Page 6 of College Town

In the moment, though, Lawson thoughtoh. And then he thoughthis eyes. And then, a little desperately,be my friend. Please.

Tommy’s gaze flicked to Lawson, when he first perked up, and skimmed over his face, briefly, before he pressed his lips tighter together and looked elsewhere. Looked everywhere, lashes flickering and gaze bouncing from face to face to face, not sticking long on anyone, eventually going up to the ceiling, and its bright lights, knobby throat jerking as he swallowed. It might have been a trick of the fluorescents, for a moment, it looked as thought Tommy’s eyes might fill with tears.

But then his head tipped forward, and his jaw set firmly, and he said, quiet but sure. “Hi.” His hand lifted in an aborted wave, brows notching together afterward like he was pissed at the motion. “I’m Tommy.”

“Hi, Tommy,” came the listless chorus from the class.

Mr. Ballas used his grip on Tommy’s shoulder to urge him forward. “Why don’t you take a seat at the empty desk beside Mr. Granger?”

Oh. Oh no. Oh…yes?

“Hopefully,” Mr. Ballas continued, angling a pointed look Lawson’s way, “Mr. Granger can set a better example.”

It was an effort not to roll his eyes. But Lawson said, “Yes, sir.” And he made a point of not staring as Tommy ducked his head and swept quickly down the aisle to take the seat beside him.

He sat with an economy of movement, a duck and slide, dumping his backpack at his feet so that it landed the same moment the soles of his shoes landed on the floor – up on the toes, because he was so short his heels wouldn’t touch.

Lawson experienced a not-so-minor crisis about that.

Once the class had settled, and Mr. Ballas had turned back to the board, he risked a sideways glance at his new seatmate.

Tommy had produced his textbook, opened it to the right page, and had a notebook at his elbow, pencil in his hand. His stare was fixed in the middle distance, though, and the notebook page was clean, and white; he hadn’t copied down any of what Mr. Ballas had put up on the board. The fingertips of his left hand bounced soundlessly against the surface of the desk, some sort of nervous tic.

Lawson frowned to himself, and wondered why that was, but, well, it wasn’t his business.

He resumed taking his own chicken scratch notes to the best of his ability, and studiously ignored the boy beside him, though not without difficulty: Tommy sat still as a stork frogging at the edge of a pond, and glowed a little bit as though he was radioactive. (Lawson’s imagination at work again, making everything from his errant thoughts, to the actions of the day, to the players in the production of his life all out to be bigger, brighter, and more consuming than they really were.)

Tommy had come into second period halfway through, and so when the bell rang to dismiss class, it was time for lunch. The poor kid’s mom hadn’t given him a chance to come into homeroom, then first period, and form any tentative, though illusory friendships before the battlefield of lunch arrived before him; Lawson shoved his book haphazardly into his bag, and turned to find that Tommy was glancing dazedly around the room, chest hitching under his too-big Colts sweatshirt, eyes slowly clearing in favor of an animal gleam of panic.

He hiked his bag over one shoulder, stepped around his desk – only tripped a little – and stuck his hand out. “Hi, New Kid. Tommy, right? I’m Lawson Granger. Mr. Ballas only calls me ‘Mr. Granger’ because he’s a fucking psychopath. You wanna have lunch with me and my best friend?”

When he first started speaking, Tommy’s head whipped around so fast it’d be a miracle if he hadn’t given himself whiplash. The flash of fear became a wild glitter, like stars caught in the corners of his dark eyes. But then, slowly, after a thorough top-to-bottom examination of Lawson that made Lawson want to blush and fidget, he relaxed. His shoulders dropped on a deep breath, and though he still looked cagey, he accepted Lawson’s offered shake and said, “Sure. Thanks.”

3

Loneliness always feels like something you can handle.It’s not the worst sensation in the world, you think.

Until it is.

~*~

Despite Dana’s gentle, and then not-so-gentle encouragements, the blind date setups, the unsubtle meet-cutes she’s tried to orchestrate, Lawson would never get laid if not for Grindr.

He tried dating in college, he really did. He went to his fair share of parties; in his twenties, he even accepted Dana’s blind dates and meet-cutes. But he was so spectacularly bad at dating that he eventually gave it up and resorted to anonymous hookups when the itch got too strong.

His last real date was five years ago. He’d been seeing someone Dana knew through work – and who thankfully lived two towns over and wasn’t privy to any Eastman social gossip – for a few weeks. A tax accountant named Terry, who, in the most general sense, was exactly Lawson’s type. Dana had stopped trying to fix him up with men whoweren’tbrunet and under five-ten, and Terry even hit the gym, and had a tasteful, subdued fashion sense, and said he thought it was “aspirational” that Lawson was still trying to become a novelist, rather than a “pipe dream,” the way some of them had. They had sex once, about a week before their final date, and it was as heated as two mannequins being shoved together in a Macy’s storage closet. Lawson hadn’t been able to relax, and Terry had been sweet about it – “It’s fine, you’re fine, we can take things slow” – which made Lawson even less relaxed.

The follow-up date, in which Terry made soft, sorry eyes at him across yet another candlelit table was crushing in its humiliation, but ultimately a relief. “Lawson,” Terry said, hesitantly, sliding his fingertips through the condensation on his water glass. “I just feel like…like maybe…” A frown. “Like maybe your mind – or your heart, I guess – is somewhere else.” A look so earnest Lawson’s breath caught, dark and starry in the candlelight, so like that other gaze, the one Lawson still dreamed about, but not close enough. “Is there someone else?”

“Yes,” Lawson said on a relieved exhale, and he wasn’t even lying. “There is.”

That was the end of Terry, and of Dana’s setups.

“There’s someone who just started at my office,” she started one night, over wine and popcorn on her sofa, in front ofThe Bachelor. “He’s a little younger than us…”

“An infant? A child? No,” he said, firmly. “Don’t bother.”

He downloaded Grindr on his phone after that, and never looked back.

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