5. Chapter 5 Liam
Iset up for the date as if it were a race I planned to win.
By seven, I had the cabin cruiser ready.
The Hendersons' Sea Ray, thirty-two feet, up on stands in the back row, wrapped tight in white for the winter and nobody's business but mine and the wind's.
I'd unzipped the access flap on the stern, the one you leave so the boat can breathe, and climbed up the ladder into the cockpit.
Inside the plastic, it was a different world. It was quiet, still, and dry.
I ran an extension cord from the shop and set the space heater going on the cabin floor. Camp lantern on the chart table. The blankets from home, the wool ones that smelled like our house, laid over the bench seats. Thermos of cocoa and the good hand warmers.
By seven-forty the cabin glowed. Lantern light coming through white plastic, soft as the inside of a shell. Best room on the lake, and only one person in the world knew it existed.
I climbed back down to wait. On the way, I caught my own coveralls hanging on the shop hook by the door, grease-stiff, Brackett Lake Marina stitched over the pocket, and I took them down and shoved them in the supply closet before I decided to.
Headlights swung into the lot.
7:58. Two minutes early.
He got out of the BMW in a peacoat, a scarf, and my hoodie underneath it all. I could see the burgundy cuff past his sleeve. His breath came out in a cloud, and he stood in the empty lot looking at the dark marina like he wasn't sure he had the right place.
"You found it," I called to him.
He came towards me. Under the one working lot light, his face did the thing it does when the mask is off. Opened up. Younger. "I've been guessing all day."
"Hey," I said. "Before we go down there. I'm sorry about the other day,"
"Liam—"
"I was pushy. I know I was. You'd been in that house for an hour, and I was already on you and that wasn't fair."
He stopped right in front of me, eyes bright.
"It's okay," he said. "I know you just wanted to see me."
"I did."
"I know." He breathed out slow, and the cloud hung between us for a second. "All of this stuff with my dad. I'm scared, Liam."
"What happened in the meeting?"
"He gave me a folder. The rest of this year planned out. Courses, an internship at the firm, no joint program. Ready for my signature."
"Did he bring up the financial stuff? The review?"
"No. Not yet. That's the next step if I don't sign."
"So…?"
He looked past me at the dark lake. Then back.
"I'm not going to sign it Liam."
I held his eyes. He looked tired and scared, and sure all at the same time.
"I know," I said. "I'm here for you. Whatever happens."
He smiled through his fear.
I stepped to him and pulled him into my arms. His body relaxed against mine.
"Come on," I said. "It's this way."
I led him down toward the water, and when we hit the dock, I felt him figure it out. He slowed.
The dock. This dock. The same planks that had been here when a red speedboat with gold accents came screaming into the no-wake zone.
"This is where you almost killed me," I said.
"This is where I stuck the throttle," he said, and I laughed.
"You came in hot. Right about there." I pointed at the water, which was now ice. I walked to the end of the dock and turned back to him, "and this is where you crashed."
He smiled and stepped forward to the other side of the dock. "And you screamed at me. Right about here." He remembered the spot. "You called me a maniac."
"You were a maniac."
"I was eighteen and bad at boats."
"You were eighteen and showing off." I raised my eyebrows and stepped toward him.
"Also true." He moved close enough to me that I could feel the heat from his body.
"Hey," he said with an adorable smile.
I kissed him right where it all started, and his mouth was cold, and then it wasn't. We leaned into each other.
Somewhere out on the lake the ice let go with a long rolling boom, and neither of us jumped.
We stayed like that. His hands found the front of my jacket and pulled, fists in the fabric. My hands went to his jaw, and his skin was freezing, and I held his face and kissed him again, slower, and felt his breath catch against my mouth.
Our noses touched. Stayed. That close, his eyes were too much, so I kept mine shut and just breathed him. Cold air and his cologne. His forehead came down against mine and we stood there in nineteen degrees not moving, just breathing the same air back and forth until it was warm.
"A week," he said.
"Ten days."
"You counted?"
"You didn't?"
His mouth found mine again, and this time it wasn't slow.
His hands let go of my jacket and slid inside it, palms flat against my ribs through the flannel, and the heat of them went through me like a current.
I pulled him closer by the belt loops and felt all of him against all of me, and we fit the way we always fit, his height against mine, his hip against my hip, and the cold stopped being a thing that existed.
He made a sound against my mouth. Small. The kind he tried to swallow and couldn't. That sound turned off my brain and all that was left was want.
I pressed him back half a step. His shoulders hit the dock piling. I kissed his neck below the ear where his pulse was going fast, and he tipped his head back and let me, and his fingers dug into my sides hard enough to bruise.
"Liam."
"Yeah."
"We're on a dock. In December."
"I'm aware."
"In public."
"There's nobody for four miles."
"My dad has binoculars."
That got a laugh out of me, and he laughed too, and the laughing broke it just enough to pull back. Not far. An inch. His mouth wet and his eyes half-shut and his hands still inside my jacket.
"Come on," I said. "I've got something better than a dock."
***
Getting Alex up a ladder and through a shrink-wrap flap in a peacoat was comedy. I let him struggle with it, because watching a rich kid problem-solve a boat access panel is a gift you don't rush.
Then he got his head inside.
The Sea Ray had a deep-V hull and a cabin you could stand up in if you weren't too proud of your posture. Teak trim, curved windshield, a helm console that probably cost more than my mom's car. In the summer, somebody's lake-weekend trophy. In December, wrapped and forgotten, mine by default.
I came up behind him and watched him take it in. The lantern-lit cabin, the blankets, the heater ticking away, the whole glowing pocket of stillness inside a wrapped boat in a frozen lot. Snow on the ground under all of it. And in here, gold light and wool and the smell of cocoa.
"Liam." He turned around, and his face had come all the way undone. "What is this?"
"Our winter hideaway."
"It's — " He sat down slowly on the bench.
"It's shrink-wrap and a camp lantern, man."
"I know." He pulled a blanket over his knees. His voice dropped. "It's perfect."
I felt a rush in my chest. I couldn't buy him anything he couldn't afford, and he was happy with something I could put together with what I had… or what Jerry and his customers had. Either way, my golden boy was happy.
I climbed in and zipped the flap most of the way and the cold sealed out and it was just us and the light and the heater's tick, and I handed him the cocoa because I'd made it for this, for the way his hands would wrap the cup, and I sat down close enough that our shoulders touched.
He told me about his day, avoiding anything about his father. I understood why. He did tell me about his mom for the first time, and a cute story about Frederick the heron.
I told him about the marina. Some of it. The parts that were funny. Jerry's exact tone of voice. I made him laugh twice. I did not tell him it was my entire week. I let him think it was an afternoon, an errand.
"How'd you even swing this?" he said, looking around the cabin. "Jerry just hands you keys now?"
"Jerry trusts me. But Jerry doesn't know. So maybe he shouldn't."
Alex titled his head. "Well, he always liked you." He leaned back against the cabin wall with the cocoa in both hands, his knee pressing warm against mine under the blanket. "That summer ended up being the best summer of my life."
"Because of the manual labor?"
"No, because of you." He looked down at the thermos. "I didn't have a single friend who knew me without my last name attached. And then I showed up here, and you hated me."
"You liked that I hated you?"
"Yeah, because it was real. And everyone else in my life was fake." He took a sip. "Plus, you shared your sandwich with me anyway."
I smiled, leaning my shoulder into his. "PB&J. Crunchy."
"Crunchy."
We were both quiet for a second. The lantern threw soft shadows on the teak, and I could feel his warmth all down my left side, hip to ankle.
"You also took your shirt off at lunch."
He looked at me sideways. "I took my polo off. It was ninety degrees."
"I know why you did it. Your undershirt rode up, and I saw your stomach and I got so turned on."
He turned his head. Full eye contact now, six inches away. "That's why you got weird?"
"Did I?"
"You got weird. You grabbed your water bottle and stared at the lake for two minutes."
I could feel my face getting warm, even now, years later, sitting in a dark boat with the guy. "I didn't know what was happening. I'd never looked at a guy like that before. And then you made that joke about working in your underwear and I started getting turned on."
He stared at me. His thumb had stopped moving on the cup. "I thought I'd offended you."
"No… it was just the first time I got turned on by a guy."
"That was the first time?"
His voice had gone soft. I felt his hand find my thigh under the blanket.
"Yeah. I didn't understand it. I just knew I wanted you to come back at eight AM sharp."
He didn't say anything for a second. His fingers pressed gently into my leg, and I put my hand over his and held it there, and we sat with it — the whole beginning of us, laid out between the cocoa and the lantern light, all the things we'd never told each other about that summer finally on the table.
I looked at him in the gold light, in my hoodie with the cocoa going cold in his hands, and a newer, warmer feeling rose through my body. I knew what it was. I loved Alex, but I was too chicken to say it.
"I'm glad you crashed into that dock," I said instead.
"I stuck the throttle."
"I'm glad you stuck the throttle. And I'm glad your dad made you work here. And I'm glad I shared my sandwich with such a hot rich kid."
He looked at me, and his face softened. His hand turned over under mine, and our fingers laced together.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."