Page 109 of College Town

“I’m out of practice,” Tommy protests, sets down his beer and picks up the chalk.

“Uh-huh, keep telling yourself that.” Lawson reclaims his beer and climbs up onto his stool while Tommy fusses with his next shot. Out of practice or not, he’s still killer at the table, though that’s largely because it takes him a full five minutes to calculate the trajectory of each shot. Lawson sips his beer and admires the view, Tommy pushing his sleeves up, and then up again when they slip; squatting down so he’s on eye level with the table, sketching angles in the air with flat hands, a process which Leo watches with something like a naturalist’s fascination.

“He’s the same,” Dana says quietly from across the table, startling him. When he glances her way, he sees her absently munching on the pickle spear that came with her club sandwich, shrewd gaze following Tommy’s progress around the table. “It’d be harder if he was different, you know? A real New York city asshole, or, you know” – her brows lift meaningfully – “aboss.” Themobpart goes unspoken. She shakes her head and looks back at the table. “But he’s still Tommy, you know?”

Lawson drains the rest of his beer too quickly, and stifles a burp. “Yeah. I know.”

~*~

Tommy and Dana each, unsurprisingly, win their matches against their respective partners, and then face off against each other. Dana wins, and gloats about it – charmingly, in Lawson’s opinion, and in Leo’s and Tommy’s, too, if their smiles are anything to go by, Tommy chagrined for his part.

He tries to hand over cash, and Dana shakes her head. “Absolutely not.”

“Let me buy you dessert, then. Do they have dessert here?”

She grins. “They have mudslides, with alotof rum.”

Tommy buys her one, and gets one for himself, too. They arrive in frosted, twenty-four ounce glass mugs dribbled with chocolate sauce, piled with whipped cream, sprinkles, and studded with little rolled-up chocolate cookies. Tommy’s eyes pop comically wide when the waitress sets them on the table.

“Did you forget you drove us here?” Lawson asks.

“You can drive back,” Tommy says, and deposits his keys into Lawson’s lap.

The gusto with which he attacks the boozy shake quells Lawson’s protests. He pockets the keys. “Fair enough.” Signals the waitress for a water.

“Okay, wait,” Tommy says, after a slurp so big it should have given him instant brain freeze. He’s intense in the way of the quite tipsy, brow furrowing, jaw setting. He has a daub of chocolate sauce at the corner of his mouth Lawson wants to lick clean. “You’re a Literature professor,” he says to Leo, who nods.

“Head of his department,” Dana says proudly, taking a daintier sip of her own mudslide.

“And you” – Tommy turns to Lawson – “write literature.”

“I write stories.”

Tommy waves.Same thing. Though they are most definitely not the same thing, in Lawson’s estimation.

“You” – back to Leo – “must have some industry connections. Have you read Lawson’s stuff? He should be published.” To Lawson, sternly, “You should be published.”

“I think you’re biased,” Lawson hedges, trying not to smile. “And a little drunk.” That earns another wave.

“Actually,” Leo says, and panic rallies swiftly and tightly in Lawson’s stomach. “Lawson’s been working on…” He trails off when Lawson makes a slashing motion across his own throat.

Too late, though.

Leo says, “Lawson’s been working on a literary fiction project I’d like to pass along to an old friend from college. Based on the excerpts I’ve read, I think it has real publishing potential.”

Lawson hunkers down in his chair.

“Really?” Tommy asks, then does a slow turn to Lawson, eyes big – then narrow. “Really?” He smacks Lawson’s bicep with the back of his hand. “You didn’t say anything!”

Dana snorts. “Shit. I forgot he was such a cheerleader.”

Tommy – mouth open, ready to keep on with his Lawson-needs-publishing roll – pauses, and frowns with just his eyebrows, mouth still slack.

Lawson tries and fails to smother a laugh in his palm.

Dana flashes a shit-eating grin. “What’s the matter? You leave your pom-poms at home?”

Tommy’s mouth joins his brows, finally. Enunciating clearly, in the manner of someone already buzzing whose rum mudslide is hitting himhard, he says, “Fuck. You.”

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