Page 17 of College Town

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You know that sensation of falling when you’re standing upright? When you just know that the decision’s already been made for you, and you couldn’t stop your feelings with an emergency brake? The ship’s going down; the train’s off the tracks; the car’s over the cliff.

I never stood a chance.

Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself.

~*~

High school was easier than middle school. The way the districts were drawn meant that the student body was much, much larger. All the middle schools in Eastman and the surrounding small towns fed into Eastman High, and so the kids who’d tormented Lawson for years were lost in the shuffle. There were jocks, and nerds, and goths, and weirdos, and hippies, and hicks, and that one ask-me-about-Jesus kid with the guitar who played worship songs on the quad at lunch, who all the girls flocked to but who Dana made gagging noises over. Lawson was utterly unremarkable in that throng of teenage hormones, and he was glad of it.

Tommy kissed him for the first time when they were in tenth grade.

They’d grown close – so close. Close enough that Dana had gone from gently teasing to gently encouraging, when it was just the two of them. “You should see the way he looks at you,” she said one evening, sunlight flaring golden in her hair at the skate park, cherry of her cig burning down low to the butt. It was a rare night of just the two of them.

Lawson blushed, and deflected. “Whatever. You’re crazy. What about you? You and Noah?”

She shrugged, unbothered. “What about us?”

“Are you guys fucking?”

She stuck the cig in the corner of her mouth, smirked, and socked him hard in the arm.

“Well!” he said, rubbing his arm, laughing. “You guys are so secretive.”

And they were. After that first fateful couple skate at Stardurst, both had denied having held hands under the neon, but Tommy and Lawson kept finding them tangled up. When it was the four of them together, which it was most of the time, they acted as plain friends. But Lawson had seen them kiss; had seen Dana rest her head on Noah’s shoulder. He didn’t understand it.

“No,” she corrected. “We’re…” She squinted, and took a thoughtful drag. “It’s nice. It’s sweet. But I don’t know if I…”

“If you what?”

“If I love him, you know?”

Lawson stared at her, because he didnotknow what it was like to not love a Cattaneo boy.

“Aw,” she said, stubbing her cig out on the concrete step, smiling at him in a way that left him squirming.

“What? Don’t ‘aw’ me.”

“You love him.”

“Shut up.” He turned away, rested his chin on his arms, where they were folded over his upraised knees.

“Law,” she said, so gentle beyond her years that it made his eyes sting. “It’sokay.”

“No, it’s not.” He sniffed, and blinked hard. “He doesn’t – we’re friends. That’s all he feels about me.”

Dana petted his hair, and he closed his eyes, but wasn’t too proud to lean into it.

Two weeks later, Tommy kissed him.

They were in Lawson’s room, playing Mario Kart. Lawson won – again – and Tommy chucked his controller aside with an irritated huff.

“Don’t be a sore loser.”

“I’m not,” Tommy protested, but flopped back on his beanbag chair and folded his arms, staring up at the ceiling.

“You wanna go again?”

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