Page 19 of College Town

A high, thin laugh escaped his lips, and he clapped a hand to his mouth and shook his head. “No,” he squeaked out, when he could.

Dana sighed again, less patiently. “It’s simple math, Law. One plus one equals two. You stare at him, and he stares at you. You like him, and he likes you.”

Another laugh bubbled in his throat, threatening to choke him. He braced both hands on the table and tried not to sway, dizzy suddenly. “He likes me as a friend.”

Her brows lifted. “You haven’t seen the way he looks at you.”

“Yes, I have.”

“No, not objectively, not like I have. He likes you back, Law.” She sat back and shrugged. “You should go for it.”

“Go for what?”

Two trays clattered down onto the table and Lawson’s death-grip on its edge was all that kept him from leaping out of his seat. He whipped his head around, and saw that Tommy was frowning as he dropped down onto the bench beside him.

“Go for what?” he repeated, brows notched, more concerned than curious. He looked so serious that Lawson would have laughed if his heart hadn’t been trying to wriggle out through the gaps in his ribs and flop onto the table.

“I…” Lawson tried and failed to come up with a reasonable lie on the spot. He glanced from Tommy’s overly-worried face to the tray he’d set between them. Two giant cups of soda, and two paper boats of nachos: one with cheese only, one topped with jalapeño slices and bright-ride fake bacon bits, just the way Lawson preferred.

The sight of the nachos, the knowledge that Tommy had stood at the condiment station and fixed them specifically for Lawson, the way he liked them, put a lump in his throat. Set his stomach to swooping.

“Hello.” Tommy waved a hand in front of his face. “Ground Control to Major Law.”

Across from them, Dana accepted her own boat of nachos from Noah – pickled onions, banana peppers, black olives – and said, smoothly, “He’s wondering if he ought to go for this writing workshop in New York over the summer.”

Lawson gaped at her, and her flat look saidwork with me here.

He unstuck his jaw, finally, and did just that.

“Really?” Tommy asked, perking up.

“Um, yeah,” Lawson said, and took a big slug of Coke to both lubricate his mouth, and buy himself a few more seconds. “But, I mean, I probably wouldn’t get in, so…” He shrugged, and hoped the heat in his face would be believed as bashfulness over this fictional seminar, rather than perfectly-made nachos and almost getting caught pining.

“What? No way,” Tommy said, voice lifting excitedly. When Lawson turned back to him, he found Tommy’s brow smooth, his smile as eager as his tone. “Are you kidding? I’ve read your stuff. You’d totally get in!”

Lawson wasn’t even sixteen yet, but he needed to be on heart medication. His condition was terminal.

“I dunno…” he hedged.

“You’re applying,” Tommy said, like a declaration, before he dug into his nachos. “Youhaveto. I’ll help you fill out the form.”

The seminar was real, Dana told him the next day, and he let out a gusty sigh of relief. But then he’d frowned. “Wait, what? You didn’t just make that up to save my ass?”

“I told you about it yesterday to save your ass, but I was gonna say something eventually. I saw the flier pinned up on the corkboard outside the east wing bathrooms.”

They were late to lunch because she walked him to said corkboard and badgered him (sweetly) into taking one of the fliers.

A flier that he dropped on his desk and tried – with moderate success – not to think about for the next three days.

Then Tommy came over so they could work on their Spanish project together.

“Oh,” Tommy said, beside Lawson’s desk, and Lawson’s insides went liquid. “This is it.”

“What’s it?” But Lawson knew. His skin prickled, and his pulse throbbed, and he felt caught-out, see-through and too-vulnerable, when he finally lifted his head.

Tommy studied the creative writing seminar flier with a faint half-smile tucked into the near corner of his mouth, his expression fond in a way that Lawson didn’t want to examine too closely. He looked…proud. And Lawson didn’t want to examine that, either.

Then Tommy lifted his head, and met Lawson’s gaze, and the entire world stopped.

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