Page 21 of Sam & Justin (Gomillion High Reunion #4)

Reunion - Saturday Afternoon

By the time pictures wrapped up, I was peopled out, and my social battery was about dry.

I was thinking I might skip the whole prom thing.

I hadn’t gone to the real one twenty years ago.

Had no desire to, though one of the girls we’d run around with back in the day had offered.

Might have taken her up on it if I hadn’t known she was looking to get dicked down after prom.

I didn’t need another night where my dick betrayed me because the person I was making out with didn’t do it for me.

That was the kind of bullshit that came with being a closeted gay kid in a small town.

My mind was good and made up until I got to my car. Then, Justin jogged up beside me, those pretty green eyes of his sparkling. “You’re going to save me a dance tonight, right?”

I raised an eyebrow, my hand freezing in place on the door handle.

“Wasn’t really planning on going,” I admitted.

His face fell, and that sparkle in his eyes dimmed.

I didn’t like that disappointed look on his face, and I already knew that my plans for the night to veg out in my shitty motel room were done and dusted.

“But if it means a dance with you, guess I can show up.”

And just like that, his eyes were glimmering again.

Yeah, even if the whole dance thing sucked, I was going to go, and I was going to pretend to have a good time.

“Are you sure?” he asked. I could hear the hesitation in his voice, different from the guy who’d taken me apart the night before.

I think I liked the guy from the night before better, but I was intrigued by this other side of him.

This vulnerable side of him that he was showing off now.

Did he let other people see it? Hell, did he even know he was showing it now?

I reached out and touched his forearm, resting my hand there lightly until his eyes met mine. “I’m damn sure that a night dancing with you sounds a hell of a lot better than watching whatever channels that shitty motel’s got.”

And just like that, Justin’s confidence returned in full force.

He was a bit of an enigma, and every bit he showed me had me just as intrigued by him as I was back in high school.

Back then, I could see that the scrawny school president had a bit more going on beneath the surface.

He was like one of those lakes that were deeper in the middle, the ones you couldn’t see what was underneath it til you dove in, and I’d wanted to dive in.

Fuck, I still wanted to dive in now. Find out what was beneath that calm surface. I’d seen bits and pieces when we’d hooked up the night before, and usually, that was enough. I was starting to wonder if any amount of Justin Kirkwood would be enough, and that was going to be a problem.

Because he lived here in Gomillion, and it was the one place I didn’t want to be for too long.

Justin and I chatted for a few more minutes about the prom, and finally I got in my car and drove back to my motel.

Back in my room, I realized that I didn’t have jack shit to wear to an 80s themed prom.

I’d packed that button down, thinking that I’d wear that if I decided to go.

But now, it didn’t seem like enough. Justin had put so much effort into this whole thing.

He’d slaved over details, and I could see the way he lit up every time he saw our former classmates enjoying the shit that he’d put together.

I didn’t want to show up to his prom dressed in normal clothes. I wanted to be just as impressive as he was.

I was fucked.

I pulled out my phone and looked up thrift stores in the area.

I had no idea if the one secondhand store I’d shopped at when I was younger was still in business, and I wasn’t about to show up and find out it had turned into another dollar store or some shit.

Internet directed me to two stores in Gomillion.

One of them was the one I’d gone to when I was younger, and the other one was something that had opened up in the years I’d been gone.

Looking through the reviews, I decided it was my best bet.

Well, the reviews and the hours. The old one was going to be closing soon, and even if I rushed there, I might not have time to find what I was looking for.

Axel

How’s the reunion going? Get laid?

I grinned at my phone as my best friend’s text popped up, blocking out the information on the secondhand store I was looking at. I rolled my eyes when I read the actual words. Typical fucking Axel.

Sam

Reunion’s going okay. None of my friends showed.

Saw my old tutor though.

Axel

The hot one you told me about?

Sam

He’s gotten a hell of a lot hotter too. Aged like a good bourbon.

Axel

Pretty sure the saying’s like fine wine.

Sam

Fuck wine. You know I don’t like that rancid ass grape juice.

Axel sent back a laughing emoji, and I knew he was waiting for me to answer the second part of his question.

Normally, I wouldn’t have been bothered about telling my best friend about the guys I’d hooked up with.

It wouldn’t have been a big deal. He’d heard his fair share of stories, even back when all the stories were about me and Tim.

He’d told me his fair share, too. I knew more about the women he hooked up with than he did; at least that’s the way it felt sometimes.

But telling him about what went down between me and Justin felt like it was crossing a line. I knew what me and Justin shared was a one night thing, me getting to finally taste my high school crush, but telling Axel made it feel like I was cheapening it.

Sam

Going to some lame ass prom thing tonight. Didn’t even go to my real prom.

Axel

This gotta do with the hot tutor? Trying to make him your reunion fling?

Shit, are you going to take him back to your hotel room and let him fuck you seven ways to Sunday? Play the blushing virgin on prom night?

I sent him the middle finger emoji and pocketed my phone.

There was no denying that my brain was filling with mental images of him fucking me seven ways til Sunday after prom.

Of course, my brain had some good stuff to fill in the fantasy with.

I already knew how he kissed, and I knew how his dick felt inside of me.

I leaned back on my bed and closed my eyes, letting the fantasy play out.

He wasn’t wearing some stupid suit from the 80s.

My mind put him in some James Bond style tux, one of those really fancy ones with the crisp white undershirt.

My dick throbbed at the mental image. I was just about to whip it out and jack off when my phone buzzed again.

Axel had a few other smartass comments, and my dick went from half hard to softer than a gummy worm.

Probably for the better. I needed to get to that stupid thrift store and find some suit that would bring James Bond to tears.

It took me about fifteen minutes to get off the bed and stop texting Axel.

He kept prodding me about Justin, and it took everything in me not to tell him that he was barking up a tree I’d already climbed.

Might have done it if he hadn’t had a tattoo appointment step into his shop just as my determination was wavering.

I drove across town to the thrift store. Some teen girl with curly dark hair greeted me and pointed me in the direction of the men’s suits. “You know if any of these are 80s?” I asked her before heading that way.

“Let me guess,” she drawled in a bored voice. “You need something to wear to the reunion? Leaving it a bit late, aren’t you?”

I shrugged and nodded. “Wasn’t sure I was going to go,” I admitted.

“Well, I think we might still have a few pieces. Dorian, the owner, he put together a little rack of all of our 80s stuff and has been keeping it stocked up the last month or so.”

Well, that was handy. I let her point me toward that rack of vintage garb and made my way to it.

There were five suits left, and I started rifling through them.

One of them, probably the most normal looking one, was too small.

I found two that didn’t look too bad that might fit well enough and started toward the dressing room.

I was almost there when I heard a ghost from my past, calling out my name. It didn’t take me any time to place that voice. Even if I hadn’t heard it in years, I’d know it anywhere. My mother.

I turned around and saw her. She looked older than the last time I’d seen her, but it had been more than fifteen years. Her dark hair was streaked with gray, and there were wrinkles by her eyes and around her mouth. Those wrinkles became more defined as she smiled at me. “I thought that was you!”

I stiffened at the warmth in her voice because the last time she’d talked to me, there hadn’t been any warmth there.

I could still remember all of it, plain as if it had happened yesterday.

I’d gone back to Gomillion for my friend’s wedding, and I thought that things might have changed.

I thought that my parents would’ve had some time to deal with the fact that I was gay.

I went back to the trailer I’d called home for most of my life and knocked on the door.

My mom answered. I still remembered the flour, stark white against the dark blue of her shirt.

I remembered the way her brown eyes turned cold when she saw me, so different than the warmth I saw looking at me now.

“Thought your dad told you not to come back,” she’d said.

I remembered the way those words stabbed me in the chest. Nothing had changed in the two or three years since I’d come out. I didn’t think anything had changed, but there was still that small, hopeful part of me that thought maybe it was different now.

“Hey Mom,” I greeted her. My voice was a croak, and I fucking hated it. Why the fuck should my mom have any kind of power over me after all the shit that had gone down back in the day?

My mom looked down at the two suits on my arm and up at me. “Another friend’s wedding?”

“High school reunion.”

Her eyes might have been warmer. Her tone might have been, too, but there was a cold kind of tension between us.

I remembered baking with her some mornings back when I was a kid, when my dad wasn’t home.

My mom had made the best cakes, all from scratch.

She’d taught me too, but I didn’t remember the recipes.

I’d stopped doing it when I hit double digits, when Dad found out, and time had taken its toll on the memory.

My mom hadn’t pushed me to keep it up, but my dad, on the other hand, had been the one telling me that I didn’t need to be learning how to bake.

It didn’t match his definition of what it meant to be a man.

My mom took in the words while she studied me. She was looking at me like I was a stranger, and I suppose I was. She didn’t know anything about my life now. “Has it really been that long?”

“Twenty years,” I confirmed, shifting from leg to leg.

My mom kept looking at me. She was smaller than I remembered. Had she been shorter than me the last time I saw her? She’d felt larger than life back in the day, and I did have to wonder if my dad would seem as big and imposing if I was facing him now.

“How have you been? Are you still in…” She trailed off.

“King’s Bay,” I filled in the blanks. Did she really not even know where the hell I lived now?

I knew we were strangers to each other, but the fact that she didn’t even know where I lived stung like that time I accidentally kicked a hornet’s nest when I was a kid.

My mom had been the one to mop me up back then, wiping my tears and taking me to the doctor’s office to make sure I wasn’t going to have any kind of reaction.

“Yeah, I’m still there. I have my own practice now. ”

“Practice?”

“Therapy practice. I’m a therapist.”

My mother nodded. I watched the way her eyes moved down to my hand, landing on my wedding ring finger. “No wife?”

My stomach clenched and twisted. No wife .

As if she didn’t fucking know that I was gay.

It hit me then, not only did she not know jack shit about me now, she’d missed so much of my life.

She didn’t know I’d been married. That I’d had a whole ass husband and went through a painful divorce.

It made me sick. It pissed me off too, because how the hell had I gone through all that shit coming out to her and my dad, got cut off, and she still had the balls to ask if I had a wife.

“I’m gay,” I reminded her, impressed that my tone was pretty steady.

I wasn’t letting her have any of this anger.

“In fact, getting an outfit for the reunion’s prom, because there’s this really hot guy I’m wanting to spend some more time with.

” Okay, maybe I was letting her have some of my anger.

Probably a bit messed up that I was willing to imply shit about me and Justin to my mom when I’d been bugged about saying anything about me and him to Axel.

“I thought you might have gotten past that,” she mused. That twist in my stomach grew worse.

“It’s not something I’m growing past,” I shot back. “Had a husband and everything, Mom.”

For a moment, I thought I saw something that looked like regret flash behind her dark eyes.

Like maybe it was hitting her that she’d missed so much of my life.

I wasn’t the same person now that I’d been back then.

Or maybe she was mourning the fact that she hadn’t gotten to see me on my wedding day.

Though if I knew her, she was more mourning the fact that I hadn’t met some girl to change me into the son she and my dad always thought they had.

She didn’t say anything, and I shook my head. “Gotta get these tried on. It was good to see you.”

I pushed past her to the dressing room, and that twist in my gut just kept growing.

I don’t think I realized how much I’d been hanging onto the idea that maybe, my parents might come around some day.

That they might realize that they lost their only kid because of their closed minds.

I’d kept a lot of information about myself public over the past two decades, and now I was realizing how fucked up it was that I’d been hoping things might change.

Everything else in my life had—for the better and all that.

But as I tried on the ugly ass suits I found, I realized that some things didn’t change. I looked in the mirror, checking the fit on a gray suit that was less offensive than the garish powder blue one, and I realized another thing.

I was okay with that.