Page 13 of Sam & Justin (Gomillion High Reunion #4)

Reunion - Friday Night

Fuck.

If I’d have known Justin could fuck like that, I might have risked it all in high school.

Risked being out back then, my friendships, having a roof over my head, all of it.

Because even if we hadn’t done anything wild, he’d fucked me so good I was seeing stars by the time he collapsed on me.

I could feel his heavy breaths against my chest. We were pretty much stuck together with cum and sweat, but I didn’t want him to roll over.

I didn’t want to feel the emptiness when he pulled out of me.

But he had to pull out eventually. I watched as he took the condom off his cock and knotted it, tossing it in the trash can by the bed.

“Stay here,” I told him as I started to sit up. I felt his hand on my chest, pushing me back. It didn’t take much pushing, if I was being all that honest. Leaving the bed when my legs felt like jelly didn’t sound all that appealing, but neither did cleaning up the dried jizz later.

It didn’t seem like I was going to have to do either of those.

Because Justin rolled off the bed. I thought he might pull on some clothes, but he didn’t.

He just walked stark naked to the bathroom.

I heard running water and a few minutes later, he came back holding a damp rag.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him as he padded across the motel room’s old carpet toward me.

He climbed back onto the bed and started wiping me down.

My eyes drifted shut with the careful way he was cleaning me off.

He wasn’t the first person I’d fucked, not by a long shot, but most of the guys I hooked up with ended up cleaning themselves off and leaving.

Even my ex-husband wasn’t always the best at the aftercare thing.

He always claimed that he was worn out after fucking, and I didn’t blame him.

But having Justin clean me off, it felt like he was putting me first.

There hadn’t been a whole lot of that in my life.

After he got me all cleaned up, he looked like he was about to leave again. I pulled him back down to me, taking the rag from his hand. I didn’t want him to go yet, didn’t want tonight to be over. I put the rag on the bedside table, right next to the supplies. “Stay for a bit.”

I thought he might fight me on it, but he didn’t.

He settled right in against me, pulling me into him.

My head found his chest like it was magnetized and rested there.

I could hear his heart beating, his steady breathing.

It was just a one night stand, but that didn’t mean it had to be meaningless.

If nothing else, it was some kind of full circle thing.

I was finally laying in bed with my high school crush, his arms wrapped around me, and I was loving every second of it.

Felt like something from one of those dumb chick flicks I got dragged to by some of the girls I tried to date back when I was living here.

I wondered if I’d have liked them more if Justin had been the one dragging me there.

Probably not, I decided, because there wasn’t anything that could’ve made me enjoy those movies.

“That was good,” Justin whispered after a few minutes. I could feel the deep vibrations of his voice against my ear, and I smiled at the sound of it.

“That was good,” I agreed. “You know, there were a few times back in high school when I imagined that.” He shifted underneath me, and I angled my head to get a better view.

He looked surprised, like he didn’t expect the words to come from my mouth.

“Shit, man, you saw the picture. You’re too smart to not notice the way I was looking at you back then. ”

That confused look of his turned to a grin. “I thought I might have been imagining things.”

“Nah, it was right there. Plain as day.”

“I liked you then, too,” he said quietly.

He was obviously better at hiding it than I’d been back then, because I didn’t see a lick of it on his face in that picture.

“I didn’t know it yet. I didn’t even know I liked guys when I knew you, but once I realized that, I was able to look back on those memories. It was obvious.”

“When did you realize?”

He paused for a moment. “College,” he answered. His thick arms tightened around me, pulling me closer to him. “I think it was my second year? Maybe my third?”

“What happened?”

I didn’t know if I was being too nosy, but I didn’t really care.

I’d known I was gay for a long time, and I was always curious how the people who didn’t know came into it.

“There was a guy in one of my political science classes,” he started.

“I found myself hanging on his every word. Every time he got up to present in class, it was the most compelling lecture I’d ever heard.

When I saw him in the library, I wanted all of his attention.

It took most of the semester and my roommate whacking me upside the head to recognize it for what it was. ”

“A crush?”

“A crush,” he confirmed.

I snorted. “How’d you handle that?”

“It made sense to me. I spent a night looking back. I remembered other guys I had the same reaction to and realized that my roommate was right. Then I had the whole panic moment, because I liked girls too. I’d had a few girlfriends by then, and I’d felt the same way about them.”

“So, you’re bi?”

“Pan.”

I never really got the difference between the two. Maybe I could’ve asked, got some clarity, but I didn’t see the point really. Labels had never been all that important to me anyway. “How long did it take you to tell anyone?”

“Well, I told my roommate the next day.” Shit, I couldn’t imagine realizing it and then telling people right away.

I let that secret eat away at me until I was nothing more than a hollow skeleton.

“He was pretty cool with it, but I didn’t expect him not to be.

He was the one that made me realize that I had a crush on the guy, after all.

” Guess that made sense. It was more confirmation than news.

“He helped me work up the guts to talk to that guy, too.”

Shit, he’d actually talked to him? That was ballsier than I’d ever been, especially at that age.

“What happened?”

“We became friends, and then a few months later, we started dating.” I must’ve had some kind of look on my face, because he grinned a bit too wide. “We were together for about two years. It didn’t work out in the end, but it was pretty good for what it was.”

I thought for a moment. Seemed like he had a good coming out experience.

It was nothing like what I’d gone through.

Of course he hadn’t mentioned how his family reacted.

I didn’t know how to ask it, because I never did like talking about the way my family acted when I came out, and there was a good chance he’d want to know about mine if I asked about his.

Sometimes, I closed my eyes and I could still hear my dad’s reaction.

I hoped he didn’t have to go through that shit, but then I doubted he did.

He’d said something about how his family made his life worth living, gave it purpose, and I figured if they’d cut him out for being into guys, they wouldn’t have made that list.

“What’s that look?” Justin asked as he studied me.

I guess my thoughts were written all over my face.

Actually, I doubted that. I’d always had a good poker face.

Axel commented on it all the damn time. Maybe he was just good at reading people.

Must have come in handy working in politics the way he did.

I could still feel his eyes on me, waiting for an answer, so I knew I had to bite the bullet and ask. “How’d your family take it?”

He was still looking at me when I asked. Like he could see all kinds of childhood trauma written on my face. Maybe he should have been a therapist like me, because you had to be able to see through the bullshit.

“They handled it pretty well,” he answered. “They just want me to be happy. It’s all they’ve ever wanted for me and Soph.”

“Different from my folks,” I grumbled.

“I take it they didn’t take it well?”

That was the understatement of the century. “Why do you think I don’t come back here all that much?”

I don’t know what kind of response I expected from that.

Back when I used to talk about my family, most people showed some kind of pity when they heard that shit.

I stopped talking about it after a year or two, because I hated the way people looked at me when they found out.

Hated the way they acted like I should be handled with kid gloves.

Fuck that.

But Justin, he didn’t. He leaned in and kissed me.

It wasn’t like the kisses we were sharing earlier.

It wasn’t full of fire and heat, wasn’t an appetizer to something else.

It was just a kiss, the kind you gave to someone you cared about.

I hadn’t had a kiss like that in a few years, and I sure as hell didn’t expect to get one from a one night stand in Gomillion.

Of course, I didn’t usually talk about the deep shit with my one night stands.

There was something about shared history that made it easier to open up.

The kiss lingered for a few moments before he pulled away.

“You deserve better than that.” I snorted. I’d been around people I’d gone to high school with all night, and not a one of them would agree with him. “You do,” he insisted.

“Might be the only one to think that.”

He raised a questioning eyebrow. “You really think that, don’t you?”

“Ain’t ever had much said to make me think otherwise. Especially around here.” I sighed. That wasn’t the whole truth. I was just in my head, because being back here, it made me feel like I was seventeen again, and not in a good way. “You notice most people looked right through me at the reunion?”

He nodded. “I also noticed that you weren’t going out of your way to talk to anyone.”