Page 2 of Sam & Justin (Gomillion High Reunion #4)

December - Six Months Until the Reunion

I’d finished with my last client of the day, and I already knew what my night had in store for me.

It was the same as every night. I’d go home to my boring ass apartment.

I’d change out of my work clothing and into something that felt more natural—jeans and a tee shirt or something.

Then I’d make dinner and veg out on my couch until it was a socially acceptable time to go to bed.

My nights had become predictable since my ex-husband and I divorced almost three years ago.

The only variations were the nights I chose to order pizza from Pie in the Sky instead of cooking or my buddy, Axel, physically dragged me out to the Rusty Nail with him.

I was in a rut. Axel told me this all the damn time, and I knew he wasn’t lying.

I’d been stuck for awhile, even before me and Tim ended things.

I’m pretty sure it was part of the reason Tim left me in the first place.

But knowing I was in a rut wasn’t enough to get me out of it. Instead, I just went about my business and did the same things I always did.

I followed the same steps I took every night.

I locked up my office. I drove back to my apartment.

I checked my mailbox and found nothing more than the usual junk mail and bills.

There weren’t even any Christmas cards, not that I was surprised.

There weren’t a lot of people in my life who would send me cards.

I didn’t talk to my parents. I was an only child, and I didn’t have much of an extended family to speak of.

My friends from my hometown weren’t really Christmas card types, and even if they were, I doubted I’d be on the list of people they sent one to.

I hadn’t really kept in contact after I left Gomillion.

I made my way upstairs to my place and started to figure out dinner.

I wasn’t in the mood to cook, even though I’d set some chicken down to thaw that morning.

I’d make it tomorrow. I was too stuck in my own head to cook it, too stuck contemplating the ways my life hadn’t gone the way I thought it would.

I found a TV dinner in the freezer and popped it in the oven before going to get changed out of my work clothes.

I said fuck it to the idea of jeans. It wasn’t like I was going anywhere, and I didn’t feel like trying to fool myself into thinking that I was.

I pulled on a pair of black sweats and a black tank top instead and plopped down on the couch.

I scrolled through my Netflix options and chose some mindless sitcom I’d watched too many times.

It wasn’t holding my attention, so I grabbed my laptop from where it was sitting on the coffee table.

I opened it up and navigated to my email.

There was the usual spam. There was an email advertising a sale at the Harley store.

I opened it and skimmed the information, making a note of the dates.

May as well treat myself to a little Christmas present, because it wasn’t like I had a lot of other people to buy things for, and I wasn’t likely to be on anyone’s gift list. I favorited the email and kept looking through my inbox.

It was a bunch of the same, until I noticed the email from the Gomillion High Alumni Association.

I hadn’t been much of a joiner in high school, but some cute guy had talked me into signing up on one of my rare visits back to my hometown.

I clicked it open, and my jaw dropped. It was an invitation to my twenty year high school reunion.

How in the hell had it been twenty years already?

How in the hell had it only been twenty years?

It felt like it was too soon and long overdue at the same time. I read over the details.

It was in late May, a good six months away.

I supposed they had to send out the information early, in order to make sure everyone had time to make plans to attend.

Most of my former classmates probably had to figure out what to do with their careers or their kids or whatever.

They had to plan out vacation time and hotel rooms if they lived too far away from Gomillion to drive down on Friday night after work.

I didn’t even know why I was considering this.

I hadn’t been all that into high school when I’d been there.

I’d taken five years to graduate, and I hadn’t been all that popular back then.

I didn’t have a ton of friends that would be interested in going to the high school reunion, and even if they went, did I really want to go spend a bunch of time with people I didn’t give enough of a shit about to keep in contact with?

Besides, it would probably be some pissing contest to see who had changed the most over the years, who had the most successful life, all of it.

A divorcee pushing forty eating TV dinners in an apartment a few hours away from where he grew up wasn’t going to make me a contender in that pissing contest. Not in the slightest. Sure, I had my own practice.

I was a counselor, helping kids a lot like the one I’d been back in high school.

Kids that came from bad homes and had bad reputations.

Kids who were confused about their sexuality.

Kids who were struggling to accept themselves because they knew it wouldn’t be taken well at home.

Kids who were having to deal with shit they shouldn’t have to deal with.

At least I was doing okay in that aspect of my life, even if I wasn’t in any other part.

There was no way I was going to my class reunion.

I knew this, but I couldn’t bring myself to delete the invitation. I hit the little star to favorite it and closed my laptop.

No need to completely cut myself off from the option of going.

May - One Week Until the Reunion

Ever since I got invited to my high school reunion, I’d been thinking about Gomillion and my past. I’d spent too long looking up my old high school friends.

Two of them didn’t have social media, but a quick search told me they were in jail.

I wasn’t that surprised. One of them had dropped out of high school, and the other one had been so high at graduation that I was surprised he’d been able to walk across the stage to get his diploma.

Most of my other friends had gotten their shit together over the past twenty years. Three of them had gotten married.

I’d only known about one of them, and that’s because I actually kept in touch with him for awhile.

I’d been one of his groomsmen. He’d had a kid since then and moved out of Gomillion.

We lost touch with each other after that.

It had been close to ten years since I talked to him last. I typed up a quick message to him, asking if he was planning on going to the class reunion.

I was more surprised by the fact that he answered than what his answer was.

He wasn’t spending the money to travel halfway across the country to spend time with people he didn’t really like.

He said he’d heard from a few of our old gang back in school, the same guys I’d spent the time searching up, and none of them were going.

That was just another reason why I shouldn’t go, but my mind kept looping back to the stupid reunion.

I kept thinking about the people I hadn’t talked to since high school.

There was that guy in my gym class that had pretty much been my gay awakening.

I wondered if he was still hot or if time had done him dirty.

I thought about the guy in my English class who always talked about being a writer but read out the shittiest poetry I’d ever heard every time he got a chance.

I wondered if he’d ever realized his dream.

I thought about my tutor senior year, the way I’d always been distracted by his damn lips.

I’d had the world’s biggest crush on him, even though I knew he was too good for me.

I wondered what Justin had been up to in the time since high school.

I bet he’d gone and done something good with his life.

It took everything in me not to search him up. I might have been curious, but that would be a little creepy. It wasn’t like we’d kept in contact. It’d be like looking up the guy from my English class. If I remembered his name that was.

Luckily, my phone buzzed and kept me from stalking a high school crush.

Normally, I might have ignored Axel’s text to go out and have a few beers.

It was getting late, and I had to be up early in the morning for work.

Giving therapy to at-risk youth while hungover seemed a touch hypocritical and like it just might be a recipe for disaster.

But if I stayed home, I’d probably give into temptation and cyberstalk my former tutor.

I told him I’d meet him at the Rusty Nail in twenty minutes.

I changed out of my sweats to a pair of jeans and headed over to meet up with Axel.

He was already at the bar, perched up on a barstool, talking to some blonde chick I’d seen at his tattoo shop a few times.

I could tell by his body language that they were flirting, and I was tempted to back out the door and send a text that something came up.

The only thing that stopped me was him noticing me and waving me over.

I slid onto the empty barstool on Axel’s other side and joined in the small talk until the blonde excused herself to get back to her friends.

Axel’s head was practically on backwards watching her go back to a table of giggling women.

“You know, I can head out if you wanted to take her home,” I offered when he finally turned back toward me.

He grinned. “Nah, me and Lana have a good thing going.”

That was news to me. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah?”