13. Chapter 13 Liam
By five o'clock the entire house smelled like ham and I'd changed my shirt three times.
The first two were wrong. The third one I pulled from the bottom of my bag was the green-and-white flannel from the thrift store in Marlow.
"You look great," Alex said from the bed. He was sitting cross-legged on it in a pair of my khakis and a crew-neck that was slightly too loose across the shoulders. His hair was still damp from the shower.
"Yeah?" I said, tugging at the collar in the smudged mirror on the back of the door.
"Yeah." He got off the bed and stood behind me and straightened the collar with both hands, his fingers warm against my neck. "Marlow."
"Marlow."
He kissed me once, soft. "I'm nervous too, you know."
"You don't look nervous," I said.
"Twenty years of training." He smoothed the flannel across my shoulders.
In about forty-five minutes my entire family was going to walk through that door and find Alex Harrington sitting in my kitchen in my clothes.
The house was clean. The food was ready.
My mom was calm. And I was terrified that he'd see all of it at once and something in his face would shift.
The slow math of a person realizing the life he'd traded everything for a poor scholarship kid and his crazy family.
My mom's voice from the kitchen: "They're gonna be here in twenty minutes and somebody needs to set the table!"
We headed down the hallway. The kitchen was small and bright, and my mom was at the stove with her back to us, stirring something in the big pot. The ham sat on the counter under foil; the pies cooling on the stovetop beside her.
"Which plates?" I said.
"All of them," my mom said without turning around. "Top shelf, bottom shelf, and the three above the fridge."
I pulled a chair over to reach the ones above the fridge.
Floral rim. My grandmother's, arrived here at some point and never went back.
I handed them down to Alex, who was already at the table laying out the everyday ones.
Blue, white, two with chips. He put the floral ones in the gaps and grabbed two handfuls of forks and knives.
He carefully laid them next to each plate, and when he stepped back and looked.
"You're good at setting a table," I said.
"I've never done it," he said, lining up a fork. "But it's fun."
My mom made a sound from the stove that might have been a laugh.
And before we knew it, Grandma Jean came through the door without knocking.
Small, sharp, coat halfway off before she'd cleared the threshold, eyes already doing the inventory. The cold came in with her. Grandpa Ed followed, quiet in his trucker cap and red and black flannel, stomping snow off his boots on the mat.
"Linda," Grandma said, looking past the kitchen into the living room where the tree leaned left by the window. "The tree's crooked."
"It's always crooked, Mom," my mom called from the stove.
"It's crookeder."
"That's not a word."
"It's my word." She hung her coat on the hook by the door and turned and saw me standing by the table.
"There he is." She crossed the kitchen in three steps and pulled me into a hug that was stronger than her size had any right to give.
She smelled like coffee and the hand lotion she'd used since I was a kid. "Merry Christmas Eve, baby."
"Merry Christmas Eve, Gram."
She held me at arm's length, her hands on my shoulders, reading my face. "You eating enough?"
"Yes, Gram."
"You're lying." She looked over my shoulder toward the stove. "Linda, he's lying."
"He eats fine, Mom," my mom said, not turning around.
"He's skinny."
Grandpa stepped up behind her and put his hand on my shoulder. One squeeze, firm, his version of the same hug. "Looking good, Captain," he said.
"Thanks, Grandpa."
Grandma turned toward the kitchen doorway and saw Alex. He was standing in the frame between the kitchen and the hallway with a dish towel over his shoulder, tall, nervous, his hands at his sides as if he wasn't sure what to do with them.
"You must be Alex," she said. She looked at him over her glasses, unhurried.
"Yes, ma'am," Alex said.
"You're too tall to stand in this kitchen. Sit down before you hit the light fixture."
She walked past him to the stove to inspect the ham. Grandpa gave Alex one nod and followed her. Alex looked at me from across the kitchen with the stunned expression of a person who'd been assessed in two seconds and apparently passed.
Then, Uncle Russ came through the front door already mid-sentence.
"— so the plow is in the ditch, right, and the guy's standing on the shoulder waving at traffic like it's his job now—"
He was big enough that the doorway framed him like a portrait, snow on his shoulders, his voice filling the room before his body did.
Aunt Deb came behind him carrying a casserole dish in both hands, angling past him.
Sam shuffled in behind them in a hoodie, phone out, head down.
Maddie was already through the door finishing a sentence nobody had heard the beginning of.
"Liam! Buddy!" Uncle Russ grabbed me in the hallway. The hug compressed my spine. "Captain Moore. That's huge, man."
"Thanks, Uncle Russ," I said, trying to get my breath back.
"We gotta talk about your training plan," he said, one hand still on my shoulder. "I was reading about this thing the Navy SEALs do—"
"Russ," Aunt Deb said from the kitchen, setting the casserole on the counter. She raised her eyebrows. He stopped.
He found Alex next. Alex was standing by the table, and Uncle Russ crossed the kitchen in two strides and stuck his hand out.
"So you're Alex," Russ said.
"Yes, sir," Alex said, taking it.
"Don't sir me. I work for a living." He clapped Alex on the shoulder hard enough that Alex shifted his weight. "Liam says you row for Kingswell."
"I did," Alex said. "I'm actually—"
"You know what I never understood about rowing?" Russ said, leaning against the counter, arms crossed. "You're going backwards. The whole time."
"That's. Yeah," Alex said.
"You can't see where you're going."
"You can feel it."
"Feel it," Uncle Russ said, considering this. He rubbed his chin. "Like driving in reverse?"
"More like driving in reverse at full speed in traffic," Alex said.
Uncle Russ laughed. Big. The kind that shook the room and rattled the plates Alex had just set out. "I like this kid," he said, turning to nobody in particular.
"Russ, let the boy breathe," Grandma said from the stove, where she was lifting the foil off the ham.
"I'm welcoming, Jean," Russ said.
"You're smothering," Grandma said.
"With all due respect, Jean—"
"Don't you Jean me in my kitchen," Grandma said.
"It's my kitchen, Mom," my mom said from behind her.
Grandma rolled her eyes and walked away toward the living room, muttering something about nobody respecting ownership anymore.
Aunt Sheryl came in carrying a salad in one hand and a casserole in the other, wearing a blouse nicer than anything else in the room.
Danny followed behind her with a case of beer under one arm, not saying a word, heading straight for the couch next to Grandpa.
He set the beer on the floor, cracked one, and the two of them settled into the same silence they'd been practicing it for years.
Maddie found me in the hallway while I was pulling extra chairs from the bedroom, dragging them one at a time past the bathroom and through the narrow corridor.
"Liam," she said, blocking my path.
"What's up, Mads?"
"Is Alex famous?" she asked, dead serious.
"No."
"He looks famous."
"He's just tall."
"Sam keeps staring at him," she said, jerking her thumb toward the living room where Sam was pretending to look at his phone from the corner of the couch.
"Tell Sam to stop being weird," I said.
"I already told him. He told me to shut up."
"Tell him I said stop."
She paused, blocking the hallway with her hands on both walls. "Can I sit next to Alex at dinner?"
"Sit wherever you want," I said, and she disappeared back toward the kitchen.
Dinner. Eleven people at a table built for six.
The folding chairs were wedged between the real ones, elbows touching, the casserole dishes taking up half the surface.
The kitchen light was on but too dim, so my mom had put a lamp from the living room on the counter behind her, and the room had a warm, uneven glow. Everyone was too close. Nobody minded.
Uncle Russ said grace from his chair at the far end, hands folded, eyes not quite closed. He thanked God for the food, the family, "everyone at this table, old and new," and the Bills' draft prospects. Everyone laughed except Grandma, who said "Russell" from her seat by the window.
The noise started immediately.
"Pass the ham," Aunt Deb said.
"Who made the casserole?" Grandpa asked, poking at it with his fork.
"That one's Sheryl's," Aunt Deb said. "Mine's the one with the better crust."
Uncle Russ leaned across the table toward me, his elbows in the butter dish. "Liam. Serious question."
"Here we go," Aunt Deb said, closing her eyes.
"Deb, let me ask," Russ said.
"It's about the Bills," she said.
"It's about leadership," Russ said. He pointed his fork at me. "You're a captain now. I put together some ideas. A PowerPoint."
"That's, uh. That's really nice, Russ," I said.
"Twenty-seven slides. Based on principles I've been studying."
"He watches YouTube videos about everything," Aunt Deb said to Alex, who was sitting across from Russ.
"They're documentaries, Deb," Russ said.
"Maybe we can look at it some other time," I said. "It's Christmas Eve."
"It'll take ten minutes."
"Russ, I appreciate it, I just think maybe—"
"Five minutes. I'll skip the Navy SEALs section."
"There's a Navy SEALs section?" I said.
"There are three Navy SEALs sections."
"Russ, I would love to see the PowerPoint," Alex said, leaning forward.
I looked at him. He was completely serious. Or completely performing serious. I couldn't tell, and it didn't matter because Uncle Russ's face lit up like Christmas morning.
"You see?" he said, slapping the table. "This kid gets it. Liam, why can't you be more like Alex?"
He was already pulling out his phone. Aunt Deb squeezed his arm. Grandma kept eating her ham.
"Russ, put the phone away," Grandma said, not looking up.
"I'm showing—"
"Russell James."
The phone disappeared into his pocket.
Aunt Sheryl was asking Alex about his major from her end of the table.
Danny, beside her, had been sliding beers down to Alex without asking, because asking would require talking.
Grandpa spoke for the second time all night.
"Smart answer," he said, when Alex told Sheryl he hoped he wouldn't be a politician.
I was in the middle of it. Arguing with Uncle Russ about the defensive line while Deb shook her head. Getting my posture corrected by Grandma from six seats away. Handing my mom the serving spoon when she reached across me for it. My family, my kitchen, the noise I grew up in.
Then Maddie said it.
She'd been quiet for almost four consecutive minutes, which was a personal record. She was sitting next to Alex, her chair pulled close, her plate half-finished. She turned to him with her fork in one hand.
"Are you Liam's boyfriend?"
The table went quiet. Uncle Russ stopped mid-chew, a piece of ham hanging off his fork. Aunt Deb's hand found his arm. Grandma looked up from her plate. My mom kept cutting her ham and didn't look up. Sam sank two inches lower in his chair.
Alex looked at Maddie. Twelve years old. Ponytail. Waiting.
"Yeah," he said. "I am."
One second.
"Cool," Maddie said. "Do you row too?"
"I do," Alex said.
"Is it hard?"
"It's the hardest thing I've ever done."
"Harder than gymnastics?"
"I don't know. I've never done gymnastics."
"Gymnastics is harder," Maddie said, and went back to her plate.
Uncle Russ looked at Aunt Deb. She squeezed his arm. His face went through confusion, processing, then a big, slow nod. He picked up his beer.
"So anyway," he said. "Fourth quarter. Thurman Thomas—"
The dinner kept going. Russ talked about the Bills. Deb told him to stop. Sheryl asked for seconds of her own casserole. Danny opened another beer at the far end of the table. Grandma corrected Maddie's elbows. My mom got up to check the pies, squeezing past three chairs to get to the oven.
Nobody left. Nobody's face changed. The word boyfriend had been said and the room had absorbed it the way it absorbed everything else. Like noise. Like family.
I sat there with the ham and the mismatched plates and the eleven people crammed around a table built for six, and the everything I'd been dreading since the bus ride home was happening around me, and a seventh-grader had handled it better than I ever could have.
Alex caught my eye across the table. He was wearing my crew-neck, and Russ was talking his ear off, and Maddie was pulling on his sleeve to ask another question, and he looked at me over all of it and nodded.
Stay. Please just stay.