Page 4 of A Cure for Recovery

Tommy gets closer, and Lawson’s head whips around. Before he smiles, Tommy catches the flicker of worry in his gaze, and is damn tired of being the one to put it there. “Hey, babe, how’d it go?” The smile stays fixed, but his gaze travels down to Tommy’s feet as he takes the last few steps.

Damn it. He definitely looks like a weirdo walking this way.

“Fine.”

The smile slips. A notch forms between Lawson’s brows.

“How are things out here?” Tommy says, quickly, and tips his head toward the kid.

Lawson’s little frown says they’ll be having A Discussion in the car, but he lets it go for now. “Good. My new friend Hayden’s been telling me all aboutThe Return of the Jedi.” He winks:play along.

“Aw, man,” Tommy says, without being able to muster Lawson’s pretend, for-the-kid’s-benefit enthusiasm. “I always wanted to see that.”

The kid turns to him. “Hi, I’m Hayden.”

Unlike Lawson, Tommy reallydoesn’tlike kids. He dealt with plenty of teenagers as a beat cop, and his baby face meant he was always the responding officer who got to play the wholehey, c’mon guys, don’t make my life harder, my sergeant’s breathing down my neck alreadycard. Throw in some relevant movie references and lingo and he could usually talk them down from their petty vandalism and skateboarding misadventures without a lot of fuss. But children, with their eyes taking up half their faces, and their blunt questions, and their guileless questions always trip him up. He’s thirty-eight, an ex-undercover detective with a literalbody count, who played a mob boss for five years, and one little boy in a waiting room makes him want to bolt.

“Yeah. Hi,” he says, stiffly. “I’m Tommy.”

“I have a friend at school named Tommy.” The boy swings his legs some more, so hard Tommy’s afraid he might swing himself right off the chair.

“Neat.”

“Why do you have a cane?”

See? Blunt.

“I got shot.”

Hayden’s eyes get huge. “Whoa? Really? That’sawesome.”

“Hayden.” The mother swoops in and takes him by the arm. “Come over here and work on your coloring book.” She lifts her head, expression pinched as she glances between Lawson and Tommy. “I’m so sorry. Hayden, come on.”

“It’s okay–” Lawson starts, but the mom is hauling the boy up and leading him across the room. “Bye, Hayden.”

“Bye, Lawson!” Hayden calls cheerfully.

Lawson stands, and both knees gocrack. “Yeesh,” he hisses, and chuckles under his breath. But he doesn’t stumble, or falter, or lose his balance. He gripes about his “old man knees” every time that pop like gunshots, but he doesn’t need a cane. He can walk for hours without missing a beat.

Tommy isn’tjealousof the fact, but sometimes he watches Lawson jog across the yard toward the mailbox, or effortlessly take the stairs two at a time, and he marvels at the wonder that is the human body. The way it can do so much…until it can’t.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Here, I can take those.” Lawson reaches for Tommy’s handful of booklets.

Time slows. Tommy envisions theRecovery and Your Mental Healthbooklet, its benign, blue cover and silhouette of a human head. Thinks about Lawson seeing it; thinks about Lawson looking from it, to him, and seeing yet another way that Tommy is broken. Lesser. So different from the boy, and then the man, that he fell in love with.

Nowsweat prickles across his skin. Panic lurches in his gut. “No,” he says, too fast, and tucks the materials into his stomach; cups them there in the curve of his arm, protective.

Hurt flashes across Lawson’s face, there and then smoothed.

“No,” he repeats, softer, “that’s okay. I’ve got ‘em.”

“Okay.” Lawson nods. “That’s cool.”

Tommy waits for the inevitable, familiar, welcome weight of Lawson’s hand at the small of his back as they head for the door…but it doesn’t come.

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