“Stay there, I’m coming to get you” tommyjon?
“Where are you?” Lovett asks. Pundit yips at him from her end of the couch like she can sense something’s wrong.
There’s the sound of traffic on Tommy’s end of the phone. “I don’t know,” he says. “This - this fucking city.”
“Hey,” Lovett says, although it’s really not the time. “You moved to this fucking city. You’ve got a two-week waiting period before you can start hating it here, those are the rules.”
“I don’t need rules,” Tommy says, which Lovett is only going to let go given the extenuating circumstances. “I need a car that isn’t a piece of crap. I need -” He breaks off, frustrated. The traffic keeps going past. Tommy doesn’t say anything else.
Tommy’s been in LA like three days and all his crap is already out of boxes. He’s got a running route, and Lovett doesn’t get as many whatsapp messages from him at like three in the morning. Tommy’ll like it here, Lovett thinks, but it might - it might take a while. Lovett doesn’t know if he would love anywhere as much if he hadn’t moved there straight from DC, if it hadn’t been where he’d tipped his face to the sky and thought, it’s not on me.
“Stay there,” Lovett says, getting up. “I’ll come get you.”
Between the two of them and Google Maps, they work out where Tommy is, and Lovett pulls up a half hour of grindingly slow driving later. Tommy’s sitting on the curb in a white shirt, cuffs rolled up to his elbows, elbows on his knees. There are patches of sweat at his collar and no sign of his car.
“How much?” Lovett calls out of his window, and Tommy startles. He’s pink from the sun. Lovett - doesn’t forget, as such, but distance does a really fucking good job of smoothing out the painful edges of how handsome Tommy is, all the ways in which Lovett shouldn’t be looking at him and masochistically is anyway.
Tommy unfolds from the sidewalk. His jeans are tight over his thighs. “You couldn’t afford me,” he says.
“You don’t know,” Lovett says. “You don’t know what I could do.” He doesn’t mean it to sound as charged, turns away from the window. He doesn’t want to know if Tommy’s expression changes. “Get in loser, we’re going shopping.”
“You need to watch more movies.” Lovett cranks the aircon up higher as Tommy climbs into the passenger seat. “We’re talking like 2004 here, Tommy, we gotta get you up to speed.”
Tommy looks over at him. The sunlight through the car window is bright even though Lovett’s wearing sunglasses. Tommy’s in LA and their company is starting to take off. Lovett wants to stay in this moment a while, watching Tommy starting to break into a smile.
“Yeah,” Tommy says, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah, you better had.”
