Page 118 of College Town

Oh.

Lawson’s heart skips, and then resumes, slower. Easier. His lungs loosen.

“You – you know, then. About me.”

Dad nods.

“Did you always?”

“For a…long time.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Dad gives him a tremulous, but genuine smile.

Lawson drops his face into his hands and breathes for a minute. Until his eyes stop stinging. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, okay. That’s…I love you,” he repeats, and Dad hums soothingly.

When he lifts his head, and wipes at his eyes, Dad’s staring at him all determined again. “Mom wantssss you to – tell him. I do, too.”

Lawson smiles against the ache of unshed tears in his jaw, in his cheeks. “It’s complicated.”

Dad shrugs. So?

“Yeah, yeah. I wish I had your confidence.” He stands, and they both stare when his knees crack. “Shit,” Lawson says, and Dad laughs his quiet chortle. “I’m old, Dad, don’t laugh.”

He laughs more.

Lawson leans down to hug him carefully around the shoulders, and Dad pats at the outsides of his arms. “Need anything else?”

“No. I’m…good.”

“Okay.” Lawson kisses the top of his head, where his wispy hair is still damp and shampoo-sweet, and straightens. Points to the walkie-talkie on the nightstand beside the Kindle. “Buzz me if you do.”

Dad sends him off with a wave, and a lopsided smile, and Lawson leans back against the door after he’s closed it, dizzy with the fade-away of nervous adrenaline.

His parents love him. Even if Tommy doesn’t, even if Tommy leaves town again and never comes back, heisloved.

That’s not nothing.

Downstairs, he hears voices floating from the kitchen, his mom’s high, tittering laugh, and Tommy’s lower chuckle.

“Oh, this one!” Mom exclaims. “This was when he wanted to look like that man in that rock band.”

“White Snake?” Tommy asks, and Lawson’s face heats from a room away when he realizes what’s happening.

“No. Nickelback? I think?”

“Nooooo,” Tommy laughs.

There’s a thump of porcelain on the tabletop, and a scuff of chair legs on the linoleum.

“What was hethinking?” Tommy asks.

Lawson braces himself as best he can, and walks into the kitchen. Sure enough, Mom has the photo album off the living room bookshelf open on the table, and the two of them have scooted their chairs closer together so they can both peer down at it. Tommy’s plate, Lawson notes, is empty save crumbs, and pushed to the side. Mom has brought the coffee pot to the table, and they both hold steaming, full mugs. Tommy still looks drawn and pale, skin a little waxy, but he’s sitting upright, and smiling, and Lawson doesn’t smell vomit, so that’s something.

For one painful moment, Lawson lingers at the threshold and soaks in the sight of them. Mom in her favorite cozy cardigan and slippers, her hair falling down out of its usual hairspray rigor as the night wears on. Tommy in his out on the town clothes, jacket shrugged back over his chair, sleeves pushed up, hair windswept. They sit shoulder-to-shoulder, heads bent together, light and dark, and it’s all too easy to let the fantasy unspool: coming home to this sight every evening, poring over old photos, or Mom showing Tommy her latest sketches; the two of them gossiping over coffee and glancing up with matching warm looks when Lawson enters the room.

Like they do now.

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