“Point taken.” Internally I note not to share any of my high school Zuko fanart with him. I love a broody man in fiction, but I can admit that they don’t play well with others—which would make them difficult in a group setting like D&D.
Noah interrupts my thoughts. “Why did you play a cleric?”
My expression goes still, and I meet his gaze solemnly. “My faith means a lot to me.”
His lips part in surprise, but before he has a chance to say anything—aha, Miss Crystal, back again. Her Crayola-red lipstick outlines a friendly smile as she sets our plates before us, followed by the milkshake. “Enjoy. Let me know if I can get’cha anything else.”
Noah reaches for his silverware enthusiastically, but I stop him with an outstretched hand. “A moment,” I say, boldly taking hishands in each of mine.So warm,I think as my fingers fold around his. “To say grace.”
Noah hesitates for only a moment before he gamely closes his eyes and squeezes my hands.
“We give our thanks to the Lady of Luck,” I say, my tone thick with playful earnestness. “For your unluckiness in being pushed out of your home due to your roommate’s romantic endeavors, and for my luckiness in having an excellent excuse to share with you a feast fit for a king.”
Noah laughs, and the deep, rolling sound makes me a little giddy. “Do I say ‘Amen’?” he asks. “ ‘Cheers’?”
“Cheers works.” I immediately feel the absence of his hands as he slips his palms from mine, but we hold each other’s gazes as we bend forward to sip from the milkshake at the same time.
The next few minutes are filled with blissful silence as we dive into the food, taking turns spearing fluffy bites of pancake from each plate. The cinnamon roll turns out to be a most excellent choice, dripping in gooey icing and shot through with swirls of cinnamon sugar, but the strawberries in the other stack are sweet and tart, pairing perfectly with the peaks of whipped cream that decorate the top.
As Noah washes down a bite with a sip from the frosty milkshake, I continue. “I chose cleric because I like playing support roles. I like helping people.” I lick my knuckles where they accidentally brushed against whipped cream. “I thought about playing a big bitch with a giant fuck-off sword, but the idea of being thrown into the middle of combat, surrounded by enemies, when I’m only just now learning the rules of D&D…” I shudder. “Maybe next time.”
“But why the Goddess of Luck?”
I purse my lips around the straw of the milkshake, pausing before I answer. “Maybe I was trying to get lucky.”
His voice is heavy with joking doubt. “Is that right?”
I laugh and shake my head. “Nah, it’s just—all of the other gods had themes like life, death, nature, storms,torture…I wasn’t really drawn to any of them. I didn’t want to play some good-girl stuck-up nun character, but I wasn’t trying to sacrifice children to appease some fantasy god, either.” I play with the red straw, twirling it between my fingers. “Luck sounded like fun. I liked how well it matched the theme of D&D—like how we leave everything up to a roll of the dice, right? And I suppose I was feeling a little unlucky when I first built Jaylie’s character, so.”
Noah winces sympathetically. “Bit of a dry spell?”
I roll my eyes toward the ceiling.
He concedes with a smile. “The old job?”
“Yeah,” I say, smearing a pancake around my plate, trying to lance one stubborn soggy strawberry. I smile ruefully. “It felt like everything that could have gone wrong did. I thought dedicating my character to the Goddess of Luck might catch me a break.”
“Has it?” He’s sitting with his bearded chin propped up on his folded hands. After nearly clearing his plate, his eyes are blissfully half-lidded now, though they’re still trained on me with interest.
I tilt my head from side to side, uncertain. “Sure,” I say. “For now. I’m enjoying my break.” I want to ask him if Dan has looked at my portfolio yet, but when I remember that he spent the week with his long-distance girlfriend whom he’s about to break up with, I figure he’s probably distracted.
God bless him, Noah takes my short answer to mean that I don’t want to go into details (I don’t) and changes the subject. “How well do you know the other folks in our group?”
“Not well at all, honestly; they’re both Liam’s friends. But Liam and I have been best friends since middle school. It’s a wonder it’s taken him this long to drag me into this D&D mess.” Liam and I have a habit of constantly shitting on each other, in the manner of most close friends, but my tone is warm, my smile nostalgic. “Wewere inseparable all through grade school, and we went to the same college, too. We had plans to move to New York together, but…” I go quiet for a moment. Even now it still bums me out to think about whether I might have liked the city better with him there. Things might not have gone so wrong if I’d had him to lean on. “I think he was afraid of the big city. I would have thought small-town Texas would scare him more, but he seems to love it here.”
“There’s a lot to love,” Noah offers.
I’m still skeptical—but maybe not as much as I had been when I first got here a little over a month ago. “What about you? Have you hung out with the others outside of game time?”
“No, just you.”
Oh.
“Don’t like them much?” I tease.
“Maybe I just really like you.” He leans forward, keeping his eyes locked on mine as he takes a sip from the milkshake. It’s the sort of look that challenges me to hold on to it—that dares me to look away.
It’s the sort of look that invites me to meet it with the same blunt honesty.
