Lawson opens his door and climbs out because he can’t take Tommy’s pitying look any longer. “Come on if you’re coming,” he says, slings his bag over his shoulder, and doesn’t wait up. “Let’s get this over with.”
The car door shuts behind him, and Tommy’s fancy shoes grit over the loose patch in the concrete of the driveway.
Lawson’s spurt of defiant bravery lasts all the way up the (not a ramp) back steps to the door, and then he pauses, and rattles his keys in his hand, and wonders if he should have called ahead. He entrusted Dana with his parents, with the explanations, and though he’s had two days to think of it, he still has no idea what he’s going to say.
He lets out a long, slow breath as he stares at his haggard expression in the little square windows set in the door.
A hand lands in the middle of his back, a specter of a supportive touch, quickly withdrawn.
He fits the key in the door and lets them in.
Today’s Thursday – is it really only Thursday? – which means that Mom will be elbow-deep in alterations today. As expected, the kitchen is cool, and clean, the breakfast dishes in the drying rack by the sink, the pan she fries the eggs in still soaking inside it. He hears the TV on in the living room, some old rerun with a laugh track, which means that Dad was still wakeful after breakfast, and is in there with her while she works.
Lawson stands a moment by the table, looks reluctantly over at Tommy to see what his reaction is. He expects more pity, or even disgust. How could someone who dines at exclusive restaurants and wears fifteen-thousand-dollar watches be anything but disgusted by this suburban time capsule?
But Tommy is smiling. It’s a small, private thing at first, but as he takes a slow turn and gazes around the room, dark eyes flicking back and forth in quick snaps, it grows and grows, and he’s flashing teeth by the time he gets back around to Lawson. “It’s the same,” he says, like that’s a good thing, giving a disbelieving, but obviously delighted shake of his head. “The curtains! And, look.” He goes to the molding around the pantry door and taps at the old marker lines where Mom used to measure Lawson’s height as he grew. “You were never this little,” he chuckles, bending to tap the lowest line.
Lawson swallows, and swallows again. “Yeah, well, you still are,” he says, weakly.
Tommy chuckles some more.
College Town is, at its heart, about home, and about happiness. About the ways home and happiness look different to different people; the ways our own insecurities can lead us to assume that someone living somewhere else, doing something else, will find the place we lay our heads to be lacking, to be insufficient. That sort of insecurity shapes so much of what we fear, and what we present to the world. I've seen readers say they want their book protagonists to be confident, but it's insecurity - and learning to live with it, and learning not to listen to it so much - that provides tension, and, therefore, a story.
College Town is live for all your contemporary, second chance, standalone romance needs; it's a perfect Sunday night indulgent read. You can find it here:
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