Page 15 of Sam & Justin (Gomillion High Reunion #4)

Reunion - Saturday Morning

I was confused when my alarm went off. The bed, the walls, the man sleeping beside me—none of it was what I was used to waking up to in the morning. I fumbled for my phone, silencing it, as Sam grumbled about the noise and tried to pull me closer.

“I have to go,” I groaned at him.

“Stay,” he whined, opening his eyes just enough that I could see a sliver of gray.

“I can’t.” I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay entangled with him all day.

The motel bed was surprisingly comfortable, and it felt like it was too early to be awake anyway.

I’d not gotten enough sleep, and there was barely any sun peeking through the crack in the heavy curtains.

But unfortunately, I had responsibilities.

I’d promised Vanessa that I’d be at the school early, and I still had to go home and shower.

I couldn’t show up at the reunion wearing last night’s clothes. “I’ll see you at the school, okay?”

Sam made a noise that I took as agreement and loosened his grip on me.

I tried to move quietly while I got dressed, not wanting to wake him up any more than I already had.

I didn’t think it mattered, because by the time I was dressed, he was snoring.

I went to the bathroom before I left to get a drink of water from the tap.

Then, because I didn’t want him to be as thirsty as I was when he woke up, I filled a second glass and left it on the bedside table.

I fought the urge to give him a kiss goodbye, not wanting to disturb him, and slipped out of his room.

I drove back to my house and made quick work of getting ready. I had an image to maintain, after all, and I could hardly show up looking like I’d missed sleep in lieu of a night of passionate sex. Which, I mean, I had, but there was no need for everyone at the reunion to know it.

I thought I did a pretty good job of washing away the evidence of the previous night until I stepped into the school and saw Vanessa.

She gave me a quick once-over, and I could see the realization wash over her face.

She smiled and crinkles formed around her dark eyes. “Looks like someone had a good night.”

“Shut up. We have a lot to set up.”

“Interesting how we can do that while we talk about your night,” Vanessa teased.

There was something in her voice that made it very clear to me why she was a school administrator.

It didn’t leave any room for argument, even with the teasing cadence of her words, and I knew that I was going to be telling her anything she wanted to know.

Okay, maybe not anything she wanted to know. There were some things better left private.

But that didn’t mean I had to volunteer any of the information she was clearly dying to know.

Instead, I checked that we had all the necessary supplies at the registration desk for the school tour.

There wasn’t a lot that was needed. Most of our work for the morning would be setting up for the alumni basketball game.

The entire time I straightened up the chairs at the registration table, I could feel Vanessa staring at me. But she didn’t say anything.

Maybe I’d be able to make it all the way until people got there without facing the interrogation stylings of Vanessa Smythe Newton. I started to relax.

It turned out, she was just waiting for me to let my guard down. The moment we were in the gym with closed doors, she turned on me. “So, was it the guy you were drooling over last night?”

“Seriously, Vanessa?” I questioned, shaking my head.

I wasn’t sure if I was more bothered by the fact that she was questioning if I’d hooked up with someone else or if she was questioning me about my sexual exploits.

But she was, and she kept looking at me in a way that made me itch under my skin. I sighed. “Yes. It was Sam.”

I didn’t like the way she was grinning at me. “Just catching up, hmm?”

“It might have been a little more than catching up.” I started toward the gym’s storage room.

It normally stored equipment for gym class.

It still did, but we’d also stored decorations for the alumni game.

I started rifling through a few shelves, looking for something. “I thought we put balloons in here.”

“ You put balloons in here. I moved them to the big gym,” Vanessa countered.

I raised an eyebrow, questioning why she would do that.

Why would she make a unilateral decision about the decorations for part of an event that I was supposed to be planning?

I didn’t have the same skill with a questioning stare that she did, because she didn’t look even the slightest bit uncomfortable.

She did answer, however, so I was going to take my small victories where I could.

“I didn’t think they were a good idea in a crowded room with flying balls.

I figured we could use them for the prom, instead.

” She might have had a point. “Speaking of flying balls…” I groaned.

Would it be unprofessional to clap my hand over her mouth to stop her from talking about this? “How was it?”

At least she wasn’t asking anything too invasive.

Maybe if I answered a few questions, she’d let it drop.

“It was great.” If the way she was staring at me was any indication, I was out of luck.

I grabbed a box of banners we planned to hang up around the gym and motioned for her to grab the step ladder.

“I ended up falling asleep at his motel.”

“Motel? Oh god, please tell me he is not staying at that roadside travesty.”

“It’s not as dirty as it looks,” I assured her. “The bed was surprisingly comfortable.”

“I guess if you’re paying for bed bugs, you should get a good night’s sleep.”

I fought the urge to throw the box of decorations at her. We’d just have to pick it up, and then we’d be behind schedule. “You’re being snobby.”

“I’m just concerned as to why he’d choose to stay there when there’s a better hotel in town. One that has inside hallways.”

I rolled my eyes. “Snobby,” I repeated. “He didn’t want to stay there, because he didn’t get along with most people we went to school with.

He didn’t want to stay where everyone else was.

” It was one of the things we’d talked about between make out sessions the night before.

I’d asked him the same things Vanessa was questioning now, so I guess it did make sense that her mind would go there too.

“Sounds like you guys were talking a lot then?” I nodded. “Not just a standard one night stand?”

“It has to be, doesn’t it?”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t live here, and I don’t think he’ll be coming back once the weekend’s over.”

The reality of it hit me like a box of rocks.

The night before was a one night stand. It wasn’t something that could be repeated.

The feelings I felt the night before, I wasn’t going to get to experience them again.

Not with him at least. Not long term. Even if we found ourselves in bed again tonight, it would still end the same way.

That shouldn’t have made me feel as low as it did.

At nine on the dot, Vanessa and I were waiting at the registration desk.

A few of her student volunteers had arrived and were milling around, wearing name tags to identify them.

As if the fact that they were twenty years younger than everyone else wasn’t a dead giveaway that they were volunteers for the event.

(I did have to wonder what Vanessa was bribing them with to give up the first weekend of their summer vacation to be here.

Except for Amber Ortiz, who was already going around, bugging people to vote for the mascot on her handy dandy tablet.)

Alumni were already filing into the school lobby.

Some of them were bright eyed and bushy tailed, but there were more than a few tired and hungover faces.

I searched each and every face for Sam, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Maybe it was just too crowded, and I didn’t see him.

I would have to wait to see if I could find him when the crowd thinned.

Vanessa and I planned on staggering the start time of the tours, sending small groups through with volunteers at five minute intervals.

The tours would all end back in the lobby, and then people could filter their way to the small gym for the alumni basketball game at their leisure.

We’d left enough time for two waves of tours, though we’d probably have time for more if there were still stragglers after the second wave.

Personally, I thought that was overkill.

Vanessa and I began to divvy up the crowd of people, assigning them to volunteers.

I took the last group through, mostly because I was still looking for him.

I think Vanessa could see it too, because she shot me a sympathetic look as I left her sitting alone at the registration table.

I wished that I’d volunteered to stay there to greet late arrivals rather than leading a group of my former classmates through a school that I didn’t know as intimately as I once did.

I’d rather sit there and hope that Sam would show up.

But I couldn’t do that.

So, I led my group of ten alumni through the hallways.

I walked them through the administrative offices and laughed when one of the guys in my group mourned the loss of the old principal’s office.

He’d apparently been a frequent flyer, something I hadn’t known back in high school.

I’d always thought that the boys on the football team managed to escape getting pulled into seeing the principal simply on virtue of being school stars.