Page 49 of Thin Ice

"Brave feels like shit. That's how you know."

I laughed, sitting back on the couch.

"What's the plan for the break?" he said. "Are you just hanging at Liam's?"

"Yeah. Christmas Eve tonight, Christmas tomorrow. And Noah and Priya are driving up for New Year's. They're getting a rental on the lake."

"What? That's awesome." He paused, thinking. "Can Remy and I come?"

"Yeah," I said. "Why not? We'll figure out the rental."

"We're there. I'll tell Remy tonight." A pause. "Alex. I'm proud of you. It's going to work out."

"Thanks."

"Merry Christmas Eve. Go peel your potatoes."

I hung up and went back to the potatoes. Liam looked over from his pie crust disaster and raised an eyebrow.

"Ethan and Remy are coming for New Year's," I said.

"The more the merrier," Linda said from the stove without turning around.

The kitchen was warm, and the radio played while my hands soaked in potato water. Tonight, eleven strangers would arrive and meet the boy Liam had brought home.

Me. The rich boy from across the lake.

I was terrified. I was peeling potatoes. And I guess… I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

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."