Page 10 of Sam & Justin (Gomillion High Reunion #4)

I snorted. “The first one, probably. Can’t imagine any of my friends holding onto this picture. Really can’t imagine them sending it in.”

None of them had been assed to come in the first place, so why would they be sending in high school photos? Our group hadn’t survived the test of time. Not like some of the other ones I was seeing at the reunion.

“Do you remember taking the picture?”

I shook my head and started looking at other pictures. “I don’t remember this one neither,” I told him, pointing out a picture I’d never seen before.

Justin took a moment to follow my finger to the picture.

It was the two of us in the library, taken during one of our tutoring sessions.

Our heads were close together, and he was explaining something to me.

Fuck, the fact that I liked him was written all over my face.

Because my eyes weren’t on the book open between us.

They were on him and that damn pencil that he had between his lips.

I’d forgotten he’d done that, but now that I was seeing it, all I could think of was the way his mouth had looked wrapped around the eraser and the way my mind always tried to substitute the pencils he was chewing on with something else.

Damn, was I glad I wasn’t much of a blusher.

I looked over at Justin, and I wondered if he saw the way I was looking at him in that picture.

Maybe he put two and two together, seeing the picture and remembering that comment about my ex-husband.

Was that going to make shit weird between us now?

Was he trying to figure out a way to run off and join up with some of his other friends?

I really didn’t want that to happen.

“You got me through senior year,” I told him.

I was willing to say just about anything to get him to stop looking at the picture.

There might have been twenty years separating me from my high school crush on him, but I still wanted to keep it close to my chest. He looked over at me, and damn, I was pretty sure I could see it in his eyes. He knew. Fuck.

He shook his head. “You got yourself to graduation.” His voice was serious, and so was the way he was looking at me. “I might have explained some of the concepts, but you’re the one that put in the work.”

I ducked my head, and I felt something I didn’t feel much.

My face was getting hot, and I just knew that if I looked in a mirror, my cheeks would be red.

So much for not being much of a blusher.

I couldn’t bring myself to look back up at him while my face was burning like that.

Unfortunately, I could feel his eyes on me.

So, I had to go and say something. I pulled in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Either way, you had a lot to do with it.”

For a moment, he looked like he was going to argue but chose otherwise. Instead, he wrote something down on a slip of paper and taped it up under the picture. He started walking down the line, and I couldn’t help but looking.

Sam Masters and Justin Kirkwood studying in the library, senior year.

I liked that he made it sound like I had just as much to do with the studying in that picture, instead of pointing out the fact that I was too damn dumb to figure out the stuff we were learning on my own.

No , I corrected myself. Because I wouldn’t have let my clients talk about themselves that way, and I liked to lead by example.

Not too dumb. I just wasn’t good at grasping things back then.

I’d had too many other things on my mind.

I followed after Justin. He had a lot more memories up there, and I liked the stories he told me about them, the way he shared parts of himself so openly. We were about three-quarters of the way down the wall when a young girl with long dark hair came up to us, clutching a tablet to her chest.

“Amber Ortiz, student body president,” she introduced herself. Her voice reminded me of one of those chirping bugs you got late in the summer. “We want to change the mascot design this year, and we need your vote to help decide which one to go with.”

Justin didn’t look all that surprised. I figured he wouldn’t be, since he was one of the people who planned this.

He probably gave her permission to be here bugging all the alumni for votes.

Justin reached out for the tablet and studied it for a few short moments, hit a button, and passed it over to me.

I didn’t think pointing out that I didn’t really have a dog in this race was going to help me much here.

I looked over the two drawings. One of the millipedes was more cartoonish than the other one. I liked the other one better. It looked meaner, more threatening. I voted for that one and passed the tablet back to the girl.

“Thank you!” She clutched the tablet to her chest and then started looking the two of us over. I didn’t really like the way she was staring at us, like we were two very attractive pieces of meat. But she didn’t say anything, just walked over to another group of people.

“She couldn’t take her eyes off of you,” Justin commented with a teasing grin. I was going to argue, point out that maybe she was looking at him, but he took away any ability I had to speak at all with his next statement. “Not that I can blame her.”

I really had no idea what to say to that, and Justin—well he looked all too amused about that fact.

I turned my attention back to the wall of pictures, because it was easier to look at people I didn’t really give a shit about than try to parse out what he meant by that statement.

I knew what I wanted him to mean, but I wasn’t naive enough to think that was what it was.

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.