Page 27 of College Town

“You got your diploma?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go to college in New York?”

A pause. Then, “Yes.”

Lawson nods and glances down into his glass, wishing Cindy would come around to offer a refill. “Wow,” he deadpans. “Musta kept you really busy. Way too busy to send a postcard. Pick up a phone. Fire off an email.”

The scowl deepens. “I was…”

“What? Trapped in a well? On house arrest? Dabbling in being Amish?”

Tommy lifts a hand toward his face, then sets in on the table instead. The deep valley between his eyebrows makes Lawson think he meant to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Can you just–”

Lawson hits his limit. The awful, gaping chasm inside him, lined with hurt, and self-consciousness, and doubt, and a howling regret, cracks another few inches wider, and he can’t sit at this table another moment.

“Why am I here?” he asks, and if his voice cracks, oh well.

Tommy’s face does something complicated, a subtler, more mature version of the pained look he sometimes adopted when they were making out on Lawson’s bed. “Because I…” His mouth forms the W;I wanted to explain.But he hesitates, and then says, “I wanted to see you.”

The pain is internal. Not a lance from outside, a stab from the front, or the back. No, this comes from deep in the center of his chest, an old, badly-healed wound splitting open, the rot within spilling out.

Tommy was gone for twenty years, but he wanted to see him. To see Lawson. And why? To see if he would cry, the way he had back then? To rub his obvious success in his face? To remind himself why he rejected Lawson two decades before?

It's cruel. It’s deeply, breathtakingly cruel, and Lawson’s always been a glutton for punishment. He reaches deep inside himself and teases the rotten edges of that wound wider, gets his insides bloodier.

He sniffs, and says, “That woman with you earlier.”

Tommy’s eyes widen – and then shutter. The pleading lines on his face melt into frown lines.

“She your fiancée? I saw a ring.”

Tommy fiddles with his glass. “It’s complicated.”

“No, it really isn’t. Does that ring mean she’s engaged to you?”

“Technically…” Tommy heaves a sigh, and glances up at him through his lashes, as pretty as Lawson remembers from twenty years ago. “Yes.”

“Cool.” Lawson stands, and slides out of the booth – clumsily, but doesn’t care. He fishes a ten out of his wallet and slaps it down beside his empty glass.

“Lawson–”

“Don’t come by my coffeeshop anymore,” he says, turns, and manages not to look back on his way out the door.

12

On the drive home, he waits for the tears to come. Waits for the clawing, choking pain, and the shattering of his heart, those last, brittle layers between himself and total devastation.

Instead, a creeping numbness overtakes him, spreading from the inside out, until his fingertips are cold on the wheel, and his previously-racing thoughts turn backed-up and sludgy.

Tommy is back in Eastman.

Tommy rejected him before.

Tommy hasn’t tried to un-reject him, now.

Tommy is engaged to a beautiful woman.

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