7. Chapter 7 Liam
His breathing slowed against my chest. His hand, which had been rubbing my chest and stomach, went still. I looked down and his eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, his whole face relaxed.
He'd fallen asleep.
On a boat we weren't supposed to be on.
I should've woken him up. It was almost eleven.
A missing BMW at midnight was the kind of detail his dad would catalogue.
But I didn't wake him up. I lay there with his weight against me and his breath warm against my chest, and I let us have it.
The ten or fifteen minutes where nothing was wrong and nobody wanted anything from either of us and the world was exactly the size of a wrapped boat.
I pressed my face into the top of his head, kissed him, and thought about nothing at all for as long as I could make nothing last.
It didn't last long enough. It never does.
He stirred. Shifted. His eyes opened slowly and unfocused, and for a second he didn't know where he was. I watched him not know, watched the confusion move across his face and then clear.
"How long was I out?" he asked.
"Fifteen minutes. You snore, by the way."
"I do not snore."
"Light snoring. Tasteful snoring. Very Ivy League."
"Shut up." But he was smiling. "I can't believe I fell asleep."
I gestured at the general scene of the crime. "You're basically a stray cat. Show up, get fed, pass out."
"That's the most romantic thing you've ever said to me."
"I'm a romantic guy."
He laughed, and the laugh was the sleepy, unguarded kind, and then he said, still half into my chest: "I've slept better in your places than I've ever slept in mine. The dorm. Here. Anywhere with you." A pause. "That probably means something."
Something. I hoped it was the same something that I felt towards him, but both of us were probably too chicken to say it.
He sat up, and the cold found the gap where his body had been, and I wanted to pull him back down and not let go.
"I have to go," he said. "If the car's not in the driveway by midnight, he'll ask questions."
"I know."
He started pulling layers back on — thermal, flannel, hoodie, peacoat, the whole Everest kit in reverse — and I watched him dress in the low light and thought about the thousands of times I'd watched him put armor on.
Blazer after a regatta. Mask before a hallway.
Composure in front of his Kingswell people.
He dressed the way soldiers dress, one piece at a time, each one taking him further from the person he'd been thirty seconds ago.
I sat up. Pulled my shirt on. The cold was real now; the heater losing against the cold, and the spell of the cocoon was breaking.
I should tell him about Christmas Eve.
I'd been carrying the invitation around for days. My mom had invited him, and she'd said it like it wasn't a big deal, and maybe it wasn't, but it felt like it was.
Telling him meant bringing him inside for a whole evening, in my actual house, with my actual family, eating food that costs four dollars to make, sitting on folding chairs that don't match. Every cousin, every aunt, every square foot of what I come from, all at once, nowhere to hide.
"So." I kept my voice easy. "My mom's setting a place for you. Christmas Eve." I felt my own pulse in it, which was stupid; it was just an invitation.
He was quiet a beat too long.
"I want to," he said.
Want. He put weight on it, and the weight was real, I could hear that it was real.
"But I can't promise."
The heater ticked. Outside, far off, the ice groaned.
"My father wants answers by Friday. I don't know if he's going to bring up the financial stuff."
"I get it." I nodded.
"I don't know what Christmas looks like over there yet. It could be quiet. It could be the whole thing coming down. And if it comes down — I can't promise you. I want to…"
It was the honest answer. I knew that even while it was happening. It was the responsible answer, the grown-up one, the one that didn't make a promise he couldn't keep, which is more than my father ever managed.
Didn't matter. My body doesn't run on honest.
Because underneath the warmth of him, underneath the boat and the lantern and the best night I'd built with my own two hands, there was a kid at a kitchen table watching a chair stay empty.
Fucking still.
I felt the old heat come up behind my ribs. The going-quiet thing. The door-closing thing.
I felt myself do it. Felt the notch turn down inside me, the temperature drop a degree, my body pulling back into the shell one inch to get ahead of the leaving.
"Sure," I said. "No, yeah. That makes sense."
And he felt it. Of course he felt it… he read me better than anyone alive. His hand found my jaw in the low light.
"Liam. Hey. That's not a no."
"I know."
"I mean it. That's a… the situation is insane, not a… I don't want your family."
"I know, Alex. It's fine. It's a lot over there. I get it."
He looked at me for a long moment, and he didn't push. The notch stayed turned down. I couldn't turn it back on command. It's the one thing about myself I couldn't out work.
We closed the boat down. Killed the lantern, unplugged the heater, folded the blankets, and zipped the flap. We climbed down into the cold, and it hit twice as hard after all that warmth.
The walk back up the dock was slow. Neither of us was good at endings anymore — we've had too many, we've gotten allergic. At the top, by the lot, he pulled me in and kissed me. It was a good kiss, a real one, and it didn't fix the crack, but it wasn't trying to.
"Best night I've had in weeks," he said against my temple. "I'm not being polite."
"I know you're not."
"I'll figure out Christmas. I'm going to try like hell to be at that table."
"I know." And I did know. That was never the problem. Believing him was never the problem. The problem lived somewhere, believing couldn't reach.
He got in the BMW. The engine turned over, too loud in the empty lot, and I stepped back and watched his taillights swing out toward the shore road and turn north toward the Point, toward the stone house.
I turned south. Wool blankets folded under my arm, thermoses empty, Jerry's twenties spent down to a fold of ones. I walked home along the water in the dark, and across the lake his headlights climbed the far shore and disappeared, and I went the other way, into the dark side, the honest side.
Same water. Opposite shores. Still. After everything, still.
I gave him a perfect night tonight. Every seam of it was tight. The dock, the boat, the lantern, the cocoa made specifically for him. I gave him all of it. Except for the truth about where I go all day, the coveralls in the closet, the sometimes that's really an everyday.
And he gave me all of it back. More than everything. Just no promise.
We were even.
I hated that we were even.