Page 147 of College Town

Lawson eats his food, and drinks his coffee, and feels better for it. He goes down the hall to the restroom, where he washes his face with cold water, and feels a little better for that, too. He buys a Twix from the machine, and goes back to the room just as a nurse is finishing up with Tommy’s vitals and IV check. She gives Lawson a warm smile that he returns, and then he settles in with his candy bar and his letters.

It's a shame he’s the one who’s trying to be an author, because Tommy’s damn good with a pen.

…wish I could take you around Manhattan. It’s dirty, and there’s pigeons, and people yelling on the subway, but there’s the theater, and the architecture, and yesterday I found this little Italian place tucked in between two bookstores, and I thought–

A deep inhale from the bed. The monitor kicks up a notch. “…where?” a croaky voice says.

Lawson slaps the letters aside on the table and lurches to his feet. Tommy’s eyes are open. He’s awake! He’s alive!

His head shifts on the pillow, and his hands clutch fitfully at his blankets, and he’s still drugged, and groggy, but there’s panic cutting through his once-peaceful expression, and his heartbeat is going up, and up, and up.

“Law? Where – Law, I hafta–”

“Hey, hey. I’m right here.” Lawson leans over him, and touches his face, oh so carefully, mindful of the cannula lines hooked over his ears.

Tommy’s gaze pings around drunkenly, and finally latches onto Lawson. His eyes widen. “Law?” he asks, wondering, like he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing.

“Yeah. Yeah, sweetheart, it’s me.” Lawson smiles, and his eyes well up again. He blinks them clear but more tears form. “Howya feeling?”

Tommy’s throat clicks dryly as he swallows. His hands flutter up to grab at Lawson’s arms. “Lawson.”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Lawson teases, and tears spill over and course down his cheeks.

“You’re…you’re here.”

“I am.”

Tommy swallows again, and his dark eyes start to fill. “You’rehere,” he whispers, brokenly.

“I am,” Lawson repeats. “Hi, baby.” He leans down, and drops the softest of butterfly kisses against his chapped lips.

I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you, and I want to come home. That’s all I want. Please, Lawson, can I come home? I love you,he wrote in his letters.

“You’re home,” Lawson whispers. “I’ve got you. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

35

It turns out that growing up isn’tentirelyshit.

Okay, okay. I know what I said at the beginning. I was angrier then. Bitter, you’d say. It has its shitty moments. Some days that loss of childhood optimism cuts you to the bone. Sometimes you wonder how you ever sat around a table in a roller rink that smelled of nachos and old vomit and supposed that you’d be happy when you were older. There are so very many obstacles to happiness, some of them of our own making, but quite a few of them outside our control. How do we live our grownup days without breaking down over all the ways things might have turned out better? How do we live with the what ifs?

I suppose it comes back to contentment, again. That incandescent, pure and simple happiness of childhood, that bright and clean-scouring love, was never going to last, no matter what. Because children are not, in fact, capable of contentment. Not in the way of grownups. Because we have seen the fragility of happiness, we treasure the little things. Our hope is of a modest variety, but it’s still hope.

A hope for fresh starts. For first steps. For quiet, earnest words of love that are not confessions, nor declarations, because we know the love already exists, it is our constant companion, but hearing it still warms the cockles of our grownup, glued and taped-together hearts.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is: children think that only one thing will make them happy, but that simply isn’t true. Happiness is a tapestry, rather than a rare artifact. And so is love.

It takes us a little time, and no small amount of effort, to pick out all the knots and lay the threads. And that effort is what makes itours.

Lawson reads back over the final paragraphs of his high-brow, navel-gazing literary contribution to society, smiles to himself, hits Save, and then slaps it onto an email bound for Leo. Whatever happens next will happen. In the meantime, he has a space opera to write.

~*~

“There’s ice on the ramp.” There is, and it seems like somebody from the hotel should have salted that bad boy, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment. “You want me to–”

“I can handle the curb,” Tommy says.

Lawson tightens his arm around his husband’s waist. “I know you can, but do you want–”

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