Page 26 of The Waiting Game

The number of dates he’d been on with guys whose eyes had glazed over when he started talking about houseplants was almost laughable.

“I dunno,” one guy had said at the end of one awkward, terrible date. “I just thought a hockey player would be cooler.”

But Jonah had never been cool.

He was good-looking, athletic, well-off, but cool was not one of the adjectives anyone who knew him for long had ever used to describe him.

Nico Arents was effortlessly cool.

Jonah? Not so much.

“Hey, are you contemplating if you’re going to stage a heist to get one of these things or what?” Felix asked. “I’d offer to drive the getaway car, but I’m kinda without a license right now and don’t want to violate the terms of my probation. Especially in a foreign country.”

Jonah laughed, snapping out of the daze he’d been in. “Nah. No heist necessary. I can buy lantern hibiscus in a pot at a nursery. They’re not super rare or anything.”

They resumed walking, a relaxed amble as they took in the sights, enjoying the quiet, nearly deserted space together.

The sound of rushing water signaled that a waterfall was just around the corner.

All of the landscape inside was artificial, of course, but the designers had gone to great effort to sculpt natural-looking rocky faces. A few moments later, Felix and Jonah passed under a jutting overhang where a waterfall flowed out, cascading down into a pool, creating a tunnel between it and the rock on the other side.

Felix reached out, trailing his fingers through the rushing water, then turned and smiled at Jonah. A bright, content smile that Jonah hadn’t seen on his face in a long, long time.

Jonah’s love for Felix was an ever-present thing.

Stronger and sharper during emotional moments like intense games. Mellower and softer at moments like this when they walked in companionable silence, their knuckles brushing occasionally as their hands bumped.

Speaking their contentment without words.

“Are those palm trees?” Felix asked a little while later, craning his head to look at the large leaves arching overhead.

“No. They’re actually a cycad, but they’re often mistaken for palms,” Jonah explained. “It’s confusing because lot of the common names for them include the word palm, but they’re only distantly related.”

“Huh.”

“They’re called living fossils. They’ve been around since the time of the dinosaurs.”

Felix’s face lit up. “Oh neat.”

God, Jonah remembered Felix’s dinosaur phase when he was about eight. He’d been obsessed.

Jonah’s grandparents had taken both boys to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto dozens of times. One summer they’d even taken a trip to the Midland Provincial Park just outside of Calgary, Alberta, to visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Felix had loved that trip so much.

Jonah wondered if he’d enjoy going there if they ever had time when they were on the road playing Calgary.

There was an indoor garden there, filled with plants that had lived during the Cretaceous Period too …

“Hey, would you ever want to take a trip out to Alberta and go to the Royal Tyrrell Museum?” Jonah asked, feeling impulsive. “In the off-season or something.”

Felix shot him an odd look. “I guess.”

And Jonah sighed internally. That was the thing. Felix grew out of these interests. These phases.

And Jonah, well, he had two major loves. Hockey and plants.

Three, if he counted Felix.

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