“Stop saying things aloud,” he muttered.
As if summoned, Noah’s truck pulled up across the street.
“Gotta go.” Eli was out the door in a heartbeat.
Noah opened the passenger window. “Get in.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. My mom told me never to get into a truck with a strange man.”
Noah narrowed his gaze. “So now I’m strange?”
Eli grinned. “The strangest.” He climbed into the truck and belted up. “What’s this plan of yours?”
“Have you ever done the River Walk at night?”
Eli blinked up at him. “I… walked along it the other day.”
“No, I’m talking about therealRiver Walk. Lights, cocoa, food stalls, live carolers, the works.”
Eli’s eyes lit up, and Noah wanted to keep feeding the wonder he saw in him.
“That sounds amazing,” Eli said. “But… I kind of wanted to try skating, too. You mentioned it earlier.”
Noah froze, then burst out laughing. “Oh no.”
Eli frowned. “What ‘oh no’?”
“You just said the magic words.” Noah maintained a solemn tone. “The words every Mapleford native dreams of hearing from a city boy who’s never skated on a frozen river.”
“I didn’t say I’d never skated,” Eli protested. “And youknowI’m Mapleford born and bred.”
“Sure, but Boston sucked it all out of you.” Noah leaned in. “Yourversion of ‘skating’ was probably a climate-controlled indoor rink with emergency contact forms and a snack bar.”
Eli lifted a finger. “I’ll have you know there was also a hot chocolate machine.”
Noah folded his arms. “And were you any good at skating?”
He coughed. “Okay, so I might have drunk hot chocolate while I watched other people skate. I remember doing a lot of falling on my ass.”
“What about when you were a kid? Didn’t your parents take you skating on the river at Christmas?”
Eli’s face tightened. “By the time I was old enough to do it, they’d already divorced, and I don’t think taking their two kids skating was very high on either of their lists of priorities. So it kinda got lost in the mix.”
He sat back. “Okay, that’s it. You’re learning the Mapleford way.”
Eli blinked. “You’regoing to teach me?”
“Obviously.”
“Should I be nervous?”
“Yes.” Noah grinned. “Very.”
Eli’s warm, shy laughter made Noah’s heart do a little flip-flop.
He drove them to the river, and they parked up alongside a line of other vehicles. The river had frozen thick and smooth, a natural surface lit by strands of fairy lights stretched overhead like glowing spiderwebs. Families skated hand-in-hand, teenagers raced each other, and someone’s dog skidded wildly across the ice wearing booties that kept falling off.
Noah led Eli to the equipment booth. “Size?” he asked.
