Page 65 of Most Likely to Match
Beside me, Dean is relaxed, a half smile softening his already soft mouth. He’s easy with anyone who comes up to chat with us, talking about Core Cupid or London, Matt and Rick. Even Lauren S., who cautiously approaches us with her girlfriend’s hand clasped tightly in hers, is greeted with a smile, with kindness.
I could count on two hands the number of words I’ve contributed to conversations, and a niggling worry scares me that this is a fall back into bad habits, of keeping quiet when I should speak up. But I also love to watch him, hear him speak. He’s lovely and charming; exactly like the boy I once knew but entirely different somehow.
“How are you doing?” With the slideshow rolling, the music isn’t quite as loud now, so he doesn’t have to project his voice. But he still leans in enough that if I close my eyes and imagine hard enough, the suggestion of his lips is there, silk against my shoulder.
“Great.” I smile. Hold up my cup of cheap room-temperature sparkling wine.
Dean scowls at the cup, gently prying it from my grasp.
I whimper. “That’s my emotional support cup.”
He turns to dump the cup in the garbage. “Chloe,” he says, his voice firm. “I—”
“Good evening, everyone.” Lauren G.’s voice cuts through auditorium, forcing Dean to turn back to the stage, his lips pressed together in a tense line.
She leads us through a land acknowledgment, something I never experienced on my high school campus when I was a student. Then she runs through the admin of things like fire exits and off-limits areas and thanks the reunion committee. Then Lauren’s teacher energy comes fully online, creating excitement for events planned tonight where there previously were none. There are alumni bingo cards we can pick up from the check-in table, three guided tours of the school— which seems kind of pointless, but maybe I’m a reunion humbug— and a silent auction set up along the back wall to raise money for programs for current Don Head students.
“And,” she says with a flourish, “there’s a video booth confessional where you can leave messages for your fellow alums.”
Folks clap and the music returns to its previous volume. A school friend of Dean’s— a woman with blue hair that I don’t recognize— chats with him, and now that I have lost my emotional support cup and my human anchor, I give myself permission to drift.
The memory lane slideshow ends, and confessional booth videos begin playing on the screen. If there’s accompanying sound, the organizers don’t bother turning the music off to hear it, but the general gist of it looks like happy people with happy faces saying happy things.
Despite attempting to converse with other people, my eyes keep wandering back to Dean. He’s moved on from his conversation with the blue-haired woman— whose name is Laura, I think— and is lost in a group of vaguely familiar men. Dean didn’t want to come to this; I know he didn’t. Yet he seems so completely at ease. As if he doesn’t care what any of these people think. Not in an irreverent way. He just simply doesn’t need them, their approval, their opinions, their concern.
I’m envious.
“Have you gone on a tour yet?” Lauren G. bounds up to me, slipping her arm through mine before I have a chance to answer her.
“The school tour? No.” She gazes at me expectantly. “Do you want to go?” I ask. “Don’t you work here?”
She shrugs, smiling. “It’s kind of fun. Plus it’s quieter than in here.” The music cuts out again. “Sorry about the speakers, though,” she says with a wobbly smile.
She’s not wrong about the quiet, so I let her drag me to the tour group meeting in the foyer. The tour guide, a former student council treasurer, points out places like “This is where crickets were released in the school for the twelfth-grade prank,” and “This is where the vice principal tackled a student streaking for theirdifferentsenior prank.” He points out the music classroom, where Mr. Chatterjee—who retired two years ago— taught for fifty years. We climb a stairwell where a student in our graduating class almost started a fire from smoking a cigarette indoors.
The hallway on the second floor has been set up like a museum, with lockers opened and photographs of us, our graduating class taped inside. Osprey backpacks and Ugg boots and those overpriced goose down jackets are stuffed inside. Music from a hidden speaker plays a Rihanna song that bleeds into a Maroon 5 song.
“Wow.” I stop at the entrance to the hallway. “This is incredible.”
Lauren grins and points to a photo in one of the lockers.
“Is that us?” It was taken from the yearbook. Lauren and I sitting on the bleachers, Bristol board signs in our hands that readGoandDucks. It must be tenth or eleventh grade, though I don’t recall the specific game.
“It’s really great,” Lauren says, her voice high and a little loud. “That you and Dean are friends.”
I straighten from where I was bent over the photo, let my hand drop from the door. The rest of the tour has moved up the hall a bit, though they’re moving slowly. I start toward them again.
“Yeah.” I don’t know what else to say about it. I can’t tell her that we’re not “just friends,” that we’re so much more. It’s not right to tellLauren things about Dean. Any information she gets has to come from him. I didn’t do anything to protect him when we were kids, and even if she’s not a threat any longer, I won’t fail at that now.
“I, um…” She loops her arm around mine again, her other hand resting gently on her belly. “I don’t know how to say I’m sorry for what I did to him.” From the corner of my eye, she glances at me, but I don’t turn. “And to you.”
I stop and she stops with me. “Me?”
Lauren’s face is heat-exhaustion levels of pink. “I stole your phone, Chloe. I betrayed your trust. On top of what I did to Dean.”
“It was pretty fucked up,” I say.
“I know,” she says quietly. “When I saw you guys at the diner, I honestly didn’t even realize it was him.” She shakes her head. “So that made things worse.”
