It’s a full-blown chaos on the ice, players beating each other up and drawing blood as the referees try to control them in vain. The crowd is living for it, rattling the arena with their screams.
Toronto shouldn’t have touched Noah. It’s an unwritten rule to keep your hands, blades, and sticks away from the goalie—and if you don’t…well then it’s your funeral.
The announcers say that Noah is fine, and the Bandits end up winning the game. Yet my heart worries about Noah and how there were bags under his eyes when the camera panned to him.
Or how there was no real happiness even when they won the game. Or how he didn’t look in the stands for a familiar face—not once—knowing he has no one.
When I go to sleep that night, I worry, why amInoticing all those things about him? But what worries me more is that I want to know so muchmore about him.
I want to unearth all the things he hides from the world, from his friends, and from himself.
I worry about how to bring a genuine smile to the gorgeous face of the wall of the Boston Bandits until he forgets everything weighing him down.
* * *
On a sunny Wednesday, I find myself banging on Noah’s door.
The large bouquet in my hand makes it difficult for me to carry the basket, and seeing me struggling to juggle everything on my own, Dan, the doorman, decided to help me.
Though he talked my ear off the entire elevator ride, I like him. His grin is contagious.
“Why did the math book look sad?” Dan asks me another one of his riddles, hiking up the basket to get a better hold.
“Why?” I ask, even though I’m an elementary school teacher and I’ve heard this one a thousand times before.
He shrugs. “It had too many problems,” he says with a straight face. It’s his face with the hiddenhope that I’ll understand his joke that makes me laugh out loud, and his proud grin widens even more.
I feel good. I haven’t laughed this much in a long time.
“Okay, I got another one,” he says, raising a pointer when I knock on the door again. My eyes become the size of a saucer when he holds the heavy basket with one hand.
“Careful,” I squeak, pointing to him, clutching the bouquet tight as if that would stop anything from happening if the basket were to fall.
“Oops. Sorry.” He says with a sheepish smile, his free hand instantly going under the basket.
When I’m sure the basket or the contents inside are in no imminent danger, I take a relieved breath, my hold loosening before I kill the flowers.
“Why don’t the skeletons fight each other?” he continues asking as his dark hair falls over his forehead.
“Why?” I ask, already knowing he’ll answer as I ring the doorbell once again.
Cherry on a pancake, where did he go?!
This time, Dan smiles before he answers, and yes, I need the answer because it’s a new one. “They don’t have theguts.”
I burst out laughing, my free hand covering my mouth before my spit flies over his face. When I’m sure there’s no danger of that happening, I cover my stomach because Dan has made me laugh so much in the last fifteen minutes that now my tummy aches, but the laughter just won’t stop.
Satisfied with my reaction to his joke, Dan looks proud while chuckling alongside me, blowing a wayward hair on his forehead animatedly, making me swat his hand playfully. We’re both barely standing on our feet when the door swings open with a whoosh.
“Where’s the fucking fire?Jesus!” Noah growls, his face scanning for the perpetrator who murdered his peace.
His figure blocks the door, his arms spread, resting on the sides of the doorframe. Noah’s eyes soften a smidge when they fall on me, but the second they fall on Dan and my free hand on his arm, his eyes resume being hard at the corners.
He does not look happy to see me. Must still be bothered about their last game, being poked and prodded on ice in heavy padded gear is no smallthing.
“What’s so funny? Tell me, I’d like a good laugh too, Dan,” his lips lift into the fakest and the deadliest smile I’ve ever seen on anyone.
He unhurriedly crosses his arms over his chest, flexing his biceps and leaning his shoulder against the door as he waits for Dan to speak.