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I sat in one of Tommy’s. It creaked, and I winced.

“Okay, it’s a bad chair,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“It’s still a chair.” He took a drink and didn’t set his mug down. “I’m not thrilled either that the first meal around this table has borrowed chairs. But the focus will be on the table. Nobody looks at chairs.”

“You look at chairs.”

“I’m not a guest.”

He said it without stopping to hear himself say it. That’s the thing about Nico. He hands over the biggest lines in the world as if he’s passing you a tool you asked for.

“No. You very much are not.”

Nico had already dressed half of the table to protect it. Two cloths down first, placemats on the cloth, a trivet at every spot where something hot was going to land. The far half he’d left bare. Three feet of book-matched cherry with nothing on it at all, so it could be seen.

Snow had come in overnight. Three or four inches, from what I could see when I ran the snowblower to clear the driveway and sidewalk out front. My parents were two hours out of Connecticut. The turkey they’d already cooked was riding in style inside an insulated carrier. Word was the roads were okay, but the traffic was not.

“Let’s do presents.” I got up from the chair in a burst of excitement. Nothing could distract better from the chair problem than giving Nico his gift.

“Now?”

“Now. Yeah. Why not? Everything is as ready as it’s going to be before they get here.”

The tree stood lit in the corner, the one Nico had put up to surprise me and that we’d decorated together. Without fanfare, we’d both set presents under it over the last day. As we sat down on the floor in front of the tree, we each reached for the other’s present.

“You first.” Nico held a small brown bundle out to me.

“No. You.”

“Jake.” He pushed it into my hand. “You first.”

I gave in. There was no reason not to. The package weighed more than it looked like it should.

I tore at the paper like I was five and revealed a puck.

It was wood, cut round and worked true by hand, three inches across and an inch thick, just like a real one. The edges sanded down and rounded smooth, so it sat right in the palm. Cherry. Close enough to the dining table that the grain could have come off the next board over.

I turned it towards the light.

On one face, burned in, a date. December 10. Nothing else.

On the other, our mark. Her Celtic knot running into his grandfather’s grain. Small and clean, and no bigger than a nickel.

For a moment, I couldn’t do anything but stare at it.

“You burned her side,” I said finally. We’d only joined the marks two days ago. My thumb ran over the burn, over the shallow ridge of it, and my throat closed up.

“I did.”

“When did you even do this?”

“I’d been working on the puck for a few days, but I marked it when I got up this morning and re-wrapped it to get it under the tree.” He rubbed his thumb across his knuckles. “I wanted the first real thing marked to be yours.”

I closed my hand around it. This needed a special place so I’d see it often.

“December tenth,” I said. “The day I walked into your shop.”