Page 103 of College Town

Sight of it brings him up short; stoppers his throat against the complaint offense he’s about to launch.

She turns to him, and her whole face lights up. “Law! Sweetie!” She sets her tea down and rushes to him; folds him into a squeezing hug that baffles him. When she pushes him back at arm’s length, her tone becomes mock-chiding. “I can’t believe you didn’t say anything!”

“About…?”

She tweaks his nose like she did when he was a boy. “I knew you were helping Tommy with his work, but I had no idea it paid like this. That you could afford to do this for us.” She sweeps her arm toward the deck, and with a jolt, he realizes that she thinks this ishisdoing, instead of Tommy’s.

“Oh, yeah, well–”

She hugs him again, and sniffles into the front of his polo shirt. “Thank you, honey,” she says in a choked voice. “I know you deserve to take yourself on a nice vacation, or get a new car, but this is…this means the world to your father and me.”

He puts his arms around her in turn, his own voice choked when he says, “Of course, Mom.”

When he gets up to his room, he throws himself back across his bed and dials Tommy to the sounds of saws, hammers, and nail guns from outside.

“Tom Cattaneo.”

“Fuck you, you know it’s me, and what the fuck?”

“Hi, honey,” Tommy says mildly.

“Don’t you fucking ‘hi, honey’ me, you jackass. Why are there four dudes building my parents a new deck? And why do they think I paid for it?”

“Hold on.” He hears movement, then the click of a door, and Tommy’s voice drops some of its phone politeness. “I take it Mack and the guys are there?”

“Yeah. Mack and the guys are here,” Lawson says, laying on the sarcasm. “And again I ask, what the fuck?”

Tommy sighs like Lawson is very dramatic. (He is.) “Did you honestly think you could tell me that you tried to build your dad a ramp, and couldn’t, and that I’d just let that go?”

“Yes.”

“You–” Another sigh. “Whywould you think that, Lawson?”

No one on earth has ever been able to make Lawson feel as stupid as Tommy, and the worst part of that is that he’s never doing it as a means to insult him. He points out Lawson’s blind spots – his stupid spots – and leaves him to hang his head in shame.

Lawson doesn’t want to do that now, though. He bristles. “Gee, I dunno, maybe because it’s none of your business.”

As kids, Tommy would have fired right back.Fuck you, yes it is, you’re a moron. But now, he hesitates. And when he speaks, it’s in a careful voice. “Your parents were always very kind to me. I’d like to repay them for that. Your dad needs a ramp, and it’s something I can easily provide.”

Lawson’s eyes go hot, and his chest gets tight. “Oh, right,” he scoffs, “you can provide it, but their own son can’t, so you have to swoop in like a white fucking knight and–”

“Lawson. Law. Hey. It’s not like that.”

Lawson’s breathing harshly down the phone line, and he tries to get control of himself.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Tommy continues, “I’m paying Mack and his crew with the money you ought to be taking home in cash for helping us.”

That shocks him to stillness. He blinks up at the ceiling. “Wait. So I don’t get to choose what I spend my own money on?”

“I didn’t figure depositing twenty-grand in cash in your bank account would look good to the IRS,” Tommy says, drily.

“No, yeah, good call.” Lawson breathes a minute, and Tommy seems content to wait him out and breathe along with him from the other end of the line. “Daddoesneed a ramp,” Lawson admits finally, begrudgingly.

“I know.”

“But I don’t like this.”

“I know that, too.” There’s a smile in Tommy’s voice. What goes unsaid is:I knowyou. Lawson hates that he does.

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