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“Not that you’re bitter or anything,” Grace teased.

“I’m not, I’m just stating a fact,” Tommy sniffed. “When I tell my followers my solo will be happening at eight so my sister can livestream it, it has to be at eight, not eight-freaking-thirty. I could have gone viral that day, you know.”

Theo patted Tommy consolingly on the shoulder. Avery scooted slightly closer, and Theo took the hint, letting her wrap her hand around the crook of his elbow and lean up to whisper in his ear. “Realized we should do something a little more couple-y,” she breathed, and placed a peck on his cheek. It was adorably chaste, but it still sent a bolt of awareness through him.

Theo smiled at her, although he was acutely aware it probably didn’t reach his eyes. All of a sudden, he was second-guessing everything, and an unfamiliar wave of doubt washed over him. Should we just bail now? Is this too much? he wanted to ask, but Avery’s smile was genuine and unconcerned. Or it was, until she seemed to read his expression, but before she could ask what was wrong, Mr. Krueger clapped his be-mittened hands for everyone’s attention.

Most of the crowd were the parents and relatives of the performers. Theo and his friends were there to serve as Jake’s cheering section while their mom got some sleep after her night shift and Karl got Thanksgiving dinner going. After a brief introduction, Mr. Krueger turned his back to face the choir and lifted his hands.

Halfway through the first song (“Jingle Bells,” obviously) Avery leaned closer to him. “If they sing that Beatles Christmas song, I’m sorry, but I will have to loudly protest,” she whispered.

Theo stifled a chuckle. Avery had worked for a florist her sophomore year in high school, and the Shrimpton Floral’s Christmas playlist had been the number-one reason why she ended up quitting. Her hatred for that song in particular was legendary. “I already asked Jake earlier. He promised that’s not on the set list.” On Avery’s other side, Grace glanced over at them and lifted her eyebrows in a goofy leer, stopping only when Avery playfully elbowed her in response.

During the third song, Theo decided he needed to stop stressing. His heart had been in his throat the entire time, which was ridiculous considering what he was contemplating, but as the middle schoolers warbled through “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” he decided to take the bull by the horns and just—do it. He dropped his hand down and carefully took her gloved hand in his, moving slowly enough to let her twitch her hand away if she didn’t want to hold his. But she sent him a warm smile and wove their fingers together, and his chest loosened. There was no reason to get all in my head about this, he scolded himself, but his heart was already fluttering, so it was too late.

It was a pretty okay concert, as far as middle school choir concerts went. Theo would admit he was probably a little biased when it came to Jake, but even Tommy thought they did well. And Tommy did not give praise easily, even to his friends. Tommy took his art seriously, and his flair for the dramatic meant he was not at all afraid to tell someone if he didn’t like theirs. It made him a bit of an acquired taste, but also what made him Theo’s second-best friend after Avery.

“You did good, kid,” Theo said when Jake came over to join them afterward. He clapped his brother on the shoulder, gratified at Jake’s huge grin. Due to the terrible hours his mom and stepdad worked, Theo had spent a lot of high school being Jake’s surrogate parent. Before Karl, when it was just the three of them, Theo had been too young to be left alone with Jake, but when their mom was home she had had to study so much that he was usually the one making them breakfast and packing Jake’s lunch. It was something he’d been looking forward to not having to do when he went to college. But after a few weeks away, Theo had started missing hanging out with him after school, eating too many Oreos, and playing MarioKart.

“Can confirm,” Tommy agreed.

“I wasn’t too sharp on my solo?”

“There were a couple of sharp notes, but only someone with perfect pitch like me would have noticed,” Tommy promised him.

“Oh good,” Jake said, and looked genuinely relieved. Theo had never really cared about anything the way Jake cared about choir. He had cared about his grades, but only insofar as good grades meant getting the hell out of Itasca. Jake seemed to care about singing in choir because he loved it, a fact that made Theo feel oddly soft.

Jake turned to Theo, opening his mouth to say something, and then paused, his eyes dropping to the space between Theo and Avery. Belatedly, Theo realized they were still holding hands, but it was too late to let go. Jake had noticed.

Officially, Theo had been hoping to skate through the weekend without telling his parents about Avery. He didn’t mind lying to her parents, if necessary, but he wasn’t comfortable with lying to his—and especially not to Jake, who tended to get very attached to his vision of How Things Should Be and usually took it pretty hard if things didn’t pan out the way he imagined. He didn’t want his little brother getting excited about a relationship that wasn’t real, but he also couldn’t trust Jake to keep a secret like that. In all the time he had been psyching himself up to hold Avery’s hand—for the crowd, not for himself, obviously—he had completely forgotten that Jake wasn’t supposed to find out.

“Wait, are you guys holding hands?” Jake squealed, and fortunately, Avery grinned and said “Yes,” which solved the current problem of Theo’s voice being temporarily unavailable. By the time he got it back, Avery had told Jake it was “still very new” and that they were “just seeing where things went.” Theo appreciated her attempt to play things down, but he could see in Jake’s eyes that he was too far down the road to be called back. He was probably already planning a Fourth of July BBQ with Avery at her house in his mind. But that was a problem he would just have to deal with later on. A bigger, more important problem was that Jake was definitely going to tell their parents, which meant he would have to roll with the charade at home too.

As the crowd broke up into small knots of people, some drifting toward their cars, others toward the handful of stores that were open, Theo realized that when they started holding hands, they had drawn more than a few glances.

He dropped Avery’s hand, abruptly self-conscious. Theo had always been very aware of how the rest of Itasca saw him, and how they saw Avery. He didn’t really care that people probably didn’t think he was good enough, but he didn’t not care about it either, especially since he always wondered if maybe Avery did care. Avery tossed him a careful look, but she didn’t say anything.

Which somehow, was worse.

Chapter Twelve

Avery

Avery came in through the garage, stomping her feet to shake off the remaining snow. “Is that you, Avery?” her mom called from the kitchen.

“Who else would it be?” Avery called back.

“Your dad went out early this morning. He should be back soon,” her mom said stiffly. Avery walked into the kitchen and surveyed the carnage. The main Thanksgiving dishes were catered, since getting a turkey big enough to feed everyone coming was nearly impossible, and until Kelly Nielson got that second oven she was always talking about having installed, there wasn’t space to cook two decently large turkeys either—but Kelly insisted on preparing the hors d’oeuvres herself. And Avery’s grandmother on her dad’s side would bring the desserts, because Grandma Nielson would be parted from her pumpkin pie recipe upon the moment of her death and not a second before, and there was no way in hell she would trust anyone else to bake one.

But appetizers for thirty-odd people was no small task, so Kelly had already been starting when Avery left that morning. “I thought Dad had a shift?” Avery asked, picking a grape out of the bowl on the enormous island. He hadn’t been home when she woke up that morning, so she hadn’t seen him yet, but that wasn’t unusual if one or the other parent was scheduled at the hospital. But hospital shifts didn’t end in the middle of the day, generally.

Kelly’s shoulders tensed, and so did Avery’s. Here we go, she thought darkly, anticipating her mother’s carefully controlled cavalcade of lies.

“He said he had some things to take care of,” Kelly said in a brittle voice. “I assume patients.”

Avery knew better than to push her mom when she was like this, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself.

“He didn’t say?” Or you didn’t ask?