If Noah had a dollar for every birthday that he'd enjoyed he'd have twenty of them, and that number was just a couple hours short of becoming twenty-
one. He was good at birthdays. He couldn't remember any of the ones before he turned five but he was
sure that they were good. Even Noah's favourite Yaya story was about the day he was born - how he came into the world red as a tomato, screaming at the top of his lungs.
'He was the strongest baby,' she liked to say,
'he'd get ahold of your hair and just about pull it out from the roots. I started wearing my braids up just to keep them away from him.'For his 21st -they celebrated early- she'd baked a cake shaped like a guitar and decorated it with icing the flavour of black licorice (his favourite, and then pinched his cheek and warned him
not to do anything she wouldn't do when she discovered he was throwing himself a party.
"Agape said she'd make sangria," Noah grinned sideways at Mal, reaching for the bags in his arms to add them to the bags in his considerably thicker arms. "Enough for everyone. I don't have to buy anything."
