Page 1 of Sam & Justin

Prologue

Twenty Years Ago

I looked down at my completed math problem, and then up at Justin Kirkwood. He had that expression on his face that I’d grown to know too well in the months he’d been tutoring me.

Disappointment.

It was a look I’d seen almost every day of my damn life. My parents gave me that look when I’d come in after curfew, smelling like cigarettes and cheap beer. My last girlfriend gave me that look because I wasn’t all that interested in the physical parts of our relationship. Or her, really. My teachers gave me that look every time they gave me back a test with a big red F circled in the corner of the page.

You’d think after almost nineteen years of seeing that look on everyone’s face, it wouldn’t bug me the way it did but seeing it onJustin’s face felt different. It had since the first time he looked at me that way. Letting him down felt different than letting anyone else down.

“I know it’s wrong,” I told him with a sigh. “Can tell by the way you’re looking at me.”

He bit at the end of his pencil, and I was distracted by the way his full lips looked wrapped around it. That might have been one of the reasons I was having a hard time mastering what we were going over, even though it was my second year taking this same stupid math class. My tutor was too distracting. I forced myself to look away from him because getting distracted by the way his lips looked wasn’t helpful.

And it reminded me of my ex-girlfriend and the whole not being able to get it up for her thing. Not really what I wanted to be thinking about when I already felt like shit because basic math was kicking my ass.

Finally, he stopped chewing on the end of his pencil and stopped looking at me with that damn disappointed look. Instead, he focused his blue eyes on the chicken scratch written on the page. “You were really close,” he told me with that soft voice people used when approaching feral animals, and Justin used when holding my hand through concepts he probably mastered in preschool.

“Where’d I go wrong?” I asked him.

He pointed to a line early in the problem. “Seven times eight is fifty-six.”

I looked at what I’d written down. Damn it. I was such a fucking dumbass. I’d said it was fifty-four. “Anything else?”

I watched him as he looked at the math problem again, going over it line by line.

“Nope.”

He made a popping sound on the P that always made the word sound crispier than when anyone else said it. And there I was, looking at his stupid lips again. No wonder I was a disappointment to everyone. I was distracted by my tutor’s lips and couldn’t get it up for my girlfriend. Not that this was news to me, but I still didn’t like it.

If I thought my parents were disappointed in me for drinking and smoking, it wouldn’t even compare to the way I knew they’d feel if I ever told them the truth.

“Sam?”

Justin’s voice broke through my self-deprecation.

“Yeah, hand it back here. I’ll do it again.”

He passed back the assignment, and I got to work on erasing all of my fuck ups. A few minutes later, I handed it back to him and was rewarded with a bright smile and a different look, one I rarely saw in anyone’s eyes when they looked at me. Anyone but Justin, at least.

Pride.

I pushed down the feeling and got to work on the next problem. Once again, I got it wrong on my first try for another simple mistake.

“You need to slow down,” Justin advised. “Check over your work before you call it done. Look at the really basic stuff. You’re good at this. You’ve got the formulas down, but the basics are tripping you up.”

Tell me something I don’t know, I thought bitterly. But I wanted to get that proud look again, so on the next problem, I slowed down. I checked and double checked my multiplication and when I handed it back, the way he smiled could have lit up the whole library. Even without making the room any brighter, it made our table feel a bit warmer. Or maybe it was just me.

I wanted to get that smile again.

I worked my way through the rest of the problems my teacher had assigned, taking them slow, and each time I got the right answer, he gave me that same look. By the time we were done, I felt like my skin was going to melt off my body. That smile was the kind of thing I’d probably dream about at night. I wondered if it’d get bigger if I passed my math test on Friday.

Then I had to rein in my thoughts, because I started thinking of other things that might make him smile like that, and those weren’t the kind of thoughts I was supposed to be having. Not if I didn’t want to have even more problems at home.

I sighed and closed my textbook, tucking my completed problems in my math folder.

“You did good,” Justin said as he adjusted his wire rimmed glasses.