Page 8 of Sam & Justin

“Goes with how?”

Was I supposed to be looking for someone else who had a gravy card?

“They’re pairs. I’mshoes, so I’m thinking that I need to find someone who hassocksorshoelacesor something like that. You said you’regravy, right?” I nodded. “Then you’re looking for someone who has a card that has something that goes with gravy.”

“Like biscuits?”

“Probably. Or chicken?” Her voice sounded a bit less bitchy when she tossed out an option. Maybe I’d been reading too much into it. Projecting, again.

“Thanks.”

She smiled at me, and I watched as her eyes moved down my body and back up to my face. There was a look in her eyes I’d seen more than a few times in tourists that found themselves in the Rusty Nail back in King’s Bay. She was barking up the wrong tree, and I didn’t feel like dealing with the return of the grump.

“Good luck,” I told her before I pushed off the bar. Guess I was gonna have to go find whoever had something that went with gravy.

The first three people I asked were a bust. Not only did they not have anything to do with my card, but they all seemed bugged that I’d even dared to interrupt them to ask. I really shouldn’t have listened to Axel. Should have just stayed home. Too bad it was too late now. I was already here, and I’d checked in. Besides, it was too far of a drive to just turn around and go home, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to linger around Gomillion without a real reason.

But that didn’t mean I had to keep playing this stupid game with the cards. It was meant to be some kind of icebreaker, and it wasn’t breaking any ice for me. If anything, it was showing off the ice my peers still had toward me. I went back to the bar and got another one of those disgusting black mojitos.

Standing around let a few people come up to me, but not a one of them was the biscuit to my gravy. Or the chicken to my gravy. Or the whatever the hell else to my gravy. I did manage to make small talk with some girl that I think I had history with, but it was about as interesting as that class had been. She scampered off to find her partner. At least her card was easy to find the match of. She hadpepper.

“What’s on your card?” a deep voice asked as a body settled onto the empty barstool next to me. I turned my head, and it took all I had not to actually drop my jaw.

The man next to me was gorgeous. He had red hair and a matching well-kept red beard. When he looked at me, he had sparkling blue eyes that crinkled in the corners. I couldn’t tell much about his height while he was sitting next to me, but he was built the way I liked my men: solid. My dad used to have a word for guys with that kind of body. He’d say they were built like a brick shitter, and the man next to me was the living embodiment of the phrase.

There was something familiar about him, but that wasn’t hard to fathom given where we were. It wasn’t until he smiled that it all pieced together. I’d seen that smile sitting across from me at a library table, gifted to me when I’d figured out some math problem I’d been struggling with or when I finally got the date right on some history factoid he’d been pounding into my head. That smile had gotten me through some dark nights. It had also been the image I jacked off too more than a few times in my youth.

Justin Kirkwood.

My old tutor.

And he was looking at me like I was a bit slow, because I hadn’t answered his question. Shit. I was making a wonderful first impression—or whatever the fuck it was called when you’d already met someone and were meeting them again for the first time in twenty years.

I shook my head like I was trying to clear a particularly stubborn Etch-a-Sketch. He looked at me like I was an idiot, the smile faltering from his lips. “Gravy,” I told him.

It was too long after his question, but at least I got it answered.

“Gravy?” he confirmed. His blue eyes lit up like someone set a fire behind them. “Looks like we’re a match.” He sat his card down on the bar in front of me.Biscuit. Our eyes met, and I swear I felt a jolt of electricity shoot down my spine. “It’s been a long time, Sam.”

The fact that he wasn’t scowling at the memory of me almost made this whole trip worth it.

4

Reunion - Friday Night

“It’s been a long time, Sam.”

I regretted the words the moment they left my mouth. It sounded like a bad line in an even worse movie. I sounded like I was going to give him a secret mission or something, especially since I’d just put my card on the bar in front of him to see if we were a match. I almost wished this was some kind of covert spy mission. At least then, I’d have something else to say.

Luckily, he smiled at me. He must not have thought I sounded too lame. I would take the small victories where I could get them, and if his smile was as rare as it had been in high school, then this wasn’t a small victory. I remembered how hard I used to work to earn one of his sardonic smiles back then, sitting across from him in the library.

There were a few small changes to his smile now, but so much of it was like looking through a mirror into the past. His bottom lip was still fuller than his top one, and his smile was still a little lopsided. I wondered if he’d gotten the chip in his front tooth fixed and wished he was the type to smile with teeth. It’d be weird to stare while he was talking. In fact, it was probably weird to study his mouth the way I was doing now, but I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t just the similarities that intrigued me, but the small differences. His smile lit up his face more, and it showed off the newly formed lines in the corner of his eyes.

He looked happier than he had when we were younger.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what to say after that stunning opening line. I had never been good at small talk, and I couldn’t ask him what classes he was struggling in anymore. I knew a little about his life from social media, but I doubted that was a complete picture. It also would probably make me come across as some kind of creep knowing things he hadn’t told me.

An awkward blanket of silence settled over us, and I found myself doubting Vanessa’s icebreaker. It had gotten people moving and breaking away from the people they came with, but now? Now I had to figure out a way to actually talk to the guy I used to tutor.