Page 23 of Sam & Justin (Gomillion High Reunion #4)

“Fine, I’m on my way.” I was about to thank her when she cut me off.

“And please, for the love of god, you better be wearing pants when I get there. If you answer the door in your underwear like the last time you needed fashion advice, I’m leaving you to your disco nightmare. ” She hung up before I could reply.

It was, however, a good reminder. Because I wasn’t even in underwear.

I still had a towel wrapped around my waist. I knew it would take Sophia five minutes to get here, so I quickly dried off and pulled on a pair of sweatpants.

I tossed the towel toward my laundry basket and watched as it missed the target and fell between the hamper and the wall.

(There were many reasons I’d not volunteered to play in the alumni basketball game, and the fact that I couldn’t even hit my laundry hamper at short range was in the top three.)

I left my suit lying on my unmade bed and went out into the living room to wait for my sister.

She must have sped over, probably run some stop signs, because she appeared faster than she normally would.

She entered my house like a hurricane, tossing her bag down on my couch and stepping out of her flip flops on the way to my room.

They were left behind on the carpet, spaced with her strides, like she’d just disappeared into thin air.

I followed behind Hurricane Sophia to my bedroom. “Is that it?” she asked, indicating the open garment bag.

The green seemed even brighter than it had when I’d left the room.

It stood out like a beacon against my dark gray bedspread.

The sparkle didn’t help anything. I wasn’t sure what Sophia could do to make this any better.

I might have to accept that fixing this outfit was a lost cause.

I crossed the room and lifted the jacket from the garment bag.

The jacket caught the overhead light of my bedroom and sparkled obnoxiously. “I may have made a mistake.”

Sophia pasted on a strained smile. “We can probably find a way to make it work.” She studied the suit jacket. “What about the pants? Are they also…” She pursed her lips, and I could see that she was trying so hard to find a polite way to describe my prom outfit.

“Garish?” I supplied.

“That works.”

I hated to disappoint her, but the pants?

They matched the jacket in color, with a glittery green stripe down the leg.

They had been funny when I’d bought them, but now that I had someone to impress?

Well, let’s just say buyer’s remorse was a very strong emotion and I was drowning in it.

I held up the pants. “He’s going to run the other direction, isn’t he? ”

“No, because we’re going to…” She stopped, biting her bottom lip while she tried to come up with a plan. “I’d say fix it, but I don’t think those pants can be fixed. We’re going to find something that isn’t terrible to go with the jacket.”

“It has to be on theme,” I reminded her.

“I know.” Sophia started rustling through my closet. I knew that she’d be disappointed with what she found inside. It was mostly jeans and slacks for work. I wasn’t exactly rolling in tuxedo pants. “Tell me about your guy.”

“He’s not my guy.”

Sophia whipped around, her hand still lingering on a pair of khaki slacks. “You know what I mean. Don’t be difficult, or I’m going to leave you to your sartorial disaster.”

The only reason I didn’t flip her off was the fact that I knew she meant it.

Sophia had never taken crap from anyone, especially not me.

It was one of the reasons I’d always admired my little sister so much.

“It’s a guy I used to tutor back in high school,” I started.

She turned her attention back to my closet. “Sam Masters. Do you remember him?”

“I heard about him.” I wasn’t surprised to hear that his reputation had preceded him or that rumors of his antics had reached my sister’s grade. “Wasn’t he some kind of bad ass?”

I snorted. “He had a bad reputation, but that’s it.

He was actually pretty cool.” Sophia turned just enough so I could see her raised eyebrow.

“He was smarter than people gave him credit for. Most of the time, he messed up at school because he was rushing or wasn’t focused.

When we were working together, I saw a different side of him.

He focused. He understood what he was doing when he slowed down. He was actually really smart.”

He just hadn’t shown it.

“He also got into fights. I remember he got into this full-on brawl my freshman year with some guy in my grade. I heard it’s why he got held back.”

I remembered that rumor. Everyone had talked about it for two weeks, and then Sam had reappeared in the hallways.

I didn’t know if that was the reason he’d been held back, but I assumed it was back then.

With adult eyes, I realized it probably wasn’t.

The only reason that would’ve happened was if he was expelled.

The fight though? That part was probably true.

I remembered he’d gotten into quite a few fights when we were younger.

“A lot of people got into fights. It didn’t make him a bad person.”

“He also smoked.”

“He doesn’t anymore.”

Why did everyone in this town have such long memories for the bad parts of Sam? Why could no one see the good parts? Not then, and not now. I remembered his almost empty yearbook and the way people looked at him all weekend.

“You look peevish,” my sister commented as she pulled out a few pairs of pants from the closet. She motioned for me to put the jacket down and laid each pair of pants beside them.

I watched her process and thought about her words.

I was peevish. “The way you’re talking about Sam,” I started, “it’s the way everyone’s been looking at him all weekend.

He’s grown up. We all have, but no one seems to give him the chance.

” They didn’t when we were younger either.

They just saw the cloud of smoke, the leather jacket, the devil may care sneer, and they never bothered to look past it.

“Then tell me about who he is. Tell me about the Sam you know.”

I smiled softly, thinking about the boy I knew and the man I was learning this weekend. I thought of the way his pale gray eyes focused in the library, and the way they met mine with that same intensity the night before in his room. I remembered the way he worked hard and how it had clearly worked.

“He’s smarter than anyone gives him credit for.

Determined, too,” I started. “He didn’t have to do his fifth year.

He could have dropped out, got his GED or something, but he did.

And then he got tutoring so he could make it across that stage.

He works as a therapist now. He has his own practice, working with teens.

Ones that are like he was.” Troubled teenagers who came from the wrong side of the track and weren’t given the same chances.

Closeted teens who would lose everything if anyone found out the truth about them.

“He makes a difference.” I bit my bottom lip. “And he’s really hot, too.”

Sophia laughed and finally held up a black pair of pants. “These. Instead of the green ones. They’ll balance out the showgirl jacket.”

“Showgirl jacket?” Oh god, was I going to look like a showgirl?

“I’m teasing, I’m teasing!” Sophia squealed, reaching out to squeeze my forearm.

It was a comforting gesture, meant to ground me, but it didn’t.

It just seemed like she was placating me, telling me what she thought I needed to hear in order to quell the rising panic.

“Breathe,” Sophia advised. “You’re going to look great.

Completely on theme. Where’s your ironing board? ”

I blinked. How had she gone from comforting me in one breath to demanding—How had we even gotten there? “Why? They don’t have wrinkles.” They’d been hanging up in my closet. I didn’t let my clothes get wrinkly. Putting away my clothes right out of the dryer was one of my biggest flexes.

“We’re going to give them a front crease. Like in the 80s movies.” She paused. “We’re going to need starch.”

“Do I look like I have starch?”

Sophia blinked. “You don’t want the answer to that, do you?”

Her reaction was enough of an answer. “Hall closet, hanging on the door. Iron is on the shelf above the towels. I do not have starch. I don’t think anyone actually has starch.”

“People have starch, Justin,” she assured me. “Find a white button down and…” She studied the jacket with narrowed eyes. “Green tie. Nothing glittery.”

“I don’t have any glittery ties.” I did. The one that came with the suit. It was a bow tie. I was pretty sure Sophia didn’t believe me because she narrowed her eyes at me and ran a hand through her long auburn hair. I chose not to argue the point. “Wide tie okay?”

She cocked her head in thought before she pulled out her phone. Her fingers danced rapidly over the screen, then she began reading something on her screen. “Okay, we’re actually going to do the new romantic style.”

“Like the Taylor Swift song?”

I thought Sophia was going to smack me. She looked so incredulous. “I’m going to push you out a window.”

It wasn’t much of a threat. My house only had one floor, and I didn’t have any particularly prickly bushes to be pushed into. But I did have the good sense not to poke my sister when she was about to be holding a hot iron. Or when she was helping me. “If not the song, what does it mean?”

She flipped her phone around to show me a few example pictures.

“Instead of a tie and a button down, I need you to find a white tee shirt. I know you buy them by the pack, so it’s going to be easy for you.

It will also make the jacket look like more of a spectacle.

” That was the last thing I wanted. My thoughts must have been written all over my face. “It’ll look more intentional.”

I nodded, and my sister took off down the hallway.

I heard her clamoring around while I dug out a neatly folded white tee shirt from my drawer.

I laid it out on my bed and dug out my black dress shoes, the ones I saved for special occasions.

I put them on the floor beside my bed. When my sister returned, my pants had hard creases in the front, and she was right.

It did give them a bit more of a vintage feel.

She stepped into the living room while I got dressed.

Then she dragged me into the bathroom to toy with my hair.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that could be done with that.

We didn’t have 1980s strength hair spray.

In fact, all I had in my bathroom was the gel I used to keep my hair in check and some beard oil.

She did manage to tease my hair into something, though I wasn’t sure what it was.

“Picture time!” Sophia chirped as she led me out of the bathroom. I wasn’t sure I wanted photographic evidence of this outfit, but Sophia wouldn’t take no for an answer. She poked and prodded me into traditional prom poses and snapped too many pictures on her phone.

I didn’t think it would ever end. I’d never been so grateful for the sound of my phone’s alarm. “I have to go now,” I told her.

“Let me drive you!”

“Then how am I going to get home?” I questioned.

“Make lover boy drive you.” I glared at her, and she changed her answer immediately. “Call me. I’ll come pick you up. Then you can have a few drinks if you want.” I opened my mouth to argue, and she cut me off before I could even start. “Besides, my car is nicer.”

“Is that the real reason?” The tone of her voice told me it was more than that.

“I want to see the outfits.”

“You realize I’m going to be there early. No one else will be there yet.”

“Early birds,” she insisted as she grabbed my elbow and started to drag me off the porch. She stopped when I reminded her that I needed to get my keys and lock the door. She let me go just long enough to lock up, and then she continued dragging me to her car.

As I settled into my sister’s car, I found myself hoping that I would not be calling her for a ride home.