Page 89 of College Town

The keys fly at him next. Those startle him. They’re his keys.

“You can drive,” Tommy says, and turns to head for the door that leads down into the garage.

“Oh, gee, thanks, boss man. I can drive my own car?” A different thought occurs. “Wait, what about you?”

“What about me?” Tommy asks over his shoulder as they descend the stairs.

“What about yourchauffer?”

Tommy pauses, and turns back to look at him. They’re alone, here, in the stairwell, and the knowledge makes the moment conspicuously intimate. “I’ll ride with you.”

“But–”

“My guys will follow a safe distance behind in one of the Town Cars. But I thought it might spook your parents if we roll up with a driver and a full contingent of guards.”

Lawson’s mouth goes dry, and he’s glad he didn’t get breakfast after all. “Look,” he starts, and Tommy shakes his head and starts back down the stairs.

“It’s fine,” he calls, and rounds the corner.

Lawson follows, and catches up quick on his longer legs. “No, no, no. You don’t get to ‘it’s fine’ me about that. I get that I’m, like, anassetnow. That you need to make sure your investment doesn’t get run off the road on his way home. But you can just follow behind with your boys and make sure I get in the driveway safe.” He’s at Tommy’s side, now, as they cross the garage toward the bay where Lawson’s old Honda now resides. “You don’t need to go in.”

Tommy pauses again, and tips a resolute look up at him. “I said I would.”

“You said–”I love you so much. “A lot of things in the heat of the moment.” And after. “But I don’t need you to walk me to my door, man.”

Tommy’s nose wrinkles atman. “I want to.”

“What if I don’t want you to?”

Tommy frowns. “Do you not? Really?”

What he wants is not to drag his parents into this bullshit.

Tommy softens. “I don’t know what Dana told them about you, but I’m sure they’re worried. I thought I could help smooth things over.”

Again, Lawson thinks of Dad in his chair, and Mom’s tired eyes, and the rundown kitchen where he grew up. Thinks of Tommy in his shiny shoes standing on that old floral-patterned linoleum, and wants to tuck into himself and cover his face.

Tommy’s expression softens further as he studies whatever his face is doing. “Law–” he starts.

“It’s fine.” Lawson brushes past him, jingling his keys. “But we’re hitting McDonald’s on the way.”

Let him see, he thinks in a fit of self-flagellation. Let him see what he left behind so he’ll gladly go running back away from it when all of this is over.

~*~

They don’t talk much. Tommy fiddles with the radio and comments on the places he remembers from high school, and all the new places and houses that have popped up in between. There are a lot more condo units and apartment buildings than there used to be, something that seems to interest him but which Lawson doesn’t care about. Lawson puts away three Egg McMuffins and a large coffee without spillingtoomany crumbs on himself, but though his hunger is sated, he’s then queasy from too much grease.

The Town Car stays a few cars behind them, and loiters two houses down at the curb when Lawson finally turns in the driveway at home.

His pulse, unsteady the whole drive, kicks into high gear as he pulls around behind the house and parks in his usual spot in front of the garage.

He knows the place isn’t as manicured as it was before Dad’s stroke, but now he makes an effort to see it through strange eyes. To see it through the eyes of a wealthy man who lives in a stone mansion with a Secret Garden attached.

What he sees through that exercise is…not good.

It’s downrightshit.

The siding on the back, where there’s less sun, is mildewed, green patches screed over the buttercup yellow his mother picked out some thirty years ago. The back deck sags in the center, and needed a fresh coat of Thompson’s Water Seal at least three years ago. The chimney brick needs repointing, and the once-tidy flower beds along the back walk now grow scraggly with weeds. The brown tips of last year’s leaves peek out of the gutters, and there’s a crack in one of the upstairs windows he hasn’t noticed before.

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