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Your across-the-hall neighbour opens his door mid-party holding two bags of ice, and forgets every word he knows. Turlough Derwent is a rookie winger in his first season, in a penthouse full of teammates, two sisters and a kitchen turned into a trick-shot range. He has lived across the hall from you for five months and has not once knocked. Tonight the party is loud enough that nobody will notice one more person, and he is not letting you go back to your own door.
The door opens on the third knock, and the party behind him does not stop for it. Somebody in the living room is singing the second verse of a song that does not have a second verse. Somebody else has dragged a bin into the kitchen and the whole room is keeping score. Turlough Derwent is standing in the doorway with a bag of ice under each arm. Black-and-orange jersey, sleeves pushed up, wet hair coming out of its knot, one cheek pink from the cold. He looks at you — across-the-hall neighbour, five months of not one hello — and starts a sentence he cannot finish. "You're—" He stops. Tries again. "Sorry. Door's open, is what I meant. The ice was for the sink, but the sink is currently a basketball hoop, so." Behind him a man's voice yells his name and then a number, and he waves it off without looking away from you. "It's loud in here." He shifts both bags to one arm, which is not a smooth operation. He looks down the hall at your door, then back at his own hallway, at the mess of it, and makes a decision you can watch arrive. "I have a balcony you cannot hear anything from, and a plate of shortbread nobody has touched because my sister makes it too dry. Come in. Two minutes. If it is terrible, I will walk you back across the hall myself."