Page 27 of A Cure for Recovery

“It’s killing you not to say something, isn’t it?” Lawson guesses.

“No.” Tommy fiddles with his empty coffee cup. “A little,” he admits.

Lawson’s smile goes rueful.

“I’m not trying to pressure you.I’m not,” he insists, when Lawson just stares at him. “I’m asking because, if we can set up some good help for your dad beforehand, and everything works out, if you go, I want to come with you.”

Lawson’s face falls slack with surprise.

“And not because I want to yell at Keith.” He did want to, but he wouldn’t. Not on this trip. “But…” Here he went self-conscious. Because they were married, yes, and they did married things, but a lot of the time he felt like they were kids at a sleepover, plus fantastic sex, but minus proper adulthood. “We never got a honeymoon. And I thought…”

He doesn’t need to finish. Lawson’s eyes go anime-wide, and his lips part on a shaky breath, and he’s such a fucking sap, his man, but damn does Tommy love making him that way.

“Really?”

“Really. Sound oaky?”

Lawson nods, and reaches across the table. They sit with their fingers laced together until their waitress brings their to-go order.

~*~

Bill comes home. Tommy sits down with his laptop, and the checkbook, and a calculator, and then he starts interviewing home healthcare workers, because Nancy can’t commit to more than her two days a week, but she has some recommendations.

He sees Leo a few days later. He peeks out his office window and spots him having lunch with Dana out at a parking lot picnic table. It’s a barbecue food truck in attendance today, and their sauce always gives Tommy indigestion. He snags his brown bag lunch and makes his careful way outside, down the sidewalk, and across the parking lot.

Dana spots him first. She lifts her head, and her gaze lands on him, and the smile drops off her face. Her eyes narrow.

They haven’t spoken since that night at Flanagan’s. He knows she and Leo went by to visit Bill in the hospital. There was a massive spray of seasonal flowers on the nightstand, and a jumbo box of Junior Mints, Bill’s favorite. He’s seen Dana’s name flash on Lawson’s phone screen, and knows they’ve texted and talked. But Tommy and she have managed to avoid one another in person.

Dana always was stubborn when they were kids, as stubborn as Tommy and more vengeful besides, so he hasn’t been expecting an easy reconciliation. Still, the ferocity of her glare stops him momentarily in his tracks.

Leo must noticed it, too, because he twists around, and spots Tommy, and though Tommy doesn’t feel he deserves it, Leo waves and offers one of his normal, small, almost bashful smiles.

Tommy takes a deep breath and approaches the table. “Hey, guys.” He can’t muster chipper with Dana looking at him like that. But he can be contrite, and he hopes he is. “I wanted to–”

“Don’t say ‘apologize,’ jackass,” Dana snaps. “You don’t mean it.”

He sighs. “I do, though. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,now.”

“Dana,” Leo says softly, placating hand stretched across the table. “It’s okay.”

She frowns. “The day before he screeched at you in public–”

“I didn’tscreech.”

“–he sat right where you are now, and held my hand, and gave me the puppy dog eyes, and said he was ‘sorry’ if he’d been a jerk during his recovery. Then he turned right around and was an asshole again, whenyouwere the one trying to do Lawson afavor. He was a shithead when we were kids, and he hasn’t changed.” The last she delivers with a cutting glance over Leo’s head at Tommy, and it lands like an arrow. Ithurts.

She’s not wrong, though. He was a prickly kid, who turned into an impatient, snappish adult. Capable of calm politeness when necessary, but always with a jab on the end of his tongue. Lawson kept up with him when they were young, and does still, and always smiles with his whole face when Tommy saysfuck you. Dana usually gives as good as she gets…but maybe she’s never really liked him.

Or, more likely, she’s still holding a grudge because he left. Because he hurt Lawson twenty years ago, and then seven months ago, when he lied, and manipulated him, and almost died in his arms.He adores you, she said the last time they had lunch together. At the time, he took it as a reassurance. Now, he thinks it was a warning.He adores you, don’t you dare fuck up his life more than you already have.

He thinks he and Dana will have to have a proper conversation at some point. It might even devolve into a knock-down-drag-out fight. But for now, he has an apology to deliver.

“Leo, can I talk to you for a minute?” He hopes his face is doing the right thing. He doesn’t know what Dana means by “puppy dog eyes,” but she and Lawson both accuse him of it often.

“Sure.” Leo scoots over on the bench. “You can sit.”

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