Page 12 of College Town

Tommy and Noah did, too, if their regular attendance was anything to go by.

“…no, no, you gotta pressup.”

“Iampressing up – aw, fuck.” The Batman plush slipped through the metal pinchers of the claw and plopped back down amidst a sea of Supermen and Hello Kitties. “Damn it.”

Tommy flapped a hand to shoo him aside. “Here. Lemme try.”

Four tokens later, Tommy managed to snag a whole fistful of plushies with one grab of the claw. “Ha!” he shouted, triumphant, face radiant in the sick blue glow of the claw machine.

The thrill that lanced through Lawson’s stomach was only part triumph – mostly it was the wide, unrestrained smile on Tommy’s face as he slowly, slowly, maneuvered the claw, and his trophies, over the drop chute. Lawson gripped his shoulder. “Oh my God…wait, don’t–”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Just–”

“Dude, shut up, I’m–”

At the last second, the precarious bundle clipped the top of a stack of ugly, droopy-eyed dogs, the claw tipped, spun, and all but one toy slipped free of the claw.

“Shit!” they said as one.

Tommy dropped his head in a comical display of despair, and Lawson snickered into his hand.

“Go on.” He elbowed him. “Get your prize, man.”

As morose as the droopy-eyed dogs that had caused the fiasco, Tommy crouched, reached into the slot, and pulled out a bright white and pink Hello Kitty. He actually pouted, lower lip popped out and everything.

“Hello, kitty.” Lawson slung an arm across his shoulders. “She’s gonna look so cute on your bed, between Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake.”

Tommy bopped him in the face with the toy, and Lawson dissolved into giggles.

“No, no, Tommy, it’s perfect! Your last name isCattaneo, and Hello Kitty is a kittycat–”

Tommy whacked him harder with the toy, and Lawson put his hands up, laughing hysterically, to fend him off.

“Dude,” he gasped, “don’t break my glasses!”

Tommy tried to shove Hello Kitty into his mouth instead, and then they were both laughing breathlessly, tussling so they staggered back and forth in front of the claw machine.

Lawson had never had this before, this sort of rowdy, masculine friendship, complete with insults and wrestling. He and Dana had been friends since infancy, but as his mother had told him sternly – she’d been shrieking, actually – in an early, sepia-tinged memory from toddlerhood, it wasn’t “nice” to wrestle with girls. Dana didn’t want to wrestle anyway. In that memory, he’d shoved her over, and Dana had come up swinging, to dump a whole bucket of sand over his head.Serves you right, Mom had said, and that had been the end of that.

To be fair, he hadn’t initiated this physical relationship with Tommy, too nervous at thirteen that any sort of touch could be construed as overstepping, as an unwanted advance. But if Tommy had heard any of the rumors by now – and he must have, it had been two months – he paid them no heed. He’d elbowed Lawson that first lunch, just a light tap with the very point of it, and then he’d kept doing it, until Lawson started doing it back, and been rewarded by one of Tommy’s sharper grins.

Now, Lawson got him in a headlock at the Stardust arcade and Tommy squawked and dug his fingers into Lawson’s ribs, tickling him until Lawson had to let go, gasping with helpless laughter.

“Ha,” Tommy huffed, the way he always did when he thought he’d gotten the best of him, his grin sly and smug and hinting at an expression that conjured forth Lawson’s imagined adult version of Tommy, still pretty and slender, but fierce in a dark and grownup way.

Thinking of it now, that imagined specter of the future, chased the last of his laughter away.

“You kids knock it off!” the girl at the snack bar called, hands on her hips.

“Sorry,” they chorused.

Tommy picked up their abandoned Dr. Peppers, and Lawson snagged Hello Kitty where she’d fallen amidst their tussle.

“Don’t forget your kitty cat, tomcat.”

“Donotcall me that.” Tommy sent him a glare, ruined by the high color in his cheeks and his rumpled hair.

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