Page 32 of Thin Ice

And my mother would watch it happen. The way she always watched.

I stood at the window. Breathing hard. My reflection in the dark glass, wrecked, red-eyed, someone I didn't recognize. The machine in the navy sweater was gone. The boy who could sit in that chair and swallow his own name was gone. He'd died somewhere between the lamb and the wine, and I was never bringing him back.

I was his gay son. If that meant I wasn't his son at all, that was his choice. Not mine.

I was going to call his bluff.

I wiped my face with the ruined sleeve.

My phone was on the bed. Three texts from Liam. The first one from an hour ago.

Liam

You okay?

Then twenty minutes later.

Liam

Alex.

Then five minutes ago.

Liam

Just tell me you're alright.

Alex

I'm good. I'm coming to Christmas Eve.

Liam

Okay. Door's open.

Chapter 9: Liam

Iwoke up to the text still on my screen.

Alex

I'm coming to Christmas Eve.

I'd read it eleven times before I fell asleep. I read it again now, in the gray Saturday light, lying in my twin bed with Noah's whale dock still going on the nightstand. It still did the same thing to my stomach. Warm and tight.

He was coming.

He was coming here.

I put the phone down and looked at the ceiling. Popcorn texture, yellowed near the light fixture. The ceiling Alex Harrington was going to see in a few days.

I got up, walked through the house in my socks, and saw every room as a stranger would.

The living room. Couch with the blanket that wasn't decoration. Carpet worn into a path between the kitchen and the TV. The kitchen through the doorway, the fridge humming, the faucet dripping, my mom's shift schedule taped to the cabinet.

I'd looked at all of it the night I got off the bus and felt the shame. He was coming, and the house was what it was, and I could either spend the next few days staring at the carpet or I could do something about it.

I got out the cleaning bucket from under the sink, Windex, lemon bleach, a scrub brush, and a few ripped-up old tee shirts.