yarrow i have a completely random out of nowhere prompt from my friend yarrow:
lebron to philly. buck remembers the lakers are a thing and he reaches out:
“hey tommy I know you like the lakers I was just wondering what you think about this lebron free agency stuff?”
tommy is like “I’m actually packing my truck to move.”
Hey, Tommy, Buck types. He backspaces and then retypes it. Stupid way to start a message. Oh well. He’s always been stupid when it comes to Tommy. Heard about Lebron’s free agency and it made me think of you. (Made me think about missing my shot at signing a deal with you, he wants to say, but that’s too stupid.) What do you think about it?
Tommy bubbles him, and bubbles him, and bubbles him some more. Can I call, he finally sends.
Buck beats him to it. “Hey,” he says when Tommy picks up. “What’s going on?”
“It’s kind of funny,” Tommy says. God, Buck has missed that voice.
“That you’re texting me now,” Tommy says. He laughs. Buck can’t be sure, but it doesn’t sound very happy. “I promised myself I would block your number, but I never did.”
“Oh,” Buck says. “But you answered.”
“I did.” Tommy’s quiet for a moment.
Buck scratches the itch on his back on the brick of the back wall of the station. The sky is darkening, a soft bruise above him. Nobody followed him outside.
“I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to feel bad,” Tommy finally says. “You’re going to take it badly and get all guilty over it.”
“Don’t, okay? It’s only, like, three-quarters your fault.”
“Uh-oh,” Buck repeats, his face growing hot.
“I don’t know. That’s not true. I think Philly.”
The heat quickly turns to ice. “Why—why Philly?”
Tommy sighs. In the background Buck hears a car door slam. “So I had a little bit of a mental breakdown last year,” he starts, and the thing is Buck knows Tommy, still, and he knows when Tommy is obfuscating the truth, and he feels like someone has slammed their fist full-force into his solar plexus.
He starts moving, his feet working without his input to steer him towards his Jeep. He needs privacy.
“I, uh, I don’t have my job anymore,” Tommy says. “My house is on the market.”
“You love your house,” Buck says.
“Sure. I love a few things,” Tommy says.
Buck picks at the leather of his steering wheel. “Like the Lakers.”
“Yeah,” Tommy says. “The Lakers. Yeah, I love the Lakers. But a lot of the things I love, they don’t… I don’t know. They don’t seem to love me the way I love them.”
“Maybe they could,” Buck says. “If they had a chance. If they could, um, if they had a little bit of time to realize how much you meant to them, and how much they loved you, even before they realized what that meant. Even when their lives were falling apart and they couldn’t focus on anything.”
Tommy snorts. “My life was falling apart, too. Still is.”
“Maybe, um, maybe the Lakers didn’t know that. But they’re realizing, now?”
“Yeah? The Lakers noticed I’m selling my house?”
“They drove past it just now.”
“Did they see me outside in my fucking ratty old shorts trying to strap this antique chair on top of my boxes?”
“Yeah, they think you need to give it a wiggle and everything will fit,” Buck says, and Tommy’s bark of laughter is a relief. “So why are you taking the chair to Philly?”
“Well, apparently the arena the Sixers play at has giant flame cannons.”
“No way,” Buck says. He puts Tommy on speaker and googles it. Sure enough: the flames come right out of the giant screens. “Wow. They probably need people who know about fire to deal with that.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Tommy says. “There’s an opening, actually. Safety lead.”
Buck drops his head against the window. “Are you applying?”
“No,” Tommy says. “I don’t know what I want to do. Not that, at least.”
“But I think I know someone with the credentials for it.”
“That guy from the Lakers who thinks he loves me,” Tommy says. Even the dryness of his voice can’t hide the tender vein of emotion underneath. “I could even give him a ride, if he wanted.”
Buck stares at the Bobby Nash memorial firehouse. He stares up at the Los Angeles sky. “What kind of a breakdown?”
Tommy breathes, in and out, nice and deep. “One I’d rather explain in person,” he says.
“Sure,” Tommy says. “I could do that.”
“How soon do you want to leave?”
“How soon can you get here?”
“Will you tell me about the basketball team we’re going to be rooting for?”
“If you tell me about all the weird shit that’s happened in your life, yeah.”
“Okay,” Buck says. He puts the Jeep in reverse. Nobody notices. “I’ll be there in thirty.”
“Thanks,” Tommy says. Buck hears the other thing, three implicit words. There’ll be time to talk about that, too.
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s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
