Page 14 of Sam & Justin

He didn’t say anything either, and we fell into a comfortable kind of silence I only ever felt around Axel. That was about as strange as what he’d said in the first place.

We finished looking, and I realized that we were getting close to the end of the night.

I think Justin realized it too, because after he put the pens back in the cup on one of the little tables, he turned back to me. “Are you going to Tallboys?”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I admitted. But then, I didn’t really want to go back to my motel room right now. I wanted to keep talking to him. “Could be convinced.”

“Yeah?” he questioned.

“But don’t you have other people you want to be catching up with?” The pictures had been proof enough that he’d had a lot of friends. There were probably lines of people around here who wanted to catch up with him, and I’d been taking up all of his time.

So imagine my surprise when he looked around at the people gathered and then turned his attention right back to me. “I have all weekend to catch up with them, and besides, most of the people I’d want to talk to still live around here.”

At least I wasn’t taking up all his time when he would rather be talking to someone else.

“Then I guess I’ll be going to Tallboys.”

“Good.” The way Justin smiled made me realize that agreeing to go to the after party with him was the only real answer. How the hell could I turn him down when he looked that happy?

And why the hell did I care so much?

Axel’s suggestion ran through my mind. It merged together with the way I used to feel about Justin. It bled into the weird feelings I’d been having about him all night, the way he’d been looking at me, the way I’d been looking at him in the picture of us at the library, his comment about not being able to blame that teen girl for the way she was looking at either of us.

I could probably lie to myself and say that it didn’t all come to one very tempting conclusion, but I wasn’t in the habit of lying to myself. Ever since I left Gomillion, I’d worked real hard on being an honest person. To myself, to other people, all of it.

And being honest to myself, hooking up with Justin at the reunion would really be a full circle moment.

6

Reunion - Friday Night

I wondered if I’d stuck my foot in it. Something had changed between Sam and me after Amber Ortiz walked away. Probably because I’d been dumb enough to say that I couldn’t blame her for the way that she’d been looking at him. Maybe I’d read things wrong between us. I’d thought he had been looking at me a certain way all night. I thought I’d seen a ghost of that same look in his eyes in that old picture on the wall. It had been enough to give me the bravery I needed to flirt with him.

And then, I’d gone and ruined everything.

But he had agreed to go to the after party with me. Maybe I hadn’t made things too weird for him.

Or maybe he just didn’t have anyone else to talk to and didn’t want to be alone.

At ten o’clock, Vanessa announced that the welcome reception was officially over. I told Sam I’d meet him at Timbers and Tallboys. I still had a few things I had to do here before I could leave. I wasn’t surprised when he offered to help, but I didn’t take him up on it. As much as I wanted to spend more time with him, I had responsibilities; he didn’t. I promised him I wouldn’t take long and headed over to where Vanessa had already begun transforming the gym back to its original glory.

“What are you still doing here?” she asked me the moment I stood next to her.

“Clean up duty.”

Vanessa looked up from the table she was cleaning and shook her head. “You realize that this isyourreunion too, right? You’ve got a full docket of responsibilities this weekend, and you’ve covered my ass a lot in the lead up. So, how about you let me handle this?”

“I said I’d help.”

“You said that before that very sexy man was hanging out with you all night,” she pointed out. I was suddenly very glad that I’d turned Sam’s offer to help down. He might have been polite enough not to mention it, but he would definitely have seen the way my face turned bright red. Vanessa, on the other hand, was not polite enough to let it go unspoken. “You’re blushing!”

I busied myself piling the used napkins from one of the tables into the center of the plastic tablecloth. “We were…” I wanted tosay we were friends in high school, but that wasn’t quite right. “I tutored him in high school.”

“That was twenty years ago.”

“I know that.” I took the tablecloth from the table and tossed it into the rolling trash can Vanessa had put nearby. “I might have had a little crush on him back then. I just didn’t know it. Not until I saw his RSVP.”

Vanessa did not look shocked. “That much was obvious.” I fought the urge to flip her off. “So, tell me why you’re here and not at Timbers and Tallboys with him now? I’m fairly sure he likes you back.”