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She took his hand in hers, and for a moment his anxiety eased, but then he saw the look on her face. She knew Tommy had been about to say something, and she wanted to know what. “Tommy’s just being Tommy,” he muttered. She nodded, but he wasn’t sure she fully believed him. He was just going to hope that, for once in her life, Avery would let something go.

By the time the pizzas were gone, the appetite for MarioKart had waned. They had all quieted down, and Harper was scrolling listlessly on her phone while Avery and Tommy discussed something over on the love seat. That made Theo nervous as hell, quite frankly, but since they didn’t seem to be saying anything very earth-shattering, he assumed he was safe for the moment.

Grace was staring outside, where flurries were coming down once again. Not enough for Karl to be called out to plow, but enough to remind them of the other day’s snow. “We should go sledding,” she announced abruptly. Tommy’s backyard had a sharp drop-off, and while Theo had never done it, owing to arriving in Itasca at the far-too-mature-for-sledding age of fourteen, he knew the others had grown up sledding back there. “Does your mom still have the sleds in the garage?” she asked Tommy.

“I mean, she never throws anything away, so I’d assume so. Do you wanna?”

Everyone agreed, and in a flurry of activity they found their jackets, hunted down the sleds—Tommy’s dad had stashed them up in the rafters, which was an ordeal in and of itself—and headed out to the backyard.

The light in the backyard was a soft yellow orange from the lights on the deck reflecting strangely off the snow. Grace started them off, whooping loudly as she dove onto the sled to go down face-first, kicking up a wave of ice crystals in her wake.

Tommy and Harper were next, so hot on Grace’s heels they all nearly collided at the bottom. “Is this what it was like when you guys were kids?” he asked Avery.

She was chuckling down at their friends, who were now in a tangle of arms and legs. “More or less, yeah. Grace broke her arm here once doing her little headfirst stunt. We were like, eight?”

Theo laughed and grabbed the last sled at the top of the hill. It was bright blue and plastic, so flimsy that he wasn’t sure it could bear his weight, and he aimed slightly to the left of their friends. “Join me?” he offered, then instantly second-guessed the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. After the moment in his room—that moment when he almost threw four years of friendship out the window just to kiss her one more time for no reason other than he simply wanted to—he knew he needed to be more careful. But the more time he spent with Avery pretending they were together, the harder it was getting.

And Theo was, quite frankly, an idiot. So he held his hand out to her and grinned as she climbed into the sled in front of him. They didn’t fit very well—Avery’s knees were almost under her chin, and his formed brackets around her shoulders—but they did it anyway. Even with the thick layers of jackets between them, Theo felt warmer than should have been possible.

He used his hands to shove off, and they went flying down the hill, his hands settling around her waist with his knees awkwardly sticking out, like a very ungainly butterfly. He probably didn’t need to hold on very tight, but he did anyway, just because he could. At the bottom was a short level field, with a small pond at the end that was not quite frozen over. The sky was a dark, leaden grey, reflecting back Itasca’s paltry streetlights. A spray of snow kicked up, most of it hitting Avery but some making it up to Theo, the cold flakes coating his cheeks. It had been years since he’d gone sledding, and even longer since he’d gone with someone who wasn’t Jacob.

The sled leveled out, but they were hurtling toward the pond at a slightly alarming speed. Theo dropped his heels into the snow on either side, but Avery must have had the same idea, because she threw her body weight to the right, dumping them both out unceremoniously.

Theo got a face full of snow and Avery’s elbow in his stomach, but he was laughing before they had even stopped skidding. He pulled himself up, brushing the snow from his jeans, and held out his hand. Avery grabbed it, but rather than let him pull her up, she grinned mischievously and yanked.

Theo let out a very undignified yelp as he crashed down on top of her. Avery was cackling, her peals of laughter ringing out into the night. He swore and grabbed a fistful of snow, rubbing it into her face and making her squeal.

Somehow Avery managed to flip them over so she was on top and then it was her turn to shove snow into his face. Theo pushed her off and sprang up to run away, but Avery was fast—too fast, even—and within a few paces she caught up and nailed him in the back with a snowball. He whirled and slapped up a spray of snow, but Avery dodged, grabbing another snowball before he’d managed to recover.

There was nothing left to do. Theo dove, aiming straight for her waist, and slammed them both down into the soft powder. This time it was Avery who let out an undignified sound, followed by more peals of laughter. “Mercy,” she said, holding her hands up in surrender as he prepared to dump more snow on her, and Theo relented.

It was only then that he realized he was straddling her, with his hands planted on either side of her face. It wouldn’t have been hard to dip down and kiss her, and part of him wondered if he should, given that they had an audience. But now he felt like somehow, that made his impulse worse, that having an audience meant he shouldn’t kiss her, because that would cheapen it somehow.

The whole time he went through his minor mental spiral they were staring into each other’s eyes, and pretty soon Theo was mesmerized by the way her blue eyes looked almost grey in the absence of light. Avery was staring back, and for the space of a few heartbeats the rest of the world faded away.

“What was Tommy talking about?” Avery said.

For a moment, he was so lost in her gaze he didn’t register what she meant. “Hmm?”

“Earlier. He said you had said something, and that’s why he wasn’t surprised we were together.”

Theo’s chest tightened. “I have no idea what he meant,” he lied. “Like I said, probably just Tommy being Tommy.”

Avery lowered her voice. “I know he can be a little, you know, prone to exaggeration, but it’s not like him to invent something.”

Fuck. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant—we’d been drinking, and maybe I said something he misunderstood, and then he ran with it.”

Avery didn’t look quite satisfied, but she also didn’t move, like she too was afraid of breaking the magic around them despite her doubts. And then it all came rushing back, courtesy of their asshole friends. “Get a fucking room, oh my God,” Grace yelled.

Theo jumped up, and Avery got up slightly sheepishly. “Sorry, guys,” she said with a shrug.

“Got carried away,” Theo added, but then he couldn’t help himself and reached over to brush some snow off her cheek, which was now bright pink from exertion and cold.

Harper rolled her eyes and looked pointedly at Tommy and Grace. “That answers that.”

“Sure does,” Tommy agreed. It was clear that their friends were not about to let them into their cryptic conversation, although Theo was uncomfortably sure he had an idea of what they were talking about.

“Look, we’re just glad Avery is getting laid,” Harper said.