Page 10 of Sam & Justin
It was my turn to look him up and down. He was still dressed the same way he had been in high school: faded jeans and a tee shirt, though I distinctly remembered frayed hems and shirts faded with age instead of the new looking black cotton that covered his upper body now. He was also missing that worn leather jacket that featured so prominently in my memories of him in our shared youth. “It looks like it,” I finally said after my eyes traveled up and down his body.
“You think?”
“You look happier,” I told him. Which didn’t require the full body scan. I really should have figured out something else to say instead of that. Maybe something about his clothes so he didn’t think I was just checking him out for no reason. A somewhat decent comment dawned on me. “Though, I have to admit, I kind of miss the jacket.”
That earned another one of those grins from him, and I found myself enamored with the glimmer in his eyes. “Left that in King’s Bay.”
“Is that where you live now?”
He nodded. “Not too far from here, really. Just a few hours.” He paused. “Drove up this morning.”
“Then, do you come back here often?”
The smile slid off his face, and his eyes darkened. I’d really stepped in it, but I didn’t exactly know why that was. I wiped my hands off on my slacks and tried to think of a way to dial back the topic. There was a heavy silence settling over us, one of those awkward types that felt almost palpable.
I was grateful when someone came over to ask me to cover Vanessa at registration for a few minutes. Judging by the look on Sam’s face, he was glad for the out too.
I followed the student volunteer to the check in desk. “Thank you so much,” Vanessa gushed the moment she saw me. “I have to take a leak, and we still have about fifteen people who haven’t checked in.”
“And you don’t think they,” I indicated the two volunteers who were working the desk with her, “could handle that?”
“Not if too many came at once.”
I couldn’t begrudge her the concern. We both wanted everything to go perfectly for this reunion. We were the first class that started at Gomillion to get their twentieth reunion, and everyone would remember it for better or for worse. I couldn’t stand the idea of people remembering it for worse. Of course, ten minuteslater when she returned and no one had come to the desk, I changed my mind. I could, in fact, begrudge her concern. But I just accepted her gratitude and went back into the room.
I spotted Sam immediately. He was still at the bar, leaning against it and looking out on all of our former classmates. Everyone else was gathered in small groups, talking while they had cocktails. He looked out of place, and while I could see several of my friends, I found myself walking back toward him.
He looked up at me when I was just a few paces away, and I saw the smile form on his lips instantly. “Didn’t know if you’d come back,” he said after a beat.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He thought for a moment. “Because things were getting a little awkward.”
Oh, so he’d felt it too. Strangely, having it called out didn’t make that feeling return. Usually, any time someone called awkwardness out, it returned ten times over. It was like summoning Beetlejuice or something.
“I’m bad at small talk,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to do it. I never have.”
“Me either. Never saw the point.”
The easy way he admitted it made me relax. It felt like he was taking some of the pressure off of me, taking some of the blame for himself. It was halving a burden I didn’t even need to carry.“So, if we’re not going to make small talk, what are we going to talk about?”
Sam cocked his head in thought. Apparently, he was struggling with the answer to that question as much as I was. There was a beat of silence before he spoke again. “What’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you since graduation?”
I was pretty sure that fell under small talk, but at least it was better than asking why he hadn’t come back to Gomillion much since graduation. That had definitely put a damper on the conversation earlier. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of interesting tales to share. My life since graduation had primarily been work. I hadn’t traveled. I hadn’t seen the world. I’d gone to a college barely two hours away from Gomillion, and then I’d moved back home and settled here.
“Honestly?” He nodded at the question. “I haven’t done much that most people would find interesting.”
“And what do you think most people would find interesting?”
I thought his question over. What would most people find interesting? Probably things like travel or torrid love affairs with foreign dignitaries. I snorted at my own thoughts, because where would someone evenfinda foreign dignitary in a place like Gomillion? Whatever someone might find interesting, I hadn’t done it. But he was still looking at me with those stunning gray eyes of his, and I knew I had to answer. “I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “Probably travel? Fall in love with someone completely inappropriate? Write a book?”
He let out a bark of laughter that caused the person standing nearest to us at the bar to turn and give us a strange look. Maybe they’d never heard him laugh in high school. I’d spent time with him back then, and it was a rare enough occurrence that it did something to my stomach now. “You realize I’ve only done one of those things, right?”
“Let me guess,” I started, tapping my chin in thought. “You wrote the great American novel.”
“You tutored me in high school,” Sam reminded me. “You know damn well I didn’t write any kind of novel. No, I traveled.”
“Yeah? Where to?”