14. Chapter 14 Alex
Maddie asked me about rowing for the next few minutes while everyone talked around us.
Not politely. Not the way adults ask, where they're really just waiting for you to finish so they can talk about themselves.
She asked the way a twelve-year-old asks.
Relentless. No regard for whether you've swallowed your food.
She was sitting beside me with her chair pulled so close that our elbows kept bumping, and she was pointing at me with her fork while she chewed.
"How fast does the boat go?" she asked.
"About twelve miles an hour," I said.
"That's not that fast."
"It feels fast when you're going backward."
"You go backward?" She put her fork down and stared at me like I'd told her the earth was flat.
"The whole sport. You face the back of the boat."
"That's dumb," she said. "How do you know where you're going?"
"You trust the person steering."
She thought about that for exactly one second. "Gymnastics is still harder."
Sam was at the far end of the table between Danny and Grandpa, hunched over his plate.
He hadn't spoken to me directly all night.
He'd spoken in my general vicinity. He'd asked Maddie a question about rowing that was clearly meant for me, and when I'd answered, he'd looked at his plate and said "cool" and gone back to his phone. Fifteen.
This was the loudest meal I'd ever sat through.
At Peninsula Point, dinner was a performance. You spoke when the conversation arrived at your chair. You held your glass by the stem. The silences between courses were designed. You could hear the clock in the next room.
Here, I couldn't hear myself think. Uncle Russ was at the head of the table, talking with his mouth full, gesturing with a piece of ham on his fork.
Linda was up and down from the stove behind us, carrying serving dishes and foil and the butter nobody could find, and every time she passed behind Liam she touched his shoulder without looking at him.
Grandma Jean was correcting Maddie's posture from across the table without raising her voice.
Danny was at the far end, sliding beers down to me without asking.
And I was sitting in the middle of it in borrowed khakis eating ham with my hands because Russ had told me that's how you eat ham in this house. Nobody was watching to see if I used the right fork because there was only one fork, and it was the wrong size, and it didn't matter.
I caught Liam's eye across the table. He was between his Grandpa and his mom, leaned back in his chair, and was watching me. He'd been watching me all night. Looking for something.
I held his eyes and let him see what was there.
After dinner, the dishes piled up fast. Linda and Aunt Deb were at the sink before anyone else had pushed back from the table, the water running, their voices low and easy underneath the noise.
I picked up my plate and carried it around the table to the counter, and Linda took it from my hands without looking at me.
"Go sit down," she said.
I went and sat down. The living room couch, next to Uncle Russ, who had claimed the remote and was flipping channels. Danny was on his other side. Grandpa Ed was in the chair by the window with a fresh beer and his eyes half-closed. The TV light flickered across the small room.
Liam appeared beside me in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. He leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
"Hey," he said. Low, just for me. "Come here for a second."
I followed him down the narrow hall, past the bathroom and the family photos on the wall, to his room.
He shut the door behind us and leaned against it.
The room was dim. Just the lamp on the nightstand, the twin bed still unmade from this morning, my duffel bag in the corner. He looked at the floor.
"Sorry," he said.
"For what?" I said.
"For all of it. The noise. My uncle. Maddie asking you that in front of everyone." He gestured at the walls, the ceiling, the house. "I know it's a lot. And it's not what you're used to."
"Liam."
He stopped.
"What do you mean you're sorry?"
His jaw was tight. He was leaning against the door with his arms crossed now, making himself small, and his eyes were wet, and he was trying not to let them be.
"I grew up in a dining room where the forks were the right size and every conversation was a test," I said.
"I just ate ham with my hands because your uncle told me to.
Nobody tested me on anything tonight except whether gymnastics is harder than rowing.
And it is, apparently. Maddie was very clear. "
He laughed. Shaky.
I crossed the small room in two steps and put my hands on his face. Palms against his jaw. His skin was warm.
"This is the best Christmas Eve I've ever had," I said. "Don't apologize for it."
"You're not lying, right?" he said. "Because you feel bad for me?"
"No, Liam. You're lucky to have this."
He shrugged, his shoulders moving under my hands. "I'm lucky to have you."
He kissed me. Quick, hard, the kind that comes from relief more than want. His hands grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled, and I let him hold on, my back against the dresser now, his weight against me.
"We should go back," he said against my mouth.
"We should."
Neither of us moved for ten seconds. Then he let go and straightened my shirt where he'd wrinkled it, and opened the door.
Liam's grandmother was in the hallway, standing there with a dish towel in her hands, like she had business being exactly in this spot at exactly this moment. The bathroom light behind her lit up her silver hair.
"Alex," she said.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"You play rummy?"
"I don't, actually," I said.
"You're going to learn. Come sit down."
She turned and walked back toward the dining table, which had been half-cleared.
The casserole dishes were gone, the plates stacked in the kitchen, but the tablecloth was still on, and the lamp from the counter threw warm light across the surface.
She pulled out a chair at the far end and sat down.
Maddie materialized from somewhere behind the couch and dragged a chair up next to mine before I'd even sat down.
Liam's grandmother pulled a deck of cards from somewhere. I didn't see where. She dealt with the speed and precision of someone who'd been doing this for fifty years, the cards snapping off her thumb, explaining the rules in a voice that didn't tolerate questions.
I asked questions anyway.
"So I can pick up the whole discard pile?" I said, looking at the spread of cards fanned across the table.
"If you can use the bottom card," Grandma said, arranging her hand without looking up.
"What counts as using it?"
"Laying it down in a set. Three of a kind or a run."
"What's a run?" I said.
"Lord." She looked at Maddie over her glasses. "Maddie, explain a run to this boy."
"It's like four, five, six," Maddie said, leaning over to look at my cards. "Same suit. It's not hard."
"I went to prep school and nobody taught me this," I said.
"That's sad," Maddie said. She meant it.
"It is sad."
I laid down a set of three and looked up at Grandma Jean for approval. She looked at the cards on the table. Looked at me over her glasses.
"That's a start," she said.
I played three more hands. Won none of them. Maddie won two and was ruthless about it, slapping her cards down and announcing "Rummy!" loud enough that Uncle Russ looked over from the couch. Grandma won the third and said nothing, which was worse.
From the kitchen, I could hear Linda and Liam at the sink. The water running. The quiet clink of plates being stacked in the drying rack. And then Linda's voice, low, not meant to carry past the kitchen doorway.
"He fits."
Two words. I don't think she knew I had heard. I kept my eyes on my cards, and my chest went tight in a good way.
I fit.
"Alright." Linda clapped her hands once from the kitchen doorway, dish towel over her shoulder, the general addressing her troops. "Dirty Santa. Everyone in the living room. Russ, turn that off."
"It's the fourth quarter—" Russ said from the couch, the remote in his fist.
"Russell," Grandma said from the table, not looking up.
He turned it off.
"What's Dirty Santa?" I said to Liam, who'd come out of the kitchen drying his hands on his jeans.
"You'll see," he said. He smiled.
The living room rearranged. Folding chairs pulled in from the dining table.
The couch pushed back against the wall. Everyone in a rough circle around the coffee table, which now held a pile of wrapped gifts in the middle, each one tagged with a number.
The wrapping was newspaper, grocery bags, one in the Sunday comics. The crooked tree blinked behind us.
"Rules," Linda said, standing in the center, and Russ groaned from the couch.
"Same as every year. Draw a number. Go in order.
Pick from the pile or steal from someone who already opened.
Three steals max per gift. If I see anyone fighting over the good candle again, I'm ending it.
" She pointed at Russ. "I'm looking at you. "
"That candle was rightfully mine," Russ said, crossing his arms.
"It was a fifteen-dollar candle and you tackled your own mother," Linda said.
"I reached across her," Russ said.
"You knocked her glasses off."
"Her glasses were loose."
"My glasses were not loose," Grandma said from her chair by the window, where she sat with the authority of a woman who had presided over this argument for too long.
"NUMBERS," Linda said, holding up a hat full of folded paper strips.
When she got to us on the couch, I said "I didn't bring a gift."
She smiled down at me. "Don't worry. I wrapped something from last year for you."
Liam was about to say something.
"You too, Liam," she said.
We both said "thanks" at the same time.
I drew seven. Liam got three. Maddie got one and threw herself back against the couch cushions in fury.
I leaned into Liam and grabbed his leg. "Your mom is the best," I whispered.