11

Tommy's been a Granger instead of a Katz or a Cattaneo for a year, and sometimes he forgets that hasn't been his name forever. It rolls right off his tongue at the post office, at the bank, on the phone with customers. "This is Tom Granger." When he sees the name printed on the mailbox, he thinks that's me. I'm a Granger. I'm part of the Granger family.

And it's in the Granger family backyard that he and Dana are stringing up fairy lights on tall metal poles to spruce up the new brick patio where a fire pit has pride of place. Dana brought candles in mason jars that she hung in the surrounding trees, and Lisa picked out Adirondak chairs and cushions at Walmart a few weeks ago. A dry-rubbed pork shoulder's been smoking in the green egg-shaped grill on the deck for hours, and the smell of it wafts across the yard and makes Tommy's stomach rumble. The air is cool, this late into October, but the bonfire is warm, and they already have hot dogs and s'more ingredients spread out on the table beside it.

"Time?" Dana calls.

Tommy checks his watch, craning his neck so he doesn't have to let go of the base of the ladder to do so. "Six-fifteen."

"Okay, cool. Coming down."

The ladder's not exactly stable, so Tommy grips it tight while she scurries down, relieved when she lands on the grass in one piece.

"Done with this?"

"Yeah, thanks."

He knocks the spacers loose and folds it up. His cane is standing by, waiting, and he'll need to lean on it, but he knows he can manage carrying the ladder back to the garage because he carried it out here, and didn't stumble once.

Dana surveys the yard, nods to herself, and then claps her hands together. "Right. Leo's getting the cornhole setup out of the car. I'm gonna go help him, then check and see what Lisa needs help with inside. What time's Noah getting here?"

Six-thirty."

"We should be good, then."

Noah finally had that conversation with Natalia, albeit a month after Lawson encouraged him to do so. She said yes, and flashed her new rock at them – "Holy shit," Lawson muttered, "maybe you should go try to be a Narcotics captain," to which Tommy bashed him over the head with a couch pillow – via Skype, but when they talked about having an actual engagement party, small and intimate, Lisa said, "Why don't we have it here at the house." So that's what they're doing.

It's also Tommy and Lawson's anniversary tomorrow, but both of them agreed not to say anything about it, not wanting to overshadow Noah and Nat's moment.

"Where's your husband?" Dana asks, frowning. "He's supposed to be setting up drinks."

"I'll go see."

There are tubs of ice on the deck, full of beer and soda, and a few bottles of the wine Lawson and Lisa like best. That's the drinks, then, but no sign of the man himself.

"Law?" Tommy calls as he steps into the kitchen. "Babe, you here?"

Lisa's in the pantry, rooting through the shelves, and calls through the open door: "He's in the living room, sweetie."

"Okay, thanks."

He is in the living room, as advertised, but not on the sofa in front of the TV, nor at the liquor cabinet. He's standing by the window in the corner, at the desk that houses the ancient desktop where Lisa pays the bills online, and the house's lone printer – which is chugging and wheezing and churning out paper marked with rows and rows of tiny, cramped print.

"Oh, hey." Tommy hastens his steps to cross the room. "It's still going?" In the busyness of Dana and Leo's arrival, and last-minute party prep, he forgot that Lawson hit Print something like two hours ago.

"Finishing up," Lawson says with a grimace. "It ran out of ink, and then the tray got jammed. But I got it fixed."

Tommy joins him in staring down at the struggling little ink jet machine, and his eyes land on the words THE END, as the last page settles, and stills. The printer coughs, and then whines, and goes quiet.

His pulse picks up. "That's it?"

"Yeah." Lawson sounds more than a little dazed, and his movements are slow when he reaches to gather the stack of pages. He rearranges them, raps them on the edge of the desk, and then tucks them at the end of a much larger stack of pages. A soaring stack, in fact, which tilts like the Tower of Pisa before Lawson catches it and realigns it.

Tommy whistles. "How many pages is that?"

"One thousand, four hundred, and twenty-nine," Lawson murmurs.

"Holy shit."

"Holy shit," Lawson agrees.

Tommy reaches, and then hesitates. Turns his head to regard Lawson, whose eyes are wide and unblinking behind the lenses of his glasses. It's taken a month to finish his space opera – or the first draft of it, anyway – but the last week he's written nearly non-stop, hunched over his laptop at his desk when Tommy falls asleep, and sometimes still there when Tommy wakes. The screen's been bothering his eyes, and he hasn't worn his contacts in days.

"Can I?" Tommy asks, gesturing to the loose-bound, printed-out manuscript.

"Yeah." Lawson finally blinks, and looks at him, and hooks a crooked smile. "Yeah," he says, surer. "I wrote it for you."

Oh, that…yeah, that's giving him heart palpitations. He lets out a shaky breath, and edges in closer to the desk. Rests his hand on the top page, the cover page of this impossible, miraculous stack.

There's no title. Lawson insists the publisher will want to come up with something on-brand and timely, and that whatever he picks will be a placeholder. The page reads:

Alloy

By Lawson Granger

Tommy's finger traces the name, over and over. Granger. Granger, Granger, Granger. His name. My name. Our name.

The next page contains only two words. The dedication.

For Tommy

He thinks, this is for me. My honey wrote this for me, and it's astounding.

Tommy means to tell Lawson how proud he is, how amazed he is. Wants to tell him that, though he's so proud of that first book, too – due to hit shelves March of next year! – this is Lawson's magnum opus, he knows it, he can feel how much the world is going to love this story.

But there's a thick lump in his throat, and he can't say anything.

Lawson's arm steals around his waist, and his chin rests on the top of his head. He rubs Tommy's arm, and Tommy nods.

"Hey," a familiar, brash voice calls from behind them. "What kinda party is it where I have to come track down the host?"

Tommy dashes a hand over his face, thankfully dry, and rolls his eyes as he turns toward Frank. "Quit your bitching, we're coming."

~*~

"Your mom wanted to come," Frank says later, when they're all seated around the bonfire, full of hot dogs and spearing marshmallows on sticks.

Tommy snorts. "No, she didn't."

"Well, no," Frank agrees. "But she sends her love."

Tommy shakes his head. He's not surprised, and not even disappointed. His mom is…well, she's his mom, and he loves her. But he made peace a long time ago with the knowledge that she can't be motherly. He feels, as ever, a twist of guilt that he hasn't worked harder or tried more insistently to help her find some sense of contentment, but the last time he tried, she laid her soft, trembling hand on his arm, and said, "You can't fix me, Thomas. I don't want you to worry about it." Frank looks after her, and Tommy doesn't ever want to know if that includes sleeping with her. On this matter, he's happy to keep his head buried in the sand.

"Nat," Dana says, "were you able to book the Plaza?"

Nat grins sharply, firelight dancing in her eyes, and says, "I called in a favor."

"No!"

"Yes!"

Lisa clasps her hands under her chin like an excited child. "A wedding at the Plaza! Oh, goodness. Isn't that every girl's dream?"

"It was definitely mine," Lawson says, batting his lashes, and Tommy chucks a marshmallow at his head while everyone else laughs.

Leo taps the edge of his marshmallow stick against his glass and lifts it. "A toast?" When they all murmur assent and lift their own glasses – water bottle, in Tommy's case – he says, "To the bride and groom to be. May you find the same kind of lasting happiness that we have."

"Hear, hear," goes up as a chorus, and they don't clink glasses, but they mime it.

"Except for Frank," Noah says, and Nat swats him.

Frank tilts his glass of Scotch – some of the good stuff he brought as a gift, though Bill's only had a swallow, thanks to his meds – and says, "Are you kidding? This is the love of my life right here."

There's laughter, and as it dies back, Bill clears his throat, and they fall silent, turning to him. Slowly, with great care, he says, "And another toasssst." Then his gaze shifts to Tommy, and Tommy freezes, bottle poised at his lips, skin prickling as everyone turns to him. "To Tommy." Bill's smile is crooked, because it always is, but it's so, so happy, and his eyes gleam wetly in the firelight. "You – you've been. A Granger. For a year. We're ssssssssso."

Lisa leans over and grips his hand tight, where it rests on the arm of his chair.

"Glad," Bill continues, for once not getting frustrated by his lisp and his hitching breaths. He presses on, gaze never wavering. "That you got to join our family."

"Hear, hear," Dana says, loudly, and she gets up, and walks around the fire to clink her glass first against Tommy's bottle, and then Lawson's glass. "Happy anniversary, you guys."

"Ugh." Tommy puts a hand over his eyes. "Why do you people want me to cry all the time?"

Frank barks a laugh to his right. Nat says, "Awww."

And to his left, Lawson peels his hand off his eyes, their rings clicking together, and then cups his face, and smiles down into it, radiant with happiness.

"Happy anniversary, baby," he murmurs. "We made it."

"Yeah." They did, didn't they? "Happy anniversary."

When Lawson kisses him, everyone cheers, a joyous chorus amidst the autumn crickets, and the crackle of the fire, and the beat-beat-beating of Tommy's heart, swollen fit to bursting with love for this family that loves him in return.

THE END