Christmas at the Frozen Lake

1. Chapter 1 Liam

The bus north out of Ashford smelled like diesel and somebody's egg sandwich.

I had the window seat, my duffel between my feet, Noah's whale dock wrapped in a hoodie inside it. Four hours to Brackett Lake. I'd made this ride a dozen times since freshman year, and I'd spent every one of them braced. Grades. Money. The scholarship. My secret feelings for Alex.

Something always rode home with me.

This time was different. The secret was out. The hearing was over. Alex was mine, and I was his, and the entire world knew it, and I should've been sitting on this bus feeling lighter than I'd felt in two years.

I wasn't.

Part of me was relieved to be leaving school after everything that had happened. A few weeks away from campus, from the looks, from the hallways that still felt like they were watching. It'd be a good break.

The other part of me was doing math I didn't want to be doing.

Alex was driving up tomorrow. To the lake.

To my side of the lake. And at some point this week he was going to walk through the door of my house and stand in the kitchen and see everything — not the D1 athlete version of me, but the actual version. The poor version.

Outside the window, the landscape turned to box stores, then car lots, then farms, then the hills and tall pines dusted in snow. Before we made it too far north, the bus stopped at a gas station. I found a nice pair of gloves as a Christmas gift for my mom; her hands were always cold.

After I got back on the bus my phone buzzed against my thigh.

Alex

Leaving at 9 tomorrow. At the lake by 11.

Liam

When can I see you?

Alex

I don't know yet. My dad's got this whole week choreographed. Dinners, meetings, "conversations."

Liam

So when?

Alex

Soon. I promise. I just have to figure out the lay of the land first.

I read soon and felt uneasy.

Because soon meant he could mean he'd come the day he got here, or it could be a week later. The thought of either made me anxious.

What happens when he sees where I actually live?

I wanted him in it. I also wanted to burn it down before he got there.

Liam

Just let me know when. I'll make it work.

Alex

I will. I promise.

Liam

You owe me a snowball fight by the way.

Alex

I've never been in a snowball fight.

Liam

Saddest thing you've ever told me.

Alex

Twenty years of missed developmental milestones.

I huffed at the window. The glass fogged and unfogged. Never been in a snowball fight?

The bus pulled in at 4:05 and my mom was already there.

She was standing by the car with her arms crossed against the cold, in the navy jacket from the hospital cafeteria, the one with the coffee stain on the sleeve she'd been failing to get out since I was in high school.

She'd come straight from a shift. She always came straight from a shift.

My mom's whole life was straight from a shift.

I came down the bus steps, and she had her arms around me before my bag hit the ground.

"Hey, Mom."

"Hey, baby."

She held on one beat longer than usual. I felt it and knew what it was. The last time she'd seen my face in person, I'd been her son, the rower. Since then there'd been a phone call and a boy named Alex Harrington, and a version of me she'd only met through a speaker. The half gay version.

She pulled back and looked at me.

I held still and let her.

"You're too skinny," she said. "Did they stop feeding athletes down there?"

I thought she was going to bring the whole thing up right here in the parking lot. But that was it.

My shoulders dropped about two inches. She reached for the strap of my duffel bag.

"I got it, Mom."

"Give me the bag."

"I got it."

"Liam, give me the —"

"Mom. I'm six-one and I row for a living."

"And I carried you for nine months, so give me the bag."

I didn't give her the bag. We walked over to the car.

"Stubborn."

"I wonder who I get that from."

She smiled.

There was a gas station coffee waiting in the cupholder on my side. Black. Still warm.

"You didn't have to."

"I know I didn't have to." She started the car. The heater came on full blast. "Seatbelt."

"I'm twenty."

"Seatbelt."

I put on the seatbelt.

The road home ran along the west side of the lake, and the lake showed up in pieces between the trees — flat, white, quiet.

Frozen out past the coves already, early this year.

A couple of ice shacks sat out on the north end.

Snow lay on everything, muffling the world until the loudest sound in it was our tires.

Summer, this road was a parade. Boat trailers and Range Rovers and kids in swimsuits walking the shoulder with towels around their necks. December, it was ours. The rentals, the year-rounders, the plow guy. The lake in winter belonged to the people who actually lived on it.

Across the water, the north shore houses sat dark. Big glass boxes and stone piles with their docks pulled and their lights off, waiting for owners who wouldn't think about them again until May.

One of them was his.

Peninsula Point stuck out into the lake about two-thirds of the way up the far shore, and the Harrington house sat on the end, stone and glass, the biggest thing on the water. Dark tonight. One small light burning somewhere low in it.

Tomorrow it wouldn't be dark.

"So," my mom said, eyes on the road. "When does that boy of yours get in?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Good." She nodded at the windshield. "I'm setting a place for him Christmas Eve."

Not a question. Not an offer. A fact.

"Mom."

"What."

"His family stuff is complicated right now. I don't know what his Christmas even looks like yet."

"Liam." She let a beat go by. "I didn't ask what his Christmas looks like. I said I'm setting a place. Whatever happens, he knows there's a plate on this side with his name on it."

I looked out the window.

"The place gets set either way," she said. "That's all."

We headed past the inlet, over the small bridge, then into our neighborhood.

My mom swung left onto our road, and then there it was.

Home. It was a small cape with peeling grey paint and white trim.

The front door, the one we never used, was painted green with a fake gold knocker on it.

We always used the side door because it was next to the driveway.

We got out and went in.

Same crack in the second porch step. Same storm door that needs a hip check. Same smell inside: heat from the baseboards, old coffee, the ghost of every cheap dinner ever stretched across that stove.

I stood in the doorway with my duffel and looked at the house the way I'd never looked at it before.

The kitchen table was to the right of the door in a little nook.

The kitchen opened out to the tiny living room.

Carpet worn into a path between the kitchen and the TV.

Popcorn ceiling that had been there forever, yellowed near the light fixture.

The couch with the blanket folded over the arm, and not for decoration.

A bookshelf with my mom's paperbacks and a framed photo of me at eight holding a fish with both hands.

My room down the hall. Twin bed, dresser with a drawer that needed lifting, medals thumb tacked straight into the drywall because frames cost money.

I stood there and saw all of it and thought: he's going to stand here. In this doorway. And he's going to see every square foot of what I actually come from.

I put my bag down and went to help with dinner.

Dinner was American chop suey, which cost about four dollars to make and tasted better than anything I'd eaten at school.

My mom ate across from me at the kitchen table, still half in her work clothes, and let me get most of a plate down before she started.

"So," she said. "Catch me up. How's everything?"

"You know most of it."

"I want the in-person version."

"The in-person version is the same. Marcus got probation. Alex got cleared. We're back to training in January."

She watched me for a second.

"Tell me about him," she said instead.

"About who?"

"About who?" She gave me a look. "About Alex. I know about his father, and I know about the hearing, and I know about the rowing. I don't know about him. What's he like?"

I pushed a noodle around my plate.

"He's — " I started, and realized I'd never had to describe Alex to anyone who hadn't already met him. "He's smart. He's three moves ahead of everyone in the room and nobody knows it. He drinks fancy lattes… and he irons his jeans."

"He irons his jeans?"

"He doesn't even know he does it. That's how he was raised. Everything in its place."

"And he's with you." She said it with a small smile.

"Yeah. And I own one button-down and it's from Target."

"That's a good shirt."

"Mom."

"It is. I picked it out." She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. "Is he kind?"

"Yeah. He is."

"Is he kind to you?"

"Yeah, Mom. He's kind to me." I met her eyes and felt the heat behind mine. "He's the kindest person I've ever met who was also raised by a monster."

She was quiet a second. The fridge changed registers.

"Good," she said. "That's the one that matters."

She changed lanes the way she always did, no signal.

"How's the rowing? And I don't mean the drama, I mean the rowing." A little light came back into her. "Fourth at the Charles. My son. I told everyone at the hospital. Deb thinks a regatta is a type of pasta."

I laughed. "It was a program record. Both schools."

"In the boat with Alex?"

I nodded.

"So, what's next?"

"Winter training. There's a quad — four of us, both schools mixed, and it's fast, Mom. There's talk about Henley. England, next summer." I shrugged. "Past that, I don't know."

And then it surfaced, the thing I'd somehow sat on for weeks.

"Oh — " I set my glass down. "I made captain."

She went still. "What?"

"Interim captain. Jace graduated early, and Coach Hale — " I suddenly needed to look at my plate.

"Liam."

"It's just interim, it's not—"

"Don't you dare." She was already up, coming around the table, and she grabbed my face in both hands like I was eight years old.

Her eyes were wet, and she wasn't hiding it now.

"Captain. Captain of the team." She kissed the top of my head hard.

"Fifteen years I've been driving you to practices and now… Captain Moore."

"Okay, Mom."

"I'm saying it one more time."

I shook my head even though I could feel myself turning red. I was happy to make her proud. She was the reason I was doing all of this.

"Captain Moore." She let go of my face, wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand, done. Went back to her chair. Picked up her fork like nothing had happened, and that's when she landed it.

"What'd you get him?"

"What?"

"For Christmas."

I didn't answer.

"Liam."

"I don't know yet. I've got time."

"You've got a couple weeks." She took her plate to the sink. "Has anything come to mind? Anything meaningful?"

Meaningful. The word sat there. What was meaningful to a guy who'd grown up with everything? What could I hand across a table that wouldn't just remind both of us how different our lives were?

"Not yet," I said.

"It'll come to you." She rinsed her plate and put it in the rack. "Goodnight, baby. I've got the early one tomorrow."

She stopped in the doorway and turned. "It's good to have you home," then disappeared down the hall.

My room was cold at the edges, the way it always was.

I set Noah's whale dock up on the nightstand and turned on the speaker. The sounds came out into the dark.

My phone lit up.

Alex

Just realized tomorrow night we'll be sleeping on the same lake for the first time since it all started.

Liam

I like that. Drive safe golden boy.

Alex

Goodnight, Liam.

Liam

Night.

I plugged the phone in and lay there.

Meaningful. My mom said it and now it was mine to figure out. What was meaningful to Alex Harrington? Not expensive — he'd had expensive his whole life. Not practical — he could buy practical without thinking. Something he couldn't get from a store or a catalog, or a family with a checkbook.

I didn't have the answer yet. But the question was in the room now, and it wasn't going anywhere.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep with it still turning.