Page 28 of A Cure for Recovery

Dana stands in a sudden rush. “You can have my seat,” she says, coldly. “I’m getting a refill.” She picks up her paper cup and strides toward the food truck.

Tommy takes her abandoned spot with a sigh, settling in across from Leo and folding his hands together on the tabletop. “She’s not wrong.”

Leo frowns, attentive rather than scathing, like Dana.

“I’ve always been a shithead. I’d blame the other night on the beer…”

“You’d had a lot by the time we arrived,” Leo says, offering him the out.

“Two and a half.”

“Yes, but, well, you’re…” One corner of Leo’s mouth quirks in a rare smirk, and Tommy gapes at him.

“Wait. Are you calling melittle?” He tries to be stern, but feels a smile threatening.

The smirk falls away. “What? No. I only meant…you hadn’t eaten anything. And you…”

Tommy snorts. “Yeah, I’m a lightweight. It’s fine.” He sighs. “I am…not the biggest person. Literally, or figuratively. I’ll admit that I have absolutely no idea how the publishing industry operates.”

“I gathered that,” Leo says, but kindly. “It’s not something someone outside the business generally has any familiarity with.”

“I don’t actually think that you’re trying to screw him over – I know you’ve stuck your neck out for him, and I really appreciate it. I also know you have no control over what your friend Keith does or doesn’t do. And he might be a very nice person for all I know.”

“He is.”

Tommy makes a face, and Leo breathes a quiet chuckle. “I just…” He scrubs at his jaw, swamped all over again by a fanged and indefensible frustration that makes him grit his teeth. “I want this for himso badly. He’s so talented – always has been – and it kills me that I can’t make this happen for him.”

“Is it about wanting to show him off?” Leo asks gently. “Or wanting him to live up to his…”

He trails off when Tommy shakes his head vehemently.

“No, no, not that. It’s not about thatat all.”

Leo waits patiently for him to explain, and, as ever, Tommy feelsso muchthat the words get logjammed in his throat. He wants to pop open his skull and let Leo see everything all at once. But that’s not how you help someone understand something. It’s like Lawson always says: you have to paint the picture. You have to tell the whole story.

He takes a deep breath, and says, “He was always telling stories when we were kids. About stuff that happened in class, or stuff that happened at home. He used to do these bits about his grandmother that made me snort milk out of my nose. But it took a year after meeting him before I read something he’d written. And he didn’t want me to: I found it on his desk, and he tried to get me to put it down. But I knew then: he wasgood. Even at fourteen. It wasn’t just ‘this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened,’ you know?”

Leo nods.

“It was like I wasthere. I was a character, and I was flying a spaceship, or riding a dinosaur, or whatever wacky thing he’d come up with. One of our teachers convinced him to enter a short story contest our sophomore year of high school. Against adults. And hewon. Leo, hewon.”

Leo offers a small, lopsided smile. “His work is very evocative. Lyrical, even.”

“I think most people never figure out what they’re really, truly passionate about. But he’s always known, and he’s always been good at it. He should have the career – the life – that he wants, and he has all the talent and dedication to get it…but knowing he’s at the whims of the industry and all its arbitrary bullshit…” He shoves both hands through his hair, messing up its gelled neatness, and links his fingers at the back of his neck. “He’s supposed to be an author,” he says, helplessly. “And I can’t make that happen, and I…” He shakes his head.

“Tommy,” Leo says, softly, “you know that it’s not something you can or should ‘make happen,’ right?”

“I know.” He looks down at the table, and sees that his hands have balled into fists on the tabletop. He opens them flat, but winds up pressing his fingertips to the wood hard enough that they turn white, knuckles popping from the pressure. “I know that. But I…” Embarrassingly, his throat tightens, and his eyes sting. He blinks the threat of tears away, and swallows hard. When he glances up, Leo’s expression is so soft and understanding that he blurts, “I did him so, so wrong twenty years ago when I left. I know that – I know he left college to take care of his dad. But I can’t stop thinking: what if I’d been here? Could he have stayed in school? Could he have–” His breath hitches, and Leo waves a soothing hand to silence him.

“Have you talked about this with Lawson?”

“A little.” Not in so many words. More like he cried all over him and lamented twenty lost years. But. Same diff.

“I’m not a therapist,” Leo says, “but, as your friend, I think you’re beating yourself up over events in the past you can’t change.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

They sit in more or less companionable silence a moment. Tommy spies Dana loitering over by the food truck, still, sipping a fresh drink and talking on the phone. Did she call Lawson? Is she even now bitching about him to his husband? He can’t blame her.

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