knox with his coffee cup. Unhurried. Completely unbothered.
"I'm not—" Knox stopped. "I'm not being like anything. I'm being normal."
"You told Searcy you wanted to remember the moment."
"I do want to remember the moment."
"Because he read a save percentage out loud."
"Because he read it like it was a—" Knox stopped again. His jaw moved. Matthew, without looking up from the laptop, put his hand on Knox's arm with the practiced ease of someone who had been doing this for two years and had developed excellent reflexes.
Foster looked at Matthew's hand on Knox's arm. Then at Knox. Then he picked up his coffee and drank from it like the conversation had concluded satisfactorily.
"The Hawks are good this year," Foster said, to his coffee. "That's all he was saying."
Knox made a sound that was not a word.
