Page 23 of College Town

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He picked Flanagan’s on purpose just to be a dick. College town that it is, there’s something like fifteen bars in downtown Eastman alone, with bigger, louder, night club blends outside the main strip. The themes range from sports bars that do loud trivia, to frat bars no sane adult would enter, to kitschy tourist traps with rowboats and blow-up sex dolls suspended from the ceiling, to a few more refined places, with genuine leather booths and gastro pub cuisine served on tiny square plates between vermouth cocktails. Thirty-seven-year-old single guys tend to frequent the Quarter Moon, a nice blend of classy and casual, where single women sit in pairs and trios sipping wine and playing with their hair; a good spot to pick someone up who probably does their taxes and isn’t on antibiotics. It’s the obvious choice for a meeting between old friends looking to catch up, booths tall and private, atmosphere quiet enough to really talk.

Flanagan’s, by contrast, is the sort of run-down, stuck-in-the-eighties spot that appears in every movie. A spot where the hero can eat a questionable sandwich amidst hard-drinkers and truckers shooting pool, no questions asked; where he can drop a dime in a payphone and call seedy connections, and where a Hollywood-beautiful waitress leans her hip up against his sticky table and asks what he’s doing in town. Oh, just passing through, he says, and their eyes meet, and pool balls clack quietly in the background, air swirling with cigarette smoke.

There are no Hollywood-beautiful waitresses at Flanagan’s, but the tables are sticky, and the rest of the picture is pretty accurate.

There’s a black Lincoln SUV in the parking lot, the nicest car by a long shot, and it has to be Tommy’s, which means he’s arrived early. Lawson stands leaning against his car and smokes a cigarette, so he can walk in five minutes late. Again, just to be a dick.

The nicotine does little to soothe his nerves – it does nothing, actually; his hand shakes as he flicks the butt away and smooths his hair, and tugs his jacket straight.

He didn’t tell Dana about this meeting. He almost did, thumb hovering over his phone, but decided not to, in the end, feeling brave, feeling stupid, and wanting to go in just as himself, without her voice in his ear.

At home, between multiple promises that he wouldn’t be long, and his mom’s amused assurances that they would be fine without him for a few hours (It won’t take a few hours, Mom, I’ll be right back. Sweetie, is this a date? No.) he changed out of his Coffee Town polo and khakis into jeans and a gray henley that Dana had assured him made his chest look “six feet wide.” He pulled his favorite, battered old leather jacket over it, attempted to fix his hair, and strides now toward the door of Flanagan’s thinking he looks the best he can without professional intervention.

In truth, dick move or not, Flanagan’sishis favorite bar in town. He meets Dana and Leo at Double Decker sometimes, for spring rolls and cosmos and a rooftop view of the city. But if he’s on his own, he wants a greasy cheeseburger the size of his head, cheap whiskey, and the company of sad middle-aged men who mind their own business.

It’s crowded tonight, he sees, when he pushes through the airlock. But not raucous. It never is. Four vaguely biker-looking guys are playing pool at the table off to the left. Six tired-looking women talk quietly over pints of beer just to his right. The bar’s full, a blend of long-haul truckers, guys in smocks with their names stitched on the breast, and a few in suits with their ties trailing out of their jacket pockets, collars unbuttoned. All of them watch the TV behind the bar, ESPN with the sound off and the closed captioning on.

Most of the booths are full: low-backed, no privacy, but the sort of place where no one twists over their shoulder to ask to borrow your salt, so what’s it matter? He finds Tommy easily, and for a moment, paused inside the door, it seems as if some vindictive stage director has turned a floodlight toward him, lit him up bright white, so Lawson can’t miss him.

That’s only his own lovelorn nostalgia, though.

Tommy sits halfway down the long row of booths straight ahead, visible enough, thanks to Lawson’s tunnel vision, but he still leans sideways into the aisle and waves to get his attention.

Dork, Lawson thinks with a snort, and his brain helpfully overlays an old image of fourteen-year-old Tommy waving wildly at him across the dim neon interior of Stardust.

Unlike then, he’s not smiling. He looks both worried and relieved, like he thought Lawson might not show up.

Lawson ducks his head, hands in his pockets, and tries to get his heartrate under control as he closes the gap between them.

He doesn’t look at him again until he’s slid into the booth, and then he lifts his head, and gets his first real look, and all his bravery dries up on his tongue like ash.

Tommy’s ditched the suit from earlier. Now, he wears a supple-looking brown leather jacket – motorcycle collar, snap across the throat undone – over a plain, clinging navy t-shirt that shows off the dip at the base of his throat, and the inner wings of his collarbones. His hair, tightly-gelled earlier, looks as if he’s been running his hands through it, rumpled on top, a lone curl falling over his temple. And his five o’clock shadow is dark and obvious, the way Lawson thought it would be.

“Um.” Tommy shifts around, and reaches for his glass: something amber on the rocks. “Hi.”

He’s so off-kilter here. So different from the suit-wearing dictatorial douche he was earlier, that Lawson is set back on his heels.

It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself.He doesn’t care.

“Hi,” he returns, hands spread flat – hopefully casual – on the table edge. “Did you order?”

Tommy blinks, and looks startled. “No, just…” He tilts his drink, as if in demonstration.

“’Kay.” The waitress is passing, and her eyes land on Lawson, brimming with recognition. “Hey, could I get a Seven and Seven? Thanks, Cindy.”

When he glances back across the table, Tommy is clutching his glass tightly on the table, and staring at him with huge eyes. His throat bobs as he swallows.

Lawson has no idea what to say to him, his brain wiped clean by the sight of his clavicles. “Yeah, so…” he starts, without any direction.

“I wanted to apologize,” Tommy says, formally.

Lawson barks a startled laugh, his lungs tight, his stomach cramping, his hands clammy where he’s linked them on the edge of the table. “For what, man?”

Tommy tilts his head. Come on, man, Lawson hears in his teenage voice, the same depth, but without the new rough edges.

Cindy returns, and sets his drink down.

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