Page 37 of College Town

Dana frowns, and he knows she wants to say something, thinks he knows what it is she wants to say, but she sips her wine, and keeps silent.

“What’s your next move?” she asks, a few minutes later.

He shakes his head. “I don’t have one. Maybe they’ll leave me the hell alone.”

“Maybe so,” she says, and clinks her glass against his.

16

Lawson was seventeen when he got his driver’s license. Not his fault, his brain was just pretty much Tommy soup, and every time he tried to study the booklet for his driving test, he wound up pinned to his own mattress, or pinning Tommy to it, instead. He finally memorized the whole thing, though – thanks in no small part to a family trip to New York that put Tommy out of reach for three days – and aced both the written testandthe driving test.

When he pulled into the driveway for the first time as a licensed driver, killed the engine of his mom’s old Buick Le Sabre, and tried to hand the keys over, Dad smiled, shook his head, and said, “You keep those.” He patted the dash fondly. “She’s yours, now.”

Lawson gaped at him, and had two epiphanies, back to back.

One: it turned out that no matter how many hours you’d spent fantasizing about a Mustang GT, or a Camaro SS, havinganycar at seventeen was an astounding thing. It was freedom. It was the means to go where he wanted, when he wanted (within reason), without having to wait around for Mom or Dad to take him.

And two: unlike a Mustang GT or a Camaro SS, the Le Sabre had a roomy back seat. One in which a newly-licensed seventeen-year-old might kiss his boyfriend silly, and do other things, away from the prying eyes and listening ears that were always a risk at home.

Tommy got back in town on Thursday night, and all day at school on Friday, Lawson could focus on nothing but what was going to happen after school.

He’d called Tommy at home last night, after eight, which was pushing it, Mom had told him, brows raised. She liked for him to at least attempt something like good manners. “It’s nearly nine,” she said, as he stood frozen, hand hovering over the cordless phone. “What will his mother think?”

Lawson shrugged. “That’s okay. She likes me.” That was a bald-faced lie, because the one time he’d been close enough to speak to the woman – “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Cattaneo” – she’d given him a shifty look, clutched her jacket tighter around her throat, and bobbed a nod.

Mom gave him a doubtful look.

“I’ll be fast.” His tone went pleading, and she relented with a sigh.

Lawson took the handset and went around the corner into the formal living room.

He paused a moment, once he crossed the threshold, the way he always did. It was a room he’d been forbidden to enter as a little boy. Was twelve before he slipped into it unnoticed for the first time, without one of Mom’s “uh-uh”s or Dad’s “you know your mother doesn’t want you going in there with her nice things, son.” It was a small space, and always inexplicably cold. A lone lamp burned in the front window, its glow too dim to reveal the precise shapes of his mother’s beloved, now-twenty-year-old off-white sofas and chairs; her dainty tables and their daintier knick-knacks on lace doilies. Mom refreshed the potpourri in the bowl beneath the lamp every few weeks, but the room always had a stale, unlived-in scent to it. He’d been fascinated when he was forbidden entrance, but now, he wasn’t sure what made it so special as to be off limits. Kinda dark, kinda depressing, kinda stuck in the eighties.

But it was private, and offered a view of the front door and the entrance to the kitchen, so he couldn’t be snuck up on while he talked on the phone.

He perched on the edge of the chair by the window, surprised to find his stomach filled with butterflies. What he’d learned, over the past months, was that there wasn’t just one first time, and then nothing but smooth sailing afterward. There were dozens, hundreds, thousands of firsts, each as splendid and anxiety-inducing as the next.

“Hello?” It was Noah who answered.

“Hey, it’s Lawson. Is–”

“Yeah, hold on, just a sec.”

Did Noah sound…put out? Lawson held the phone to his ear and listened to the muffled sounds of walking on the other end of the line.

Lawson didn’t like silences, generally. He and Dana had always managed them beautifully, and he and Tommy had had some lovely ones lately, while they caught their breath, while they lay tangled and sweat-glued, existing together in a way Lawson had never known could feel so wonderful. But Noah – well, he didn’t make him nervous. But knowing that Noah and Dana were together, were doing some of the things he and Tommy did, had painted a layer of strain over their friendship. They rarely found themselves alone together these days, and when they did, it was…awkward.

Like now.

Lawson said, “When did you guys get back?”

“Like, twenty minutes ago.”

“Ah. Cool.”

“Mom had to use the phone. Otherwise Tommy would have called you thesecondwe walked in.” Lawson could picture Noah rolling his eyes, and fidgeted in the chair.

He chuckled, but weakly. “Yeah, well, I win. I called first.”

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