Page 38 of Sam & Justin
He put down his menu, and it seemed like it was a magical cue to summon the server. Because only a moment after he put it down did an older woman with a tight, dyed blonde ponytail and laugh lines appear, holding a pen and a little order pad. She introduced herself as Margo and made quick work of taking our orders. She returned a few minutes later with coffee and polite small talk.
When she left, we were left sitting there with what was possibly the first awkward silence of the weekend. It dawned on me that this was the first unstructured time we’d had together since we’d reunited. Unless you counted the night before, but I hadn’t been thinking of conversation when I first got to his motel room and neither had he. We’d managed to have good conversation in the afterglow of our hookup, but that was yesterday.
Now, I was struggling to come up with anything to say. The silence spread over our table as he put sugar into his coffee. The sound of his spoon scraping the bottom of the mug while he was stirring it sounded louder in the strained silence. I hated it. I kept racking my brain for things to talk about, but I couldn’t. I’d never been good at small talk, after all, a fact that I’d shared with him the night before.
He stopped stirring. “Are you relieved it’s over?” I didn’t understand what he was talking about at first, and I tried tofigure out how to ask for clarification. Surely, he wasn’t asking about whatever was going on with us. I raised a questioning eyebrow, trying to pull a page from his book of nonverbal communication. “The reunion,” he clarified. “You did all the planning and shit. Must be a relief that it’s over, yeah?”
“I’m glad it went well,” I answered tactfully. It was his turn to quirk a questioning eyebrow, and I couldn’t stop the small smile from forming. “I can’t say that I’m glad that it’s over.” My voice was quiet, and I felt my face burn. I looked down at my black coffee, trying to wait for the feeling to fade from my face. Instead, it kept feeling warmer. I could feel his eyes on me, watching me. I swallowed hard and forced myself to look back up at him. “I liked reconnecting with you.”
I thought I saw a little color in his cheeks at my words. “Liked catching up with you too,” he admitted. His voice was quieter than I’d heard it, and it gave his words an almost confessional tone. He took a deep breath. “Can’t say I’m upset that the reunion bit’s over though. Never did care much for this place, you know?”
“I bet you’re happy to get back to King’s Bay then, huh?”
And there it was. The elephant that had been in the room with us all night, getting bigger and brighter and more obvious with each passing minute. I’d finally called our attention to what we were both stubbornly avoided, and I regretted it.
He didn’t get a chance to answer, because Margo chose that moment to return with a tray weighed down heavily with food. He looked relieved, not having to answer. That, in and of itself,was an answer. He dove in immediately, downing one of his eggs, before conversation resumed. But it wasn’t an answer to my question. Instead, we started talking about the reunion, going over things that would be nothing more than memories tomorrow.
When the topic of my speech came up, he faltered again. I noticed he did that every time we started inching toward the more emotional aspects of our reunion. “Have you ever thought about running for office?”
The question took me by surprise. “What?”
“Running for office,” he repeated. “You were a real natural up there, giving your speech. Had everyone hanging off every word. And you’re organized and shit, you know? Smart, and you’ve got good ideas.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I admitted after a small pause. “Rachel thinks I should make a go for city council.”
“Why haven’t you done it yet?”
“No idea. Maybe I don’t like the idea of not getting it,” I answered. My stomach twisted at the thought. “I’ve never liked rejection, but who does?”
He took in my words before reaching out and covering my hand with his. “But maybe you’d get it in a landslide,” he suggested as he rubbed his thumb over my finger comfortingly. “People here like you, you know?”
“I think they’d like you too,” I told him, dragging my eyes up to his face. “With time, once they got to know the real you.”
He didn’t look convinced, and I could see why he might think that. I’d seen the way our peers had treated him, but several had started to warm up to him during the weekend. Gabe had been talking to him, even when I wasn’t there. Robbie had seemed to get along with him. When we’d been on the dance floor, a few other people had given him smiles. I’d even caught him chatting with a former classmate at the bar when he’d gone to get us drinks.
If that much change had happened over a weekend, I could only imagine the way things would change over a longer period of time. It was just too bad that we didn’t have it.
Conversation continued as we finished our food and Margo brought the check. We were running out of excuses to stick around, especially once I paid the bill.
Our time was over.
We got into his car, and I gave him directions to my place. Once he parked, I looked at him and then back to my house. I didn’t want our time to be over. It didn’t have to be, not yet. He wasn’t leaving until the morning.
“Come inside?”
He didn’t verbalize an answer, just turned off the car.
15
Reunion - Saturday Night
“Come inside?”
Wish I could say that Justin’s words caught me by surprise, but they didn’t. I didn’t even stop to think about them. Not really. Not when my head was still on that kiss in the hallway and all those little touches under the table during dinner, in the way his body pressed against mine while we danced. Not when I was still thinking about the fact that this was the last night we had together.
If I just dropped him off, then that was it. The weekend was over.
Of course, that might’ve been the smarter thing. Axel had advised me coming to have a one night stand. He hadn’t said anything about reigniting an old high school crush, but that was what I’d gone and done. And if I didn’t go inside with him now, Iknew I was going to regret it for the rest of my life. I’d play it over and over in my head, what might have happened. Sure, I knew what it was going to be. It was just going to be another hookup because that was all it could be. I was leaving in the morning, and that was all there was to it.