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Theo winced internally at her metaphor, but kept his face bland. “How do we want to play this?” he asked quietly. “Am I here to make people mad or charm them?”

Avery considered his offer. “I want to say make people mad, but Aunt Jenn already loves you, so it would probably, like, backfire and make her and Aunt Faith pick a fight with everyone else.”

“Charming it is,” he said, and then hesitated. “Wait, am I dressed okay?” He had realized belatedly that Avery was wearing a dress—the grey one she had been considering back in her dorm room—while he was in jeans and a button-down.

“Little late for that, isn’t it?” Avery said, wrinkling her nose and rolling up on her tiptoes to straighten his collar. “And yeah, you look fine.” She placed her hands on his shoulders as she went back down, and he found his hands coming up to steady her elbows, completely unnecessarily. He smiled at her and she smiled back, and for a minute they simply stood there, grinning at each other like a couple of fools, until Faith stuck her head out of the living room.

“You two coming back in? Because if you want to run, I can give you”—she checked her watch ostentatiously—“a five-minute head start.”

“We’re coming, Aunt Faith,” Avery said, dropping her hand to his. It was getting easier, holding her hand, but his heart still did a little stutter step at the feel of her skin on his.

He had been hoping that maybe the Nielsons would surprise him, and maybe dessert would be some super-casual affair without much pretense, but he was completely out of luck. Everyone was still seated while Kelly and Jeremy’s mother passed out plates of pie. As one, what felt like hundreds of eyes turned to fix on him and Avery as Faith slipped into her seat next to Jenn at the family table in the dining room. “Hey, Theo,” Jeremy said, warmly enough. Theo’s eyes darted around the room, searching for possible allies. There were Jenn and Faith, and a couple people he assumed were new medical residents over at one of the auxiliary tables in the living room, who seemed slightly bewildered by the room’s attention on him—they were new to the town, and thus probably didn’t know the importance of the Nielsons’ daughter dating the Finstads’ son. But otherwise he was on his own.

Avery squeezed his hand, and warmth swept through him. “Here, we managed to get an extra chair in next to me,” she said, gesturing to a space tightly shoehorned in between her and Jenn. Theo sat down, but it was only when he caught Kelly’s sharp look that he realized he had probably been expected to pull out Avery’s chair for her.

Slowly conversation resumed, and Jenn leaned forward. “How’s stuff, Theo?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” he said, shrugging. “I dunno. School is school, and my roommate is a weirdo.”

Jenn made a face at Faith. “Does he shower at least? There was a guy in my freshman dorm who, like, never showered and smoked so much pot he was basically a walking biohazard.”

“He showers, or at least often enough that it’s not a huge deal,” Theo said, the corners of his mouth quirking up. Avery handed him a piece of pie, and he found himself relaxing infinitesimally. But then Kelly took her seat at the opposite end of the table from Jeremy and cast a shrewd look his way. “Have you picked a major, Theo?” she asked.

He noticed a few other guests—people he vaguely recognized from going to hospital Christmas parties with his mom, back before he could get out of them—were listening. “History,” he said, doing his best to sound genial and charming but worried he might actually sound gruff and disinterested. He didn’t particularly care if Kelly liked him, but he also didn’t want to make things harder for Avery than they already were. He cleared his throat and took a sip of water. “It’s really interesting so far,” he added.

“What do you plan to do with that? Is there much career potential there?” Kelly asked, and he wondered, not for the first time, why Kelly Nielson had gone into medicine instead of law. She would have made an absolutely terrifying prosecutor, and Theo didn’t scare easily.

He shrugged. “I could teach,” he said. “Or there’s grad school.”

“Sounds expensive,” Kelly said quietly. Theo risked a glance over at Jeremy, hoping that he would have another semi-ally in him, but Jeremy was busy with his pumpkin pie, not making eye contact with either Theo or his wife. He remembered his mother’s questions about them earlier, and suddenly he wondered if something was in fact up with Itasca’s Golden Couple. They hadn’t so much as looked at each other the whole time he was there, and sure, maybe that was a coincidence, but it felt odd.

“Jere, didn’t you minor in history?” Jenn asked, coming to his rescue.

Jeremy looked at his younger sister and grinned. “Yes, but only because I had a crush on a history TA. I thought minoring in it would impress her, but alas,” he said, and several people around the table chuckled. The slight tension Theo had been picking up on broke, but he noticed that Jeremy still didn’t look at Kelly when he made his joke.

“The pie is very good, Mrs. Nielson,” he said to Avery’s grandmother. He knew she was very proud of her pie recipe and felt momentarily pleased with himself for remembering that.

“That one is store bought,” Avery’s grandma replied without looking up, and Theo decided he was actually quite thankful that Evelyn was Evelyn. She was annoying as hell, but she was nice at least.

“Sorry, should have warned you about that,” Avery whispered. She smiled nervously at him and took his hand under the table. He wondered if he should lift it up, so people could see it—that was the point of this, right?—but then she let go. “Thanks for coming.”

Theo smiled back at her, and he couldn’t say he was mad he came. After all, Avery was looking at him like that, so it couldn’t have all been bad, right?

Chapter Sixteen

Avery

“We’re going to Theo’s,” Avery called from the kitchen. Theo had survived the gauntlet that was dessert with her family, although it had been awkward as hell. He had even offered to stick around after to help with the dishes, mostly, she suspected, to help prove to her parents that they should lay off her about getting back together with Cameron. By now her parents were in the living room, on separate devices, with the dishwasher already chugging along. The silence that descended after a Nielson family Thanksgiving was almost as jarring as the chaos it created when it started.

“I thought you were going to Tommy’s?” her mom yelled back.

“We are, but we’re walking to Theo’s first,” she clarified.

“I walked here, so my car is back there,” Theo added. There was a beat of uncomfortable silence before her parents agreed, only asking that she not stay out too late.

The sky was clear and the almost-full moon was brighter than the streetlights when they set out through the side yard. Avery stuffed her hands in her pockets, tromping through the snow at Theo’s side until they reached the recently cleared sidewalk. It wasn’t too cold yet, at least not by northern Minnesota standards, but she could feel her nose turning pink as she walked. She took in a deep breath, the air just cold enough to sting, and let it out slowly. Next to her, Theo was walking in much the same way—hands in his pockets, head tipped up to the sky.

“You can’t see the stars in the Cities,” Theo said, his breath hanging in the air as a wispy cloud. “Barely any of them anyway. When I first moved up here, I realized that there were so many more stars than I ever imagined.”