Page 2 of College Town

He doesn’t know, honestly, why she’s still here. In Eastman. In this college town with its odd mix of farmers and students. She’s not stuck, like he is; she could go somewhere bigger, somewhere as fabulous as she is.

But she sips her Americano and pins him with a look, and says, “Actually, I’m not here just for the coffee.”

“Aw. You’re here for my pretty face?”

“No.” She smiles, but small and tight, a sudden tension stealing over her features, and it sets a warning siren to spinning distantly in the back of his head.

He pauses with his cookie in front of his mouth. Slowly lowers it back to its napkin. “Okay.”

She hesitates a moment, trailing her nails down the side of her cup, a soft scratching sound. It’s not like her to waver, and it immediately sets his teeth on edge.

“What?”

She starts to bite her lip, white teeth poised above it, a girlhood habit he knows she’s tried to outgrow. She wins the battle, and lifts her gaze, a quick flicker up through her lashes, expression smooth, but braced for his reaction.

His stomach sinks.

Matter-of-factly, she says, “Our class reunion is in December.”

He knows that. Has known it for months – for almost a year, when the email hit his inbox with an innocuous ping, and then the bottom dropped out of his stomach. That little innocent tagline sitting at the top of his unread Old Navy promotions and Dell customer service surveys:It’s the Big Two-Oh, Eastman Raiders!

He was walking down the sidewalk, after a quick Seven-Eleven run to grab more Equal packets for the tables, mindlessly scrolling, and the email leaped off his phone, grabbed him by the throat, and shocked his heart into a wonky two-step. He halted, slumped sideways against the rough brick of the wall, actually touched the fingertips of his free hand to his chest and felt the jackrabbit hitch beneath his breastbone.

Had it really been twenty years? Twenty? Since he plucked the mortarboard off his head, turned it in his hands, and wished it had felt like a victory, instead of the end of something?

Yeah, it had. That tracked. He was thirty-seven, so the math added up.

But still.Twenty years. Twenty years in which, he realized, standing on the sidewalk with his pulse throbbing in his throat, he hadn’t moved on even a little bit. Still caught in an ugly, childish hope, burdened by the defeat of knowing it was a hope that could never be realized.

He gave himself a solid thirty seconds to grieve. Then he thumbed the email into the trash, pocketed his phone, and pushed off the wall. Love wasn’t real – not the kind he’d thought he’d been in back then. And nobody really went to their reunions, save cheerleaders and quarterbacks.

So he knows about the reunion, but he’s tried very hard not to think about it.

He’s shocked it’s Dana bringing it up, of all people, considering she knows the exact shape and flavor of the bitterness that sat on his tongue on graduation day.

He sits back in his chair and folds his arms. “What about it?”

Her brows jump.Calm down. “You know how Harmony is the president of the Reunion Committee?”

“One.” He lifts a finger from the crook of his arm without unfolding. “Why the fuck is there a ‘Reunion Committee?’ And two: how could I possibly have known Harmony was the president?”

“Uh, maybe because Harmony is our friend?”

He stares at her, unblinking.

“Maybe because she sends out, like, weekly update emails about her kids, and her pottery class, and her, frickin’ new favorite HGTV show?”

He shrugs. “I don’t check my email,” he lies.

Dana makes a face, because she knows he’s lying, but doesn’t call him on it. Instead, she does something much worse. She takes a deep breath and says, “You know how her sister’s pregnant? The sister who lives in North Dakota?”

Before Lawson can ask what the hell that has to do with their reunion, he realizes where this is headed, and his stomach locks up hard, like the cash register when he can’t get the key to work. He sets the cookie down for good, and shoves it over to her side of the table. Folds his arms, and says, “No.”

She lifts a hand and says, “Now, hold on. Let me finish.”

“No.”

“Lawson.”

---