Page 8 of Sam & Justin (Gomillion High Reunion #4)

“Then, do you come back here often?”

The smile slid off his face, and his eyes darkened.

I’d really stepped in it, but I didn’t exactly know why that was.

I wiped my hands off on my slacks and tried to think of a way to dial back the topic.

There was a heavy silence settling over us, one of those awkward types that felt almost palpable.

I was grateful when someone came over to ask me to cover Vanessa at registration for a few minutes. Judging by the look on Sam’s face, he was glad for the out too.

I followed the student volunteer to the check in desk. “Thank you so much,” Vanessa gushed the moment she saw me. “I have to take a leak, and we still have about fifteen people who haven’t checked in.”

“And you don’t think they,” I indicated the two volunteers who were working the desk with her, “could handle that?”

“Not if too many came at once.”

I couldn’t begrudge her the concern. We both wanted everything to go perfectly for this reunion.

We were the first class that started at Gomillion to get their twentieth reunion, and everyone would remember it for better or for worse.

I couldn’t stand the idea of people remembering it for worse.

Of course, ten minutes later when she returned and no one had come to the desk, I changed my mind.

I could, in fact, begrudge her concern. But I just accepted her gratitude and went back into the room.

I spotted Sam immediately. He was still at the bar, leaning against it and looking out on all of our former classmates.

Everyone else was gathered in small groups, talking while they had cocktails.

He looked out of place, and while I could see several of my friends, I found myself walking back toward him.

He looked up at me when I was just a few paces away, and I saw the smile form on his lips instantly. “Didn’t know if you’d come back,” he said after a beat.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He thought for a moment. “Because things were getting a little awkward.”

Oh, so he’d felt it too. Strangely, having it called out didn’t make that feeling return. Usually, any time someone called awkwardness out, it returned ten times over. It was like summoning Beetlejuice or something.

“I’m bad at small talk,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to do it. I never have.”

“Me either. Never saw the point.”

The easy way he admitted it made me relax. It felt like he was taking some of the pressure off of me, taking some of the blame for himself. It was halving a burden I didn’t even need to carry. “So, if we’re not going to make small talk, what are we going to talk about?”

Sam cocked his head in thought. Apparently, he was struggling with the answer to that question as much as I was. There was a beat of silence before he spoke again. “What’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you since graduation?”

I was pretty sure that fell under small talk, but at least it was better than asking why he hadn’t come back to Gomillion much since graduation.

That had definitely put a damper on the conversation earlier.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of interesting tales to share.

My life since graduation had primarily been work.

I hadn’t traveled. I hadn’t seen the world.

I’d gone to a college barely two hours away from Gomillion, and then I’d moved back home and settled here.

“Honestly?” He nodded at the question. “I haven’t done much that most people would find interesting.”

“And what do you think most people would find interesting?”

I thought his question over. What would most people find interesting?

Probably things like travel or torrid love affairs with foreign dignitaries.

I snorted at my own thoughts, because where would someone even find a foreign dignitary in a place like Gomillion?

Whatever someone might find interesting, I hadn’t done it.

But he was still looking at me with those stunning gray eyes of his, and I knew I had to answer.

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “Probably travel? Fall in love with someone completely inappropriate? Write a book?”

He let out a bark of laughter that caused the person standing nearest to us at the bar to turn and give us a strange look.

Maybe they’d never heard him laugh in high school.

I’d spent time with him back then, and it was a rare enough occurrence that it did something to my stomach now.

“You realize I’ve only done one of those things, right? ”

“Let me guess,” I started, tapping my chin in thought. “You wrote the great American novel.”

“You tutored me in high school,” Sam reminded me. “You know damn well I didn’t write any kind of novel. No, I traveled.”

“Yeah? Where to?”

“Which time?”

Well damn. He’d traveled to more than one place, and the furthest I’d ever gone was Myrtle Beach. And that was only twice. “Your favorite trip,” I decided.

“That would probably be the time me and my best friend, Axel, took our bikes straight down the coast. All the way down to Florida. Wasn’t anything waiting for us at the end, just wanted to say we did it.

” He was smiling again, and I could see the chip on his front tooth.

There was something endearing about the image, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Maybe it was just the fact that while so much had changed with him, that hadn’t.

“Wasn’t even anything special about the trip.

Me and my ex-husband had already gone to a few beaches, and King’s Bay is on the coast, so it wasn’t that. ”

“Ex-husband?” My cyberstalking had told me he was divorced.

It had also told me that he was interested in men, but for some reason, hearing him say it out loud was different.

I probably shouldn’t have questioned it, because his eyes narrowed.

His shoulders tensed. Damn, he probably thought I was about to make some homophobic comment with the question.

I had to dial it back. “I can’t imagine some guy having you and letting you walk away. ”

Too far back. Oh god, that was too far back.

At least it made his shoulders relax, but he was looking at me differently now. His eyes moved over me again, and I could see some appreciation in them. My face felt hot again, and I was once more cursing how easily I blushed. “Really?”

Was it possible to spontaneously combust? Because I felt like I was about to spontaneously combust.

I was never more grateful for an interruption than I was the minute Theo Brooks came over and tapped me on the shoulder. I could have kissed his feet with how grateful I was, up until the moment he spoke. “I think we have a problem.”

“Give me a minute?” I asked Sam. He nodded, and I turned my full attention to Theo. A problem was the last thing I needed at this reunion. “What’s wrong?”

“Remember how I was supposed to keep track of the cards for the music trivia game?” I nodded. “I may have misplaced them.”

Fuck. That was the next activity. Student servers were already starting to pass around the canapes.

That left us with two hours to either find the cards I’d meticulously laid out and printed for the trivia game or come up with an alternative solution.

I drew in a deep breath, because I could not freak out right now.

“Okay, we can find them.” We could. That was the best option.

That was the only option, even though I was already coming up with seventeen backup plans.

“At least we still have the pens, right?”

Theo looked down at his shoes.

“Theo!”

“Everything okay?” Justin asked from behind me.

I offered him what I hoped was a passable attempt at a grin.

“It will be.” I turned back to Theo. “It will be,” I reassured him, though my voice was sounding increasingly manic to my own ears.

I drew in another deep breath and tried to think calming thoughts.

Things like warm sand under my toes and the feeling of falling asleep reading a good book.

It wasn’t working. “Okay, we need to find the cards. And the pens. Where do you remember having them last?”

Theo winced and carded his fingers through his hair. “If I remembered that, they wouldn’t be lost. Sorry, Kirkwood.”

I bit back a curse. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that this was just another one of Rachel’s moments in the office.

It was easier to think of it like that, because I was in control there.

I might have been her personal assistant, but I was the one that was always taking charge.

“Okay, Theo, go see if Vanessa’s seen them laying around.

I’ll check the supply room. Meet back here in fifteen minutes, no matter what the outcome.

If we haven’t found them, I think I have the design saved in my email.

I can ask Vanessa if we can print more from her office.

” They would just be flimsy alternatives instead of the nice cardstock the real ones were printed on.

Theo nodded, and he took off. I made it one step before I felt Sam’s hand on my shoulder. “Need help?”

“I think I might.”

He nodded and followed me to the supply room.

It was packed full of things for the event: signs for tomorrow’s tour and alumni basketball game, boxes of yearbooks, pictures that hadn’t made it onto the wall, decorations for the prom.

This might have been an impossible task.

I could feel my breathing getting uneven, and my heart racing in my chest.

“You start over there,” Sam ordered, his voice breaking through my panic, “and take a few deep breaths. You already have a workable backup plan if you don’t find these things, right?”

Right.

His reminder helped, and I moved to the corner he indicated.

I watched as he went to the opposite side of the closet, and we began rifling through the boxes.

Ten minutes later, the cards were nowhere to be found.

I wanted to keep looking, but Sam reminded me that we were supposed to meet Theo to see if he’d had any luck.

I really hoped he had.

Theo was waiting at the bar when we returned, and I couldn’t tell if he’d had any luck by the expression on his face.

The panic was starting again, but Sam? He was oozing competence and confidence as he strode over to Theo.

I followed after him, trying to turn my shallow panicked breaths into deep calming ones.

It wasn’t working. “Any luck?” Sam asked, completely taking over my role in this whole ordeal.

Maybe he missed his calling in high school and should have been class president.

“Vanessa had them in her office,” Theo reported. “Someone found them in the boy’s bathroom yesterday and turned them in to her.”

The boy’s bathroom? I laughed. How was it possible that we’d gone through all of that and he’d just left them lying around.

I had so many questions, but Theo was already distracted and looking elsewhere.

I would have to ask him later. I thanked him for his help and released him back into the wilds of the reunion.

By the time I was done, Sam had another mojito in his hand and a spicy margarita on the bar, waiting for me.

I thanked him, and we fell back into an easy conversation, one that kept going all through canapes.

I didn’t realize how long I’d been talking to him until Vanessa came over to drag me away.

It was time for the other icebreaker games, and I was supposed to be leading the next activity.

I left my mostly finished cocktail on the bar and followed Vanessa to the front of the gym, where we’d set up a podium.

“You seem to be hitting it off with him,” Vanessa whispered as we walked, bumping her shoulder playfully into mine.

“I tutored him in high school,” I explained with a shrug. That didn’t explain why my face was suddenly flushing. Vanessa gave me a knowing grin, and I suddenly felt a need to defend myself. “We were just catching up.”

“Yeah, your face is saying that,” she teased.

Unfortunately, that only made me blush brighter.

“Sh-shut up,” I stammered out before I picked up my pace.

I wanted to get this show on the road, if only because it meant that I wouldn’t have to put up with more of Vanessa’s teasing.

I did not need her calling me out on a childhood crush.

Especially not when that childhood crush was threatening to rear its ugly head twenty years later.

Was it my fault that he’d grown up hot?