Page 2 of Thin Ice

Alex

I've never been in a snowball fight.

Liam

Saddest thing you've ever told me.

Alex

Twenty years of missed developmental milestones.

I huffed at the window. The glass fogged and unfogged. Never been in a snowball fight?

The bus pulled in at 4:05 and my mom was already there.

She was standing by the car with her arms crossed against the cold, in the navy jacket from the hospital cafeteria, the one with the coffee stain on the sleeve she'd been failing to get out since I was in high school. She'd come straight from a shift. She always came straight from a shift. My mom's whole life was straight from a shift.

I came down the bus steps, and she had her arms around me before my bag hit the ground.

"Hey, Mom."

"Hey, baby."

She held on one beat longer than usual. I felt it and knew what it was. The last time she'd seen my face in person, I'd been her son, the rower. Since then there'd been a phone call and a boy named Alex Harrington, and a version of me she'd only met through a speaker. The half gay version.

She pulled back and looked at me.

I held still and let her.

"You're too skinny," she said. "Did they stop feeding athletes down there?"

I thought she was going to bring the whole thing up right here in the parking lot. But that was it.

My shoulders dropped about two inches. She reached for the strap of my duffel bag.

"I got it, Mom."

"Give me the bag."

"I got it."

"Liam, give me the —"

"Mom. I'm six-one and I row for a living."

"And I carried you for nine months, so give me the bag."

I didn't give her the bag. We walked over to the car.

"Stubborn."

"I wonder who I get that from."

She smiled.

There was a gas station coffee waiting in the cupholder on my side. Black. Still warm.

"You didn't have to."