Page 122 of College Town

He’s getting comfy again, and that’s so dangerous it makes his palms sweat.

He wipes them vigorously on the legs of his work khakis before he scales the new back steps and lets himself into the kitchen.

The smell hits him first: chopped raw onions.

Mom stands at the counter, knife in hand, and doesn’t pause with her perfect knife strokes when she looks up to greet him with a broad smile.

“Hi, sweetie!”

Lawson shucks his jacket and heads for the sink to wash his hands. “You shouldn’t have started without me.”

“I didn’t, not really. The onions always bother your eyes, anyway, so I thought I’d get this part over with. You can help me with the meat.”

That’s what she said. From anyone else, it would have been a dirty joke, but that’s not how Mom operates.

“Before you do that” – she holds half an onion out toward him in a staying gesture – “go say hello to Tommy.”

Lawson makes a show of glancing around the otherwise empty kitchen. “Where is he? Did you stuff him in the bread box?”

Mom rolls her eyes. “He really isn’t that short, dear. You’re just taller than necessary.”

“Hey, now.”

“He’s in with your father.” She nods that direction, brows at a meaningful angle.Go on, her look says.

“Should you really be encouraging this?” he asks, and he’s only half teasing.

“He brought me flowers.”

Lawson turns around and sees that he has: a big, no doubt expensive bouquet of hothouse lilies and eucalyptus.

“Go.” Mom shoos him with her knife hand, this time.

“I’m going, I’m going.”

The TV’s on in the living room –Family Feud– but goes unwatched in favor of the big, hardback book open on Dad’s lap. Tommy sits with half his butt perched on the end table, bent double so he can see what Dad’s pointing at in the book, and hear what he’s saying, slow and painstaking.

Lawson catches a glimpse of a full-page black-and-white photo and guesses it’s one of Dad’s military history books. He’s slapped with a memory: Tommy at fourteen, impatiently shoving up the sleeves of his too-big sweater as he nodded along with Dad’s commentary of the WWII documentary playing on the TV. It had been a special about fighter planes, and Tommy always liked planes; they’d hustled down from Lawson’s room intent on getting more Cheetos and Cokes before they returned to the Nintendo, but Tommy got caught up in Dad’s plane thing, and before he knew it, Lawson was sitting over alone over on the loveseat, eating Cheetos and sulking while the two of them all but talked over one another in their mutual excitement about a propellered aircraft that didn’t look fit to cross a field, much less an ocean.

At the time, Lawson was frustrated that his friend was stolen away from their planned afternoon of video games.

In retrospect, he’s hopelessly charmed – as he is now, watching Tommy speak softly and patiently to his father, as though what he’s saying about his book is the most interesting thing he’s heard all week.

Tommy looks good – he looks soft, and looks even better than he does when he’s all buttoned-up and put together. His jeans are old, and faded, and clearly don’t make it into the mob boss rotation often. He wears New Balance sneakers, like someone’s dad, and a wooly, oversized sweater with a stretched-out collar, the collar of his white t-shirt poking out from underneath. Like last week at Flanagan’s, he’s forgone gelling his hair into submission, and Lawson would like nothing more than to shove both his hands into it.

He hangs back, and it’s Dad who notices him first, pausing midsentence to smile at him. “Hiya…kid.”

“Hiya, Pop. Good day?”

“Uh-huh.”

Tommy’s expression is so tender that Lawson can’t maintain eye contact for more than a fraction of a second.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Tommy says back, much fonder. His face is soft and rosy in the lamplight, like he’s been drinking, but it’s only glasses of ice water sitting on coasters.

Lawson has to get out of this room. Right now. “You guys good? I’m gonna change and then I should help Mom.”

---