Page 20 of A Cure for Recovery

The words hit Tommy like a slap. “I was never a–”

“Oh yeah, buddy,” Lawson sneers, “you totally were. Pinstripe suit and everything.”

Tired of the mirror game – tired of seeing his own anger-mottled face – Tommy whirls.Tottersis a better approximation. He stumbles, grips the sink like a lifeline, and leans back against it hard once he’s face-to-face with Lawson. This close, he has to tip his head back an infuriating amount to make eye contact.

“I’m trying to help you get a career. Do you not evencare?”

Lawson wore his heart on his sleeve as a kid. He went still and shocked and terrified the first time Tommy kissed him, but Tommy wasn’t nervous, because he’d known long before he finally swooped in and pressed their sun-chapped lips together that Lawson loved him. And after that kiss, something broke loose in Lawson’s face; his love shined out of him, undisguisable, a light source all its own.

When Tommy arrived back in Eastman, when Tom Cattaneo walked into Coffee Town and almost had a heart attack, the Lawson he encountered had learned a helluva a lot about poker faces and putting up walls in the intervening twenty years. Post-shooting, post-marriage, those walls came right back down, and it’s felt like having the old Lawson back ever since.

Right now, though, in a bar bathroom that smells like cheap air freshener, Lawson is as guarded as he’s ever seen him. His face closes off. His eyes go flat and cold. If he’s hurt, he’s hiding it expertly.

In a low, dispassionate voice, he says, “I have wanted to publish a book since I was old enough to read one. It’s theonlycareer I’ve ever wanted. But I understand it might never happen, and that even if it does, it won’t happen quickly. And even if it happens slowly, there’s no guarantee I’ll be successful.”

He cocks his head. “Is this about you wanting it for me? Or is this because you’re sick of living in my old childhood bedroom and think a fat advance could go a long way toward living like you did as Tom Cattaneo?”

Forget slapped – Tommy feels steamrolled. He lurches back against the sink and nearly falls. All of his anger, mounting and mounting and burning like coals in his belly, evaporates. “I don’t – I – Lawson–”

Lawson’s lips curve in a small, unhappy smile. “Yeah. Thought so. Why don’t you think on that. I’ll be in the car.” And he leaves without a backward glance.

~*~

In the first five minutes after Lawson’s departure, “thinking on that” is more or less comprised of leaning heavily on the sink while white noise crashes through his skull. His left leg is holding, but his right is shaking, and anxiety has his breath coming in short little gasps, and he’s not sure he can walk out of here under his own power.

Damn it.

As soon as he acknowledges that truth, the bathroom door swings inward, and a kitchen employee wearing a sauce-streaked white apron and a hair net enters, looking awkward. He’s holding Tommy’s cane.

“Um, are you Tommy?”

Tommy doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry. He wipes a trembling hand down his face. “Yeah. That’s me.”

“This guy – your husband, he said – asked me to make sure you got this.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Tommy manages to step forward without letting go of the sink and take the cane. “Thanks,” he says again, face heating, insides going cold with regret.

The employee ducks out with a grateful-sounding exhale, and Tommy spends a few minutes unfolding his cane and deciding whether or not he can make the trek through the bar.

He risks it. Walking slow, and careful, and upright, like Dr. Wilson showed him, cane settling firmly on the floor with each step.

Dana and Leo are gone, which isn’t a surprise. Someone else has their usual table, a five-person group laughing loud and hard and having a good time – which the four of them could have had if Tommy hadn’t ruined it.

By the time he pushes through the front doors, he’s jittery from unbalanced blood sugar, exhausted, and, worst of all, ashamed. Guilt weighs heavy on each shuffling step, and he wishes he had something better to offer thansorry. Again.

They nabbed a good parking place when they arrived, so he doesn’t have to walk far. But he pulls up three cars down from theirs, struck by the scene that awaits him.

Lawson sits on the nose of the Subaru, uncaring if his jeans scratch the paint. He’s wearing his jacket, collar bunched up around his neck with the way his shoulders are slumped. He has his head tipped back, staring up at the moon, a cigarette between his lips, smoke curling up in thin ribbons.

Tommy makes some sort of involuntary noise, too soft to be heard, too low to be a gasp.

The thing is, Lawson has never understood how damn beautiful he is. Even when he hit his tenth grade growth spurt and was all knees and elbows, he’s always been the only person Tommy wants to look at it. Lawson callshimpretty, calls him handsome, tells him how hot he is, always discounting his own looks.

But the sight of him makes Tommy feel feverish with want. The long, long stretch of his legs stretched out before him, heels of his shoes resting on the asphalt. The strong column of his throat, bared to the night air as he tips his head back and exhales smoke through his nose like a dragon. And it’s a good nose, too, just bold enough not to be “cute,” but Tommy thinks it’s cute anyway. He wants Lawson when he’s working him over with strong hands, and he wants him when he’s yawning into his morning coffee, hair impossibly mussed.

He wanted him when they were clumsy kids, and he spent twenty years trying to get back to him, so he could want him up close in person again.

And he keeps fucking it up.

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