25. Chapter 25 Liam
Noah had found a second bottle of wine somewhere, and nobody was asking questions.
The table was too small for six people. Remy had pulled a stool from the kitchen counter and was sitting three inches higher than everyone else, which he seemed to enjoy.
Ethan was on a camping chair he'd dragged in from the deck.
The rest of us were on the mismatched dining chairs that came with the cabin, and the table was covered in pasta and bread and a salad Priya had made with whatever was left in the fridge, and the wine was cheap and warm and nobody cared.
"This is not how you open a bottle," Noah said, wrestling with the corkscrew.
"You're turning it the wrong way," Priya said.
"There's no wrong way to turn a corkscrew."
"There is literally a wrong way. You're doing it."
Remy reached over from his stool, took the bottle, opened it in two seconds, and handed it back. Didn't say a word. Noah stared at him.
"How."
"I bartended in high school."
"You bartended in high school?"
"My uncle's restaurant. Cash. Weekends." He poured himself a glass and sat back. "Next question."
The cabin was warm and loud and smelled of garlic and the cheap candles Ethan had found under the bathroom sink.
Snow against the windows. The fire going in the living room, throwing light through the doorway. Music from Ethan's phone on the counter, something Remy had picked, jazz with a beat underneath it, and Ethan had complained for ten minutes and then stopped complaining because it was actually good.
I was a little drunk. Not sloppy. Just warm. The edges of everything softened, and the room felt smaller, and the people in it felt closer.
Alex was next to me. His knee against mine under the table.
His cheeks flushed from the wine. He was listening to Ethan tell a story about his film professor, something about a screening that went wrong, a projector that caught fire, and the professor standing in front of the blank wall saying "this is actually a better film than the one we were about to watch.
" Ethan told it with his whole body. Hands moving, voice changing for each character, building to the punchline like he was editing in real time.
Priya laughed first.
"Your professor sounds unhinged," she said.
"All good professors are unhinged. It's a prerequisite."
"My constitutional law professor has been wearing the same tie since 1987. I don't think that qualifies as unhinged."
"That's deeply unhinged, Priya. That's the most unhinged thing you've said all week."
She smiled. Took a sip of wine. Noah put his arm on the back of her chair and she leaned into it without looking.
Remy was talking to Alex about the lake.
Not rowing. The lake itself. How deep it was, where the springs fed in, why it froze unevenly.
Alex was explaining the geology of it, something about the limestone shelf on the north side, and Remy was listening the way he listened to everything, like he was filing it for future use.
"That's why the ice is thicker at the cove," Alex said. "The spring current doesn't reach it. Shallower water, less movement, cleaner freeze."
"So the south shore freezes last."
"Always. By two or three weeks, sometimes."
Remy nodded. I could see him building the lake in his head. The depths, the currents, the freeze patterns. A system to read. That's what the world was to Remy. Systems.
I sat there and listened to all of it. The overlapping conversations, the laughter, the wine glasses clinking, Remy's jazz through the phone speaker.
My hand was on Alex's leg under the table.
His hand was on top of mine. And I was happy.
Not the complicated kind, not the kind with a qualifier attached.
Just happy.
By eleven the pasta was gone and the wine was gone, and someone had found a bottle of champagne that Noah swore he'd brought from New Jersey.
"I packed it in August," he said.
"You keep saying you packed things in August," Priya said. "What were you doing in August?"
"Preparing."
"For what?"
"For this. For exactly this."
"You planned a New Year's Eve party in August?"
Everyone laughed and we moved into the living room.
Fire going. Blankets on every surface. Remy was in the good chair with his feet tucked up and an energy drink he'd switched to after the wine.
Ethan was on the floor next to him, leaning against the chair, his head near Remy's knee.
Priya and Noah were on the couch under a blanket.
Alex and I were on the other end, his back against the armrest, his legs across my lap.
Ethan had the countdown on his phone. Forty-eight minutes.
"We need to talk about the fact that this has been the best week of my life," Ethan said.
"Don't make a speech," Remy said.
"I'm not making a speech."
"You're making a speech. I can feel it building."
"I'm making an observation. Observations are different from speeches."
"Observations don't start with 'we need to talk about the fact that.'"
Ethan tilted his head back and looked up at Remy. Upside down, from the floor. "Let me have this."
Remy looked down at him. They were cute.
Alex shifted. His hand found my arm. Squeezed.
"Hey," he said. Quiet. Just for me. "Come outside with me for a second."
"Now?"
"Before midnight."
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah. I have something for you."
He swung his legs off my lap and stood.
"We'll be right back," he said to the group.
"You're supposed to wait for the New Year for that!" Noah said, wiggling his eyebrows.
I laughed and followed Alex through the kitchen and out the back door onto the deck.
The cold hit immediately. Sharp and clean after the warm cabin.
The sky was clear for the first time all week.
Stars everywhere, the kind you only see away from cities, scattered and bright and so many of them that the sky looked crowded.
The lake was silver in the moonlight. The snow in the yard was blue.
"What's going on?" I said.
"I have a Christmas gift for you. Late."
"Stay here."
He went down the steps and across the yard to the car. I stood on the deck with my hands in my coat pockets and my breath making clouds, and the sound of the party muffled through the cabin wall behind me. I could hear Noah laughing about something.
Alex came back carrying something wrapped in his coat. Heavy. He walked across the yard, up the steps, and stood in front of me.
"I didn't plan this," he said. "I want you to know that. I didn't go there to get this. I went there for my mom. And on the way out, I walked into my dad's office and I just took it."
He unwrapped the coat.
I looked at it. A trophy. Old. Metal and wood. Tarnished at the edges, the brass plate clouded but was still legible.
IRA Championship, 1967. Riverside State University.
I stopped breathing.
"Alex."
"It was on his shelf. My whole life. I walked past it a thousand times."
I took it from him. The weight of it. Solid.
Real. I turned it in my hands and read the names on the plate, the crew, eight names and a coxswain from sixty years ago.
Hale's mentor was on this list. The '67 boat.
The only national championship Riverside ever won.
The trophy that disappeared in 1970 and nobody could prove where it went, and Tyler had been talking about it since the first day I walked into the boathouse.
It had been in Thomas Harrington's office. The whole time.
"I didn't even think about it," Alex said. "I saw it a week ago. And after my mom said sorry… I just went and took it. I didn't plan it. Kinda crazy, right?"
I looked at him. His face in the moonlight. His eyes bright and scared and proud and waiting.
"You stole a trophy from your dad's house."
"I recovered stolen property."
"You're insane."
"Probably."
I put the trophy on the deck railing. Carefully. Like it might break, even though it was solid metal and had survived fifty years in the wrong house. Then I put my hands on his face and kissed him.
His hands came to my waist and my hands stayed on his face and the cold was everywhere and I didn't feel any of it.
"I love you," I said.
"I love you too."
"No, I mean. I love you and you stole a national championship trophy from your father's office for my school."
"I love you and I'd do it again."
"Don't do it again. Once is romantic. Twice is a felony."
He laughed. I felt it against my mouth. I kissed him again, slower this time, and his hands were in my hair, and we stood on the deck in the cold with the stars above us and the trophy beside us and the year running out.
"We should go inside," I said.
"Bring it."
I picked up the trophy. We walked back into the cabin. The warmth hit my face. The music was louder now. Everyone was in the living room, the countdown on Ethan's phone on the coffee table, seven minutes to midnight.
Remy saw it first.
He was in his chair with his feet tucked up and his energy drink on the armrest, and he saw me walk in carrying it and his body went still. He unfolded his legs. Stood up. Crossed the room.
"Give me that."
I handed it to him. He held it in both hands and turned it and read the engraving, and his face did something I'd never seen from him. The composure cracked. His eyes widened and his mouth opened, and he looked at Alex and then back at the trophy and then back at Alex.
"Is this the '67?"
"Yeah," Alex said.
"Where was it?"
"My father's house."
Remy held the trophy. His hands were tight on it. He read the names. Every one. His lips moving.
"How long has it been there?"
"My whole life."
The room was quiet. Everyone watching Remy hold a sixty-year-old trophy like it was something alive.
"Tyler is going to lose his mind," Remy said.
The room exploded. Noah was on his feet yelling.
Ethan had his phone out. Priya was asking "What is the '67?
" and Noah and Remy and I were all trying to explain at once, tripping over each other.
The only national championship. Stolen in 1970.
Empty case in the boathouse. Tyler's been obsessed since freshman year.
"Call him," Noah said. "Call Tyler right now."
Ethan was already dialing. FaceTime. The phone rang twice, and Tyler picked up and his face filled the screen, backwards hat, a party behind him, someone's living room.
"WHAT. It's eleven fifty-six, I'm busy."
Remy held the trophy up to the camera.
Tyler's face went blank. Then his eyes got wide. He grabbed the phone with both hands and pulled it close.
"No."
"Yeah," Remy said.
"NO."
"It's the '67. Alex found it."
"WHERE?"
"His dad's house. It was there the whole time."
Tyler screamed. Not a word. Just a sound.
Pure, unhinged joy. The people at his party turned around.
He was jumping up and down, holding his phone and screaming, and we were all laughing, all of us, the cabin full of noise and Tyler's voice through the speaker yelling, "I KNEW IT.
I KNEW IT WAS AT A LAKE HOUSE. I SAID IT WAS AT A LAKE HOUSE. "
"You said it was the Lockwood house," Remy said.
"I SAID IT WAS A LAKE HOUSE AND I WAS RIGHT AND EVERYONE OWES ME AN APOLOGY."
The countdown started on the coffee table. Ethan's phone, the numbers ticking down. One minute.
Noah grabbed the champagne. Twisted the cage. The cork blew and hit the ceiling, and foam went everywhere, and Priya shrieked, and Noah poured into plastic cups, sloshing, spilling, handing them out.
Thirty seconds.
Six cups raised. Tyler still on FaceTime, holding his own drink to the camera. The trophy on the coffee table between us. The fire going. The music going. Snow on the windows and the lake frozen silver outside.
Ten seconds.
We counted. All of us. Out loud. Remy's voice underneath, steady, the coxswain's count. Ethan's arm around him. Noah and Priya pressed together. Alex beside me, his hand in mine, his shoulder against my shoulder.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
The cabin erupted. Everyone yelling, cups in the air, champagne spilling. Tyler screaming through the phone. Noah dipped Priya, and she grabbed his collar and kissed him, and he almost dropped her. Ethan took Remy's face in both hands and kissed him, and he didn't pull away.
I turned to Alex. He was already looking at me.
His face open and bright and his eyes full and his mouth turning up at the corners and I could see it all.
Everything we'd been through. The dock, the summer, the year apart, the double scull, the semester, the Charles, the disowning, the chili, the marina, the ice, the fight, the clearing, the words: I love you.
I kissed him. In front of everyone. In the noise, and the warmth, and the chaos. His hand on my chest and mine on the back of his neck, and the taste of cheap champagne between us.
"Happy New Year," he said against my mouth.
"Happy New Year."
Tyler was still screaming. Someone turned the music up. Remy was holding the trophy again, sitting in his chair, reading the names one more time.
After midnight the energy settled like snow. The fire burned low. The champagne was gone, and the music had gone from loud to something quieter, something Remy had chosen, a piano that filled the room without crowding it.
Noah and Priya were asleep on the couch. Her head on his chest, his arm around her, the blanket pulled to their chins. They'd lasted twenty minutes past midnight.
Ethan was on the floor scrolling his phone. Remy was still in his chair. His feet up. His eyes closed. Not asleep. Just resting. His hand hanging off the armrest where Ethan could reach it, and every few minutes Ethan's hand came up and touched his fingers and then went back to the phone.
Alex was next to me on the floor, his back against the couch, the trophy between us.
I kept looking at it. Kept reading the names.
1967. The year Riverside won the only championship that mattered and then had the proof taken from them by a family that thought trophies, like everything else, belonged to them.
Alex put his head on my shoulder.
"We have to give it to Hale," I said.
"I know."
"He's going to lose it."
"I know."
"His mentor's name is on here. Third from the top. Brian Shaughnessy."
"We'll bring it to his office. First day back."
I held the trophy in my lap and felt the weight of it.
Metal and wood and sixty years and a kid from the south shore sitting in a rented cabin on New Year's Day holding the thing that proved his school had been great once, that the people who rowed before him had been fast and fearless and real, and that someone had tried to erase that and failed.
Alex's breathing was slowing. His head was heavy on my shoulder. I turned and kissed his hair.
I closed my eyes.