Page 13 of Thin Ice

Typed: Hope today's going okay over there.

Looked at it. Sent it.

Alex

It is. Thanks. Lunch was consommé.

Liam

What the hell is consommé?

Alex

It's like fancy soup.

Alex

What are you doing today?

I looked at the phone.

Steam was coming off my gloves where I'd hung them over the heater. There was shrink-wrap tape stuck to my sleeve, and soon there would be grease under my nails from afternoon engine work, and out the shop window the lot stood in its white rows with my morning's work holding tight against the wind.

Helping Jerry at the marina.

I looked at that for a while.

It's five words. It's where I was. And the guy whose texts I fell asleep reading could have had those five words without the sky falling. He worked here himself.

But Alex worked here like a tourist. I work here like my mother's son. Now that he was mine, now that this was real, the marina isn't a cute story about the summer we met. It's the answer to a question he hasn't asked yet: what does Liam Moore actually amount to? Scholarship kid, captain, sure. But under that, down at the studs, a boy in coveralls with grease under his nails who counts twenties through denim and calls it a good week.

He'd say it didn't matter. He'd say it warmly, and mean it. But I'd rather he never thought of me in this place than watch him be generous about it.

I deleted it one word at a time.

Liam

Errands. Around.

Alex

Are you getting me a gift?

Liam

You'll see.

I put the phone face-down on the workbench and ate the rest of my sandwich.

A gift.

My mom had said meaningful. I'd been turning that word over since Friday night and I still didn't know what it meant. Meaningful how? Meaningful like expensive? I couldn't do expensive. Meaningful like sentimental? I didn't have anything sentimental that wasn't embarrassing. Meaningful like I made this for you? What was I going to make him — a macaroni necklace?

The whole thing made me feel stupid. Like there was a language for this that other people knew and I'd skipped that class. Some guys just knew what to get their person. I was just trying to figure out what meaningful meant.

I let it go.

The afternoon was engine work. A lower unit that needed draining, batteries to pull and shelve, the last winterizing on a straggler whose owner had called in November.