Page 46 of Sam & Justin
I had so many questions, and I wanted to ask all of them. Unfortunately, the server chose that moment to come over and take drink orders. I was forced to hold my tongue while I ordereda beer. The moment she walked off, I was able to give him all my focus. “One of them? What the fuck did you get into while I was gone?”
“Me and Lana decided to have a bit of fun.”
“Thought you and Lana were done, and she was seeing that new guy?” Axel cocked his head to the side and gave a half shrug that told me everything I needed to know. “Axel, you fucked your ex and her new guy?” He nodded. “Shit man, and here I was going to tell you all about my exciting weekend thinking it was something special.”
Well, I knew it was something special. Maybe not as earth shattering as whatever the hell he had going on with Lana and her new guy, but it was special to me.
“Turns out, him and Lana are about as serious as me and Lana were.”
“So not all that serious?”
He laughed. “Just fucking around. Same as we were. That was him texting me.” He moved his hand from his phone and then covered it right back up. “You get a lot of dick pics from the guys you hook up with?”
No wonder he’d been looking at his phone like that. It was probably the first dick pic he’d ever gotten. Well, other than the times his clients sent him one because they wanted him to ink it.
“Really depends on the guy. Guess he’s wanting a round two?” Axel nodded. “With or without Lana?”
“Didn’t say.”
“You interested in another go? With or without Lana?”
“Think I would.” Axel sighed and looked down at his phone. Well, looked down at the faded ink on the back of his hand that covered the phone. “You think it’s fucked up to learn this about myself this late in life?”
“Nah,” I assured him. “Like I tell the kids I work with, there’s no timeline on your life. You figure shit out when you figure it out. Not like you ever had a chance to figure it out before now, right?”
“Could’ve figured it out with you back in the day, before you got with Tim.”
“Hell, could’ve figured it out after me and Tim broke up,” I pointed out with a laugh. He grinned and leaned back in his seat. The server came back with our beers and took our pizza and wing order. When she walked away, I was still reeling by the revelation that Axel had gone out and had some kind of big sexual identity revelation while I was gone. But I didn’t want to scare him by pushing too hard at any of it. “Too late now though.”
Better to just change the subject.
I saw the relief in Axel’s brown eyes, and I knew I’d made the right call. He leaned forward a bit. “You and the guy from the reunion? That’s turning into a thing?”
“Might be,” I told him with a shit-eating grin of my own. I dived into a recap of the weekend, telling him all about the time I spent with Justin but leaving out the good bits. There was no reason to let him know how good Justin was in bed. Axel asked all kinds of questions, including a bunch that I didn’t know the answer to.
Like were we officially together? Was Justin hooking up with people in Gomillion? Judging by the reunion, it had a bigger queer population than I’d thought it did back when I was growing up. There’d been a gay couple or two, but I’d never had much interaction with them. Thought it was just them and me, a few gay fish in the Gomillion pond. I might’ve been wrong, but that was neither here nor there. What mattered was that Justin had options back in Gomillion, just like I had options in King’s Bay.
And none of those options sounded even a bit as appealing as Justin Kirkwood did.
I just hoped he could say the same thing.
Three Weeks After the Reunion
The next two weeks passed about the same as the first. Me and Justin spent all day texting each other. Axel hadn’t ended up meeting back up with Lana and her new guy, but he’d admitted that he’d gotten a bit curious about other guys since then. I still had questions about how far things had gone with Lana and her boy, but he’d been pretty tight lipped. Guess it made sense. I wasn’t particularly forthcoming about what happened in the bedroom between me and Justin either. It felt kind of weird, because we’d always told each other a little too much.
Axel and I went out a few more times. I think after going back to Gomillion and realizing that I didn’t really care much for the people I’d grown up with, I started to appreciate him more. I went to work and talked to my clients. At night, I sat on the couch and watched that weird ass show while video calling Justin. I was starting to like it and get real invested in that small town of cursed fairy tale characters. He’d also roped me into watchingJeopardywith him, and while I thought I’d been pretty good at trivia, I was nothing compared to him.
Every time we hung up, I realized something.
I was missing Justin something fierce. Texting wasn’t cutting it, and I had half a mind to drive back to Gomillion and show up at his doorstep just to kiss him senseless. If it were closer, I might have done it already. I might have said fuck it to all my responsibilities and gone where I wanted to go.
Sam
Miss you.
I sent the text late one night, a few weeks after the reunion. Because I was lying in my bed after he’d already said good night, and I was just thinking about him. He’d become a part of my routine. It usually took guys I was talking to a hell of a lot longer than that to become a part of the routine, someone I texted when I woke up and all that. It wasn’t even anything in particular we texted about, just like it wasn’t anything in particular I was thinking about when I texted him. It was justhim.
I didn’t think I’d hear back from him. He nodded off fast. He’d already fallen asleep while we were texting a few times, just stopped responding until the next morning.