Page 27

Liam

The Baker residence was, as expected, devoured by Christmas decor from the inside out: all warm-white string lights, scented pinecones, and chemical snow powdered over the garland lining the grand staircase. Nothing could have suited Liam’s mood less.

“Look who’s here!” Their hostess greeted them in the doorway, still in her kitchen apron. The fabric was spotless, and Liam spared half a cynical thought to wondering if she’d put on this piece of fifties housewife cosplay just for their entrance.

She hugged his mother and greeted his father with an air kiss on each cheek before turning to Liam. “Look at you!” she exclaimed, as if it had been years rather than months since they had last seen each other in passing. “Even taller than Benny now.”

“Cassidy isn’t taller than me,” came Ben’s objection from the next room .

Liam plastered on a smile he had no faith in. “Hi, Mrs. Baker. The house looks great.”

She smiled. “I always hoped some of that politeness would have rubbed off on Benjamin after all these years.”

“I am polite,” Ben’s voice came again, though the fact that the words were garbled around a mouthful of food sort of negated his point.

The coffee table was lined with veggie trays and Christmas-themed finger foods, along with a spread of assorted wines and the obligatory bottle of sparkling grape juice for the Cassidys. Ever the good Christians. Personally, Liam would have liked to snatch a bottle of red off the table and save their hostess the trouble of washing an extra glass tonight.

Ben’s father was stationed in his recliner with a glass of whisky, eyes glued to whatever sporting event was on their flatscreen. He greeted them with a raise of his glass, barely looking away from the television, and, as if by the pull of some invisible straight man magnet, Liam’s father found his way to the second chair.

“The Scotts are running a little behind. As per,” Mrs. Baker added with a co-conspiratorial smirk. “But dinner is ready whenever they are. Help yourself to some appetizers in the meantime. God knows Ben has.”

Liam sank down on the couch next to Ben.

“Hey,” Ben said, eyes on his phone.

“Hi. ”

That was fine. Liam wasn’t in the mood for conversation anyway.

He sat back, watching the scene unfold around him like an interactive Hallmark movie. The graying fathers watching sports and talking about their corporate jobs, the mothers clad in cashmere sweaters and polka-dotted aprons, not a hair out of place. This was the only life that Liam had ever known. This was the warmth of his privilege, to be so secure in his comfort that he could resent it.

He ached for Jonah, in that moment, as much as he ached with the absence of him. It was too easy to picture Jonah against this familiar backdrop, seated next to him on the plush cushions, warm and safe. Fed and strong and unbruised. Liam wanted that for him. More than he had ever wanted anything, he wanted Jonah to be safe. If there was a god watching over this universe—something Liam became less and less inclined to believe the longer he knew Jonah—there would come a day where that boy got to spend a holiday with people who loved him.

The rattle of bells against the front door signaled the arrival of Nathan’s family. Mrs. Scott entered the room in a flurry of beige fleece, shrugging out of her coat while balancing a glass casserole dish on her arm. “Sorry we’re late. Couldn’t peel this one away from the game long enough to bear the five-minute car ride over.”

Trailing behind her, Mr. Scott wore a sheepish grin. Behind him was Nathan, who —

“What the hell happened to your face?” Ben voiced the thoughts of everyone in the room, finally looking up from his phone.

A jagged line of raised pink flesh tore across Nathan’s cheek, stretching from just below his eye to the corner of his mouth.

Liam was sure he wasn’t imagining the brief glint of irritation before Nathan masked it with a smile. “You should see the other guy,” he said.

“Was the other guy a bear?” Ben asked. “You look like you got mauled, dude.”

“I think we’ve held dinner up long enough for everyone,” Mr. Scott interrupted, putting a terse end to the questioning.

Maybe Liam wasn’t the only one who sensed the tension in the room, because there was a brief, uncomfortable pause before Mrs. Baker stood, untied her apron from around her waist and shepherded everyone into the dining room.

The boys were the last to follow. Ben wandered off after a lingering glance at the scar, vowing to get the story out of him later. But Liam couldn’t look away.

Even if everything else had just been in Liam’s imagination, there was no mistaking the loathing glare Nathan shot him before he turned and left Liam standing alone in the living room.

The scrape of silverware on ceramic murmured over the dining room table .

As luck would have it, Liam found himself planted in the chair directly across from Nathan, where he could feel the ugly burn of his sneer like a heat lamp too close to the skin. Liam kept his eyes down, watching the piece of roasted potato he was pushing around on his plate. He was already expending all his mental energy just by being here tonight. He didn’t know what was happening—with Nathan’s new beauty mark or the silent warfare that seemed to be waging between the two of them—but he was far too tired for it.

Liam hadn’t seen Nathan since the run-in outside the diner last Friday. So much had happened in the short time since, he’d all but forgotten about it. It was only now, under this new, indiscernible tension, that he remembered the strangeness of Nathan’s behavior that night. Jonah had brushed it off when he brought it up later, but Liam knew what he had seen: that Jonah had been just as shaken by the encounter.

He nearly choked on a bite of dry chicken at the reminder of what Nathan could do with that information, here, of all places. There were any number of ways he could weaponize his out-of-context knowledge of Liam spending time with the sex worker Nathan had once hired for him, none of which would go over well at a dining room table full of his family friends.

“Liam.” Mrs. Baker’s voice pulled him to attention from the opposite end of the table. “Do you have any plans for the fall? You were planning to transfer out of your two-year program, right? ”

Liam bit his cheek to keep the scowl off his face. He could hear the implicit comment between her words: “You’ll be going to a real college after this, right?”

“Nothing solid yet,” he responded as politely as he could manage. “I’ve applied to a few places. My top choices.” He paused, sparing a sideways glance at his parents. His future plans were a point of contention between the three of them, and he would rather not have that conversation here. “But, you know, I’m aiming a little high. I probably won’t get in.”

“You’ve been so busy these days.”

Everyone turned to face Nathan, who spoke for the first time since they sat down for dinner.

“Must be putting in a lot of work on those applications.”

The edge of the fork dug painfully into Liam’s skin. “I’ve been working a lot,” he said without looking at him.

“That’s an understatement,” Liam’s mom chimed in. “Poor Liam has been working himself to the bone at that diner. He’s even started picking up graveyard shifts.”

Liam didn’t like the trajectory of this conversation, but he was struggling to find his voice.

Nathan, apparently, found his first. “I wonder where all that money is going,” he said. Liam looked up at him, and into the fire burning behind his eyes. “Your college fund must be stacked by now. Unless you’re spending it somewhere else.”

There was no way the rest of the family wasn’t feeling the heat of whatever was simmering beneath the surface. Liam never thought he would be grateful for the Midwestern Art of Forced Polite Conversation, but he could finally breathe again once Mrs. Baker stepped in to steer the conversation back to safer territory.

“Well,” she declared loudly, raising her wine glass in Liam’s direction. “I think it’s great that you’re working toward your goal. Nobody your age seems to want to work for anything anymore.”

“Mom,” Ben groaned.

Even as the idle chatter moved on around them, breaking off into sub-conversations, the silent exchange between him and Nathan only seemed to grow hotter, nearing a boiling point that Liam didn’t know how to predict.

He kept quiet, unwilling to provoke a confrontation when Nathan was so clearly looking for one. Dinner was almost finished, and he had almost survived the whole ordeal with nothing more than a mental scratch, when Ben decided to upend the whole evening through another mouthful of food.

“Okay, for real,” he said, pointing his fork toward the gash on Nathan’s cheek. “Are you just not gonna tell us what happened?”

Nathan’s spine drew up, his shoulders rolling back. “It’s really not as exciting as you want to think it is,” Nathan replied.

A lie, Liam clocked easily. Nathan never was any good at that.

“That’s really not what I asked,” Ben pushed .

Liam watched Nathan’s jaw twitch again. “Wasn’t a big deal. I went into the city with some of Becca’s friends from school. We rented a hotel room. Things got out of hand.”

From the end of the table, Nathan’s father barked out a laugh. “‘A little out of hand?’” he repeated. “Is that what you call waking up to a three-hundred-dollar damage charge from the Marriott on my credit card?”

The sound of silverware clattering on ceramic had every eye turned in Liam’s direction.

The Marriott.

The pieces fell into place, one after another.

The tense conversation in the diner parking lot.

The caller ID from Jonah’s voicemail.

Nathan’s injury.

A defensive wound.

“What the fuck did you do?” The words were cold and flat, escaping in a whisper before he could stop them.

“Liam,” his mother snapped from beside him, but he didn’t look away from Nathan, who was staring back at him with eyes narrowed in confusion.

“What the fuck did you do?” He was suddenly yelling, and standing, through no active decision-making of his own.

“What are you talking about?” Nathan’s cool reply only fed the monster of rage inside him.

Something in the finality of the realization, the unblinking reality of what Nathan had presumably done to Jonah, severed Liam’s last thread of restraint. He had always known that the person pretending to be his friend since childhood was a lot of things, most of them unpleasant, but he had never taken him for a predator.

The world around him went red and messy.

The noises he registered blended together as one: Mrs. Baker’s startled shriek, the shattering of ceramic against a hardwood floor, the crunch of Nathan’s nose under his fist. Again. And again. And again. And ag—

“Liam! Liam— Okay, stop, that’s enough.” The arms around his chest might have belonged to Ben, but he couldn’t see, and he didn’t care. He swung out wildly, trying to escape, trying to catch another blow to Nathan’s bleeding face, but he was yanked backwards, out of reach.

Liam went momentarily slack in Ben’s grip. He only had a moment to register the tears on his face before Nathan was propelling himself off the ground, making a lunge for him. Liam was ready for it. He yanked against the restraining hands, eager to get his hands on Nathan again, but Mr. Scott swooped in behind Nathan and dragged him back.

“That’s enough!” His commanding voice stopped them, both of them breathing heavily from opposite sides of the table. “Benjamin, take him outside. Nathan, upstairs. Now. Let’s go.”

Liam didn’t have much of a choice, being the obvious weaker of the two and semi-paralyzed from the adrenaline crash. He let himself be pulled into the attached garage off the Bakers’ kitchen. Ben’s hands dropped heavily onto his shoulders when they came to a stop .

“Holy shit, dude.” To his surprise, Ben was almost smiling, looking at him with a look of bewildered—if not a little concerned—amusement. “What was that about?”

Liam was supremely not in the mood for this. He jerked backwards out of Ben’s reach, swiping at both his eyes. Sensation was slowly returning, a low throb of pain building in his wrists and his knuckles.

“Leave me alone,” he snapped, fingers digging into his scalp.

“Okay, but I don’t know if I should—”

“Just go!”

“It’s okay, Ben.” Liam’s mother appeared in the doorway of the garage. “I’ve got him.”

Ben straightened up, taking a step back. “I’ll, uh. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

Liam’s hands slipped down from his hair to cover his face. Quiet footsteps drew closer across the garage floor, but he didn’t look up at his mother’s approach. Something inside of him was hurtling toward a breaking point. He could feel it in his bones, like the vibration of a glass just before the shatter.

“Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but— oof. ”

Whatever chastisement he had coming was abruptly cut off by the weight of Liam’s body collapsing against his mother. He threw his arms around her waist, buried his head in her shoulder, and the dam broke. She reciprocated without question, though he was sure she had plenty, pulling him in close .

“Liam?”

A sob tore free from his throat, and he squeezed her tighter. All the weight he’d been carrying inside him was spilling out, desperate for escape.

“Mom.” His voice cracked around the word.

“Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

The invitation split him down the middle, throwing open the gates of secrecy and pain, and letting it all rush out of him in a long, wordless wail. I’m sorry, Jonah. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

That I can’t keep your promise.

That I didn’t break it sooner.

“Mom, I need your help.”