"Yes."
I didn't push.
A beat.
"No siblings," he said. "Just me."
There was something in that.
I heard it. Didn't say anything about it.
Sal, or Bill as his name tag said, arrived with the pizza.
We ate.
The margherita was good—straightforward and correct, the kind of pizza that didn't try to be anything other than what it was. Nathan ate his half with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything and I ate mine the way I ate most things and we talked, easy and slightly careful, two people figuring out new terrain.
I was mid-sentence—something about Searcy, something about the last away game, the wave he'd tried to start at the opposing team's rink—when someone stopped at our table.
Young, maybe nineteen, Wardens hoodie that had seen better days.
"Sorry," he said. "Are you—you're Wesley Morrison."
I put my pizza down. Smiled. The smile came automatically, the full one, the one that was for exactly this. "Hey, man. Yeah."
"Oh my god." He looked like he might vibrate out of his own skin. "I'm so sorry, I can see you're eating, I just—the Morr Roar. I've been doing it since you joined. My whole section does it.”
"Which section?"
"Upper bowl,” he said. “214."
"214 is loud. I hear 214."
He made a noise that was not quite a word.
"You want a photo?" I said.
He absolutely wanted a photo. We took it. I said something that made him laugh. He thanked me three times, apologized twice, backed away from the table like he was trying very hard not to run.
I picked up my pizza.
Nathan was looking at me.
"What? Do I have food on my face?”
"No," he said. “That’s not it.” Nathan looked at his pizza. Ate some of it. "You remembered the section number.”
"I always remember the sections." I pulled off a piece of crust. "214 has been doing the roar since my second home game. There's a guy up there, huge guy, red jacket, starts it every time. I look for him."
Nathan was quiet.
"What? Come on, tell me.”
"It’s nothing," he said.
But it wasn't nothing. I was getting closer to figuring that out.
I had also been trying to figure out, for a while now, what it was about Nathan Cross that had gotten through every system I had.
