Page 62 of College Town

She laughs, high and musical, head tipped back to expose the clean line of her throat.

It wasn’t that funny. More sad than anything. He thinks of beautiful, flattering Soviet ballerina spies, sweet smiles and doe eyes and knives strapped to toned thighs.

Her laugh tapers off into a throaty chuckle and she turns her smile back on him, eyes delighted slits. “I like you,” she says, like that’s a thing that peoplesay.

“You don’t know me.”

He was playing a nonsense Tetris game on his phone when she came in, and so his hands are in his lap. She leans forward and lays a manicured hand on his wrist, and it’s an effort not to recoil. “That’s true,” she says, “but I feel as though I do. You have kind eyes, and a very friendly face.”

He frowns. “I do?”

“Yes. I could tell right away that you’re a good person.”

Who says that? Who the hell evensays that? Lawson says, “Okay…thanks, I guess.”

“And Tom thinks so much of you as well.”

Lawson’s stomach turns over unhappily. His breath stills a moment. “He told you about me? What did he say?”

She shakes her head, and tucks back the silky lock of hair the motion dislodges from behind her ear. “No, no, don’t think that. He wasn’t gossiping. He didn’ttellme anything. He didn’t share any secrets.”

Lawson grinds his teeth, and fails to come up with something cool to say. He has no chill when it comes to Tommy, and his pulse knocks harder the more he tries to understand what she’s getting at. “Okay, cool, but what did hesay?”

Her smile widens, eyes dancing, as if he’s told a joke. It’s not a condescending expression, though; she seems genuinely happy to sit here in his presence for some reason. “Mostly, it’s what hedidn’tsay.” She smooths her slacks, and bends her spine down so she’s curled in a casual, but still-elegant slouch that puts him (fractionally) at ease.

“I met Tom two years ago,” she says, and her smile softens in obvious remembrance. “He was very…tense. Yes, that’s it. What’s the word? Uptight?”

Lawson nods. “Yeah, that’s the word for it.” He wouldn’t admit it if asked, but he’s entranced. He realizes, in this moment, that aside from Dana’s scathing reprisals of him when Lawson dares to mention the past, he hasn’t had anyone to talk about Tommy with in twenty years. Not anyone friendly about it, anyway.

“He was all business. Phone calls, and meetings, and lots of…” She scowls dramatically, and her enhanced brows make a good play at Tommy’s usual expression.

Lawson snorts.

“And I knew that – well,” she hedges, and sends him a calculating look through her lashes. “He told you about us, yes? Him and me?”

Lawson fights the urge to fidget. He taps at the sides of his phone case, though, the dull ticking of his nails on plastic. “He said you guys were…” He doesn’t want to say it; doesn’t want to offend her irrevocably and send her running to the guards insisting they rough him up for besmirching her reputation.

But Natalia leans forward and whispers, “We don’t sleep with each other. He told you that, yes?”

Lawson’s face heats. “Um. Yeah. He told me something like that.”

She nods, and sits back. “He told me up front that it would be that way. That he did not want to…” She twirls a finger in the air, searching for the right word.

“Fuck?” Lawson suggests, and feels his blush deepen, afterward.

A startled laugh bursts out of her, but she nods. “Yes, that! But he said it more delicately.”

“Consummate your relationship?”

“Yes.” She gives him a triumphant grin. “That’s how he said it. He assured me that I was very beautiful, and expressed his regret that he would not consummate–”

“I get the gist.”

She nods, unfazed, and continues, “And at first I thought he must have a mistress. So many men in this life do, you know.”

He marvels at her casual seeming-acceptance of the fact. “That didn’t bother you?”

She shrugs. “It wasn’t a love match. I knew I was marrying him for the alliance with my father. I assumed we would both take lovers of our own choosing.”

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