Page 34 of Sam & Justin (Gomillion High Reunion #4)

I’d seen his room on our video calls. Or at the very least, I’d seen the king size bed with the leather and wood headboard.

The last time we talked, his sheets were dark gray.

Today, they were a rich green that reminded me of the woods around my parents’ house.

“You changed the sheets?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m not a complete heathen,” he teased as he put my bag down in a corner. “Change my sheets every week.”

The fact that this single statement made me swoon said something about the quality of men I usually hung out with. I’d even gone on a few dates with one guy who had snowmen sheets in the middle of summer. Something told me he’d put them on when snowmen would have been seasonally appropriate.

Sam finished the tour of his small apartment by showing me where the bathroom was.

After the tour, he sat on the bed while I unpacked my weekend bag.

Hanging my clothes in his closet and putting my shower supplies next to his felt good in a way I couldn’t describe.

Talking to him while I got everything together felt even better.

We spent the night on his couch. He ordered pizza from some local place, and we cuddled up watching our show.

He was just as into it as I was, and I found myself watching his reaction to everything instead of paying attention to the show.

Every time he caught me, we ended up missing a few minutes of the plot, because we started making out like high schoolers. I didn’t stop smiling all night.

We spent the next day exploring King’s Bay.

We started our day at the beach. We spent the morning soaking up the warm weather, barefoot on a blanket.

We built sand castles, and when it got too hot, we cooled off in the water.

We talked all morning, and all of the doubts I’d had on the drive over disappeared completely.

We went to a small deli for lunch, and Sam fought me over which one of us got to pay.

He ended up winning that fight, but I didn’t mind.

After lunch, he showed me around the main drag.

It was mostly little shops. There were a few antique stores and others that were dedicated to selling knickknacks.

I ended up buying a little cat made of seashells at one of the more touristy shops.

We were browsing a record store when his phone buzzed. I watched the way his eyes lit up before his fingers danced over the screen, typing out a reply.

“Anyone special?” I asked, fighting the immediate surge of jealousy in my gut. It was quickly replaced by curiosity. Did his eyes light up like that when I texted him?

“Axel,” he grunted out. “He wants me to bring you by the shop.”

“That’s your best friend, right?” I questioned, even though I knew the answer.

I’d seen the pictures of them on his social media accounts when I’d all but stalked him before the reunion.

He’d also told me a lot of stories about him in the weeks since we’d reconnected.

I didn’t even know why I asked. God, I was really bad at this.

Sam didn’t seem to care. He nodded. “Yeah. You wanna go check out his place?” His smile doubled when I nodded. “Just a warning. He’s probably gonna wanna hit the Rusty Nail or something. Drag us both out to get a bite to eat. And he’s gonna talk your ear off.”

“If that’s supposed to convince me to change my mind, it’s not working.” Axel would probably have a lot of stories about Sam, and I wanted to hear them.

“Damn,” he muttered. “What if I said I wanted you all to myself?”

There was a heat in his eyes that almost had me convinced that we didn’t need to meet his friend…

or do anything other than go right back to his place and lose time in his bed.

I took a deep breath. “Then I’d tell you that we have all night for you to have me all to yourself.

” It took a Herculean effort to get those words out, but I wanted more than just his body. “I want to meet your friend.”

Twenty minutes later, we were at Axel’s shop.

It was a small storefront with graffitied walls.

Axel looked the same as he did in all of the pictures—buzzed hair and dark brown eyes, a silver eyebrow piercing glinting against his light brown skin.

His body was covered in tattoos. The woman at the front desk also had a lot of tattoos and piercings. I felt boring in comparison.

“So this is him?” Axel asked after a few minutes of small talk with Sam. His dark eyes were fixed on me, and I shifted under the weight of his stare. “You gonna actually introduce us or be your rude ass self and just hope he does it himself?”

Sam flipped him off. “Justin, Axel. Axel, Justin. That’s Mandy at the front there.” The woman heard her name and nodded in our direction. Sam looked back at Axel. “Happy now?”

Axel shrugged. He had a shit-eating grin on his face, so big that it formed dimples in his cheeks. “Guess so. C’mon back.”

I didn’t know where we were going, but I followed Sam and Axel anyway. We ended up in a cubicle with art all over the place. I didn’t know where to look first. I listened to Sam and Axel chat while I looked around. “How much longer you gotta stick around?”

“Another hour. No more appointments, but might get a walk in,” Axel answered. There was a pause. “Unless you want some new ink? Could fit you in now.”

There was a beat of silence. I looked away from a line drawing of birds on a branch in time to see Sam shaking his head. “Not got anything I’m wanting right now.”

“What about you?” It took me a few moments to realize that Axel was talking to me. Even the fact that he was staring at me didn’t clue me in right away. “Justin? You want some ink?”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d thought about getting a tattoo a few times.

I even had a list of things I’d want, but the permanence and the idea of a needle poking me several thousand times had always kept me from pulling the trigger.

I was about to say no. I really was. “I wouldn’t know what to get. ”

That wasn’t no. All of the art around me was inspiring. There was also the fact that Sam’s tattoos were all so beautiful, and Axel was the one who had put them on him. If I was going to finally get something done, this would be the time.

“Tell me shit you like.”

And that was how, fifteen minutes later, I was laying shirtless on a white chair, fully reclined while Sam was shaving a patch of hair from my torso.

He’d taken the razor from Axel and claimed he was going to do it.

There was something intimate about the way his eyes locked on mine while he wiped my skin down and ran the razor over it.

I could feel heat settle at the base of my spine.

“Should I leave?” Axel asked, breaking through the moment. Apparently, the tension was high enough that he could feel it too. It was good to know it wasn’t entirely in my head.

“Nah man, you remember when you tried to let me use your tattoo gun?”

Axel laughed. “Still got that shitty ass tattoo.” I looked between them, and I guess I must have looked panicked, because Axel rested a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. Won’t let him near you with the tattoo gun. Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

“I might,” Sam commented wryly. He wiped down the now hairless patch of my torso again and laid down the razor. “All ready for you.”

Axel and Sam switched places and a minute later, Axel was passing me a mirror to check out the placement of the tattoo he’d drawn out for me.

It was just two simple sunflowers, one a little shorter than the other.

My mother had always called me and my sister her sunflowers, and it just seemed fitting.

It was one of my tattoo ideas I knew I’d never regret, so it seemed like a good one.

“You sure?” Axel questioned once I handed the mirror back to him. “Once I start, there’s no going back.”

Was I sure? No. Not really. “Let’s do it.”

Axel got started. It hurt less than I thought it would, and Axel and Sam kept me distracted during the parts that did hurt.

Mainly when he would get close to my ribs.

Sam held my hand through most of it, and Axel entertained me with stories about the Sam he knew.

The years I hadn’t been around for. It took almost an hour before we were done and he’d cleaned me up.

“Dinner?” Axel suggested as he cleaned up the area and I pulled my shirt back on over the bandaged ink.

“My treat,” Sam answered before I had a chance.

We went to a place called Dana’s Diner for dinner and then, just as Sam predicted, we found ourselves at a bar called The Rusty Nail. It reminded me of a less clean Timbers and Tallboys. Everything was sticky, but the band playing that night was good.

It was well after midnight when we finally made our way back to Sam’s. We fell into his bed and spent the rest of the night exploring one another’s bodies. Afterward, he helped me clean my new tattoo, and I fell asleep in his arms.

The next morning, I didn’t want to leave.

As much as I loved Gomillion, I didn’t want to go back.

It wasn’t that King’s Bay felt more like home or anything like that.

It didn’t. I loved the small town, but it was just a town to me.

It didn’t have the history and the ties that Gomillion did.

But it had one thing Gomillion didn’t. It had Sam.

And I didn’t want to leave him.

When I drove away, it felt like I was leaving a piece of myself back in King’s Bay.