Chapter 8 Liam
I'd never brought anyone into a thrift store before. Not on purpose.
Growing up, thrift stores weren't cute or vintage or whatever word rich people used to make secondhand sound intentional.
They were where my mom bought my school clothes.
Where I found the winter coat I wore for seven years straight.
Where you learned to check the seams and smell for mildew and calculate price-per-wear in your head before you hit the register.
But walking into Second Chances with Alex Harrington—watching him stand in the doorway like he'd entered a foreign country—I felt something I hadn't expected.
Pride.
"So, this is a lot," Alex said, looking around.
The store was full of racks of clothes crammed together so tight you had to muscle hangers apart to see anything. Shelves along the back wall stacked with old books, mismatched dishes, ceramic animals missing ears.
A bin of vinyl records near the door with a hand-written sign taped to it: ALL RECORDS $2 — NO RETURNS. A mannequin in the window wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cowboy hat, one arm missing, the other posed in a permanent wave at the street.
The counter was a glass display case filled with jewelry and old watches and a collection of pocket knives fanned out on velvet.
Behind it, a woman in her sixties with reading glasses on a chain and a cardigan that looked like it came off her own racks.
She was pricing items with a sticker gun and didn't look up when we walked in.
The whole place smelled like old fabric and dust and someone's grandmother's attic.
"This is organized chaos. There's a system."
"What system?"
"My system." I was already moving through the racks.
Fingers sliding across hangers with the automatic efficiency of someone who'd done this a thousand times—checking fabric, checking fit, skipping past anything with stains or busted zippers.
"You start at the left. Work your way right.
Skip the first rack because that's where they put the stuff nobody wants.
The good stuff is always in the middle or near the back. "
Alex followed me. Watching. Not with the polite distance of someone humoring a friend, but with genuine fascination. He reached out and touched a leather jacket on the rack like he was handling an artifact.
"How much is this?" he asked.
"Check the tag."
He flipped it. "Eight dollars."
"Yeah."
"This would be three hundred dollars at a store near my house."
"Welcome to my world, golden boy."
He kept browsing. Pulling things off racks, holding them up, putting them back. He didn't have the rhythm—kept gravitating toward things that were too big or too worn or too weird. A velvet blazer. A Hawaiian shirt to match the mannequin.
He held up a knitted Christmas sweater with a big orange cat.
"Christmas is coming," he said with a big grin.
"No," I said to the cat sweater.
"It's ironic."
"It's a cat."
"An ironic Christmas cat."
"Put it back."
"You're so serious."
He put it back. But he was still grinning—that loose, unguarded grin I only ever saw when we were alone.
I found what I was looking for near the back—a rack of flannels, the heavy kind, not the thin fashion ones that fell apart after two washes. I pulled a green-and-white one off the hanger. Held it up. Good weight. Good condition. The right kind of worn-in.
"That would look good on you," Alex said.
I checked the tag. Fourteen dollars. My wallet had a twenty and some change from my last work-study deposit. I could swing it, but it meant skipping something else this week.
"It's alright," I said. I put it back on the rack.
Alex watched me like he saw something but he didn't say anything. He just kept browsing and wandered into the depths of the store like an archaeologist discovering long lost oddities.
Ten minutes later, I was flipping through the vinyl bin when I noticed I lost sight of him. I looked up. He wasn't in the aisle. Wasn't at the books. Wasn't at the weird lamp shelf.
He was at the register. Card out. The woman behind the counter was scanning something I couldn't see.
I hope he isn't buying the cat sweater.
Whatever it was the woman bagged it, he tapped his card, and he headed over to me.
He walked up to me, a smile bubbling underneath his cool composure.
I put down the record I was looking at. "What'd you get?"
He pulled the green flannel from the bag and held it out. "The green is going to bring out your eyes."
"My eyes are fine."
"This is going to make them even better." He smiled and handed me the shirt.
I grabbed it. No one really bought me something before and it was uncomfortable, especially considering he just bought lunch too.
"Alex you didn't have to—"
"Liam, I wanted to. It's not a big deal. Something to remember the day." He gestured with the plastic bag still in his hand.
"Fine."
"Fine?" He asked.
I smiled. "I mean thank you."
"But I have one condition."
"A condition?" I raised my eye brows.
"You wear it with no undershirt. Top two buttons undone."
Heat climbed up my neck. "You're ridiculous."
"Those are my terms. Take it or leave it."
"If that's what my golden boy wants, then that's what he gets."
I couldn't even believe I was saying it but he did something to me, something I didn't understand.
Alex blushed.
"I'll be right back," I said.
"Where are you going?"
"Dressing room. Apparently I have conditions to meet."
I found the curtained-off corner at the back of the store.
Pulled off my hoodie. Then my t-shirt. The air was cold on my bare skin for a second before I pulled the flannel on.
Buttoned it up from the bottom, left the top two undone.
Rolled the sleeves to my forearms. Looked at myself in the smudged mirror propped against the wall.
It fit. Not tight—just right. The kind of worn-in that made it feel like I'd owned it for years.
I walked back out.
Alex was flipping through the vinyl bin. He looked up.
His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"Conditions met?" I said.
He stepped closer. His eyes tracking from the open collar down my chest to where the flannel tapered at my waist. Then back up. Slowly.
"You look really sexy like that," he whispered.
Something hot curled in my stomach. I smirked. "Let's go before I drag you into that changing room."
Alex swallowed. Hard. "Yeah. Let's go."
We walked out of the store and I could feel his eyes on me the entire way to the door. Back on the main street, the air hit the exposed skin at my collar but I didn't mind. The flannel was warm.
***
Marlow had a trail.
We found it by accident—a wooden sign at the end of the main street pointing toward HEMLOCK FALLS NATURE WALK, 1.2 MILES. The trail started at the edge of a small parking lot and disappeared into the trees.
"You want to?" Alex asked.
"Yeah. Let's go."
The trail was narrow. Single file at first, then widening into a path big enough for two. The trees arched overhead—maples and oaks, mostly, the leaves turned to fire. Red and gold and orange, the light filtering through the canopy in shafts that made everything glow.
We walked close. Our shoulders bumping. My hand finding his between us—not holding, just touching, the backs of our fingers brushing with every step.
Nobody else on the trail. Just us and the trees and the sound of our footsteps on packed dirt and dry leaves.
"This is disgustingly beautiful," I said.
"You say that like it's an insult."
"It's aggressively picturesque. Like a screensaver came to life."
"You're very romantic."
"I'm realistic. Nature is trying too hard right now."
Alex laughed, startling a bird out of a bush ten feet ahead. The bird shot into the canopy and Alex flinched and grabbed my arm and I didn't let go of the joke for the next quarter mile.
"A bird, Alex. You jumped at a bird."
"It came out of nowhere." He was brushing a leaf off his jacket like the bird had personally attacked him.
"It came out of a bush. Where birds live."
"I don't care it was flying aggressive."
"It was a sparrow." I held a low branch back for him as the trail narrowed around a bend. "Golden boy. Nationally ranked rower. Afraid of a sparrow."
"I'm not afraid of—can we move on?"
"Never!"
He shoved my shoulder. I shoved him back. He caught my hand when I did and held onto it, and suddenly we were walking hand in hand and neither of us was pretending it was an accident.
His thumb traced circles on the back of my hand.
"This is nice," he said. Quietly. The trail opening up ahead into a clearing where the light came through in wide golden shafts. Like he was saying it to himself as much as to me.
"Yeah. It is."
We walked. The trail wound through the trees, following a creek that ran clear and cold over smooth rocks. The sound of the water mixed with the leaves rustling overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a woodpecker was hammering at something.
Alex was different out here. Looser. He pointed out things—a cluster of mushrooms on a fallen log, the way the light hit the creek, a tree with roots so twisted they looked like hands gripping the earth. He noticed details. The world slowed down for him when he let it.
I noticed him noticing, and something ached in my chest. This was who he was without the performance. Without the boathouse and the Harrington name and the weight of being watched. Just a guy who saw beauty in small things and was finally in a place where he could say so.
"There," Alex said, pointing ahead.
The trail opened up. The creek widened. And spanning it—old, wooden, the boards weathered grey—was a covered bridge.
It was maybe forty feet long. Wooden beams overhead, open sides with waist-high railings, the creek running underneath. The light came through the slats in thin gold bars, striping the floorboards. Leaves had drifted in and collected along the edges—red, gold, brown.
We walked to the middle and stopped.