Class Reunion

“Jo?” The voice behind me inquired timidly. Slugging my Jamison I turned, expecting to find someone I was avoiding from the funeral. 

Instead, tucking his Kurt Cobain shag behind his ear with the same hunched-over body language I remembered from high school, it was him. He’d become quite handsome, but somehow still looked like he was trying to shrink into a ball so he could roll into the nearest dark corner. 

I was speechless. 

“Oh my god, you don’t know who I am,” the horror in his eyes was pitiful. 

“No, no, don’t be silly, sit.” I patted the stool beside me and signaled to the bartender to bring two more tiny glasses of alcohol. 

This was a blast from the past I was not expecting on this 36-hour trip “home” to say goodbye to my aunt.

After high school, I Irish goodbyed my existence. My home life went to the bottom of hell in a twisted wicker hand basket so I lit it all on fire and fled. 

I never looked back. Anyone I wanted to see, I saw. The important people had my number or knew where to find me, and the persistent were rewarded with the evolution of social media. 

I hadn’t thought about him in years, the sweet face that greeted me in Homeroom with an occasional “extra” coffee or doughnut. Mr. Reliable with a pocket full of Tic Tacs and a seemingly endless number of sweaters knitted by his grandmother. 

He drove me home from parties when I had one or seven too many tequila shots, and saved me from many drunken mistakes with predatory douchebags. I don’t remember how, I can’t remember why, but he was always there when I needed him. 

Then I threw a Molotov cocktail into the center of my 17-year-old life and vanished like a Las Vegas illusionist. 

“How have you been?” I asked, downing my shot and flashing a smile at the cutie with the full sleeve of tattoos behind the bar for another. 

“Good,” he said, clearly locked and loaded with more. “So, what happened to you? You just disappeared.” His eyes made something inside me droop like Charlie Brown’s shoulders, and a weird shame ghost whispered unintelligibly in my ear. 

“Oh, you know, my life blew up and I ran,” I tried to joke, hoping to change the subject. 

“I didn’t know where you went,” he looked confused, annoyed, sad? I did not understand the emotion on his face, I just knew it made me feel like a monster. 

“I’m on all the socials, you know,” I winked.

“I figured you didn’t want me to find you, so I didn’t,” he sipped his shot like he was rationing it in an emergency situation. 

I quickly ran back through the last couple years of high school, searching for exactly which classic asshole move I had played on him. Then I remembered the one night I had locked away, deep in the recesses of my mind. It was shoved in the file between the friend’s cat I lost while housesitting and the time I totaled my aunt’s truck and lied about it. 

We were sitting in his clown car one night, maybe after a party or theater rehearsal, and I remember the windows were fogged up like we’d slept there on a chilly camping trip. I was laughing, and then suddenly he was kissing me. Cheeks so soft and warm, his hands respectfully resting on the center console. 

Feeling the need to clear the air, I leaned in as if to tell him a secret just as my third shot arrived. 

“You kissed me, I had forgotten about that,” I winked. 

Somehow I thought this was what he was looking for, yet his face looked even more lost and forlorn than before. 

“I knew I was insignificant, but Jesus, Jo,” he shook his head as he slammed the rest of his shot. 

The bartender, clearly reading the room, replenished his shot without being asked. 

“I don’t think you understand how terrible everything was back then,” I paused, “but I would never have done anything to intentionally hurt you…if that’s what you are thinking.”

“Do you have any idea how long it took me to work up the nerve to kiss you? Then you were gone, and I felt disposable. You threw me away like trash.” 

Was that what happened? I had never thought about it, and yes, maybe that was part of the problem.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said earnestly, chewing the inside of my lower lip in awkward discomfort. 

I could see him planning his next sentence very carefully. It was as if he had spent the last several years plotting this conversation, and wanted to be sure he was following the script. 

Looking into his sad eyes it hit me, oh my god, I’m his revenge person. I’m the person he fantasizes about devastating at class reunions (not that I’ve ever been to one), stepping out of a sports car with a supermodel on his arm, pockets stuffed with cash, and zero fucks to give. He’d sashay past me and I’d look at him with puppy dog eyes, begging him for a dance, while he dismissed me with a crass, “Snooze you loose, babe.”

I have to admit I was a little flattered. As awful as this situation was, I had never envisioned myself as someone’s “what if.” Very sweet, yet also incredibly sad. 

I stood from my stool and settled between his knees, my hands on his thighs. I looked deep into his eyes, smiled, and kissed him. Just like before, his hands didn’t move, and he froze like a squirrel for fear I’d change my mind and run. I grabbed his face and kissed him deeply, passionately, a punctuation mark on a long unturned last page of a book. 

He smiled. 

“So,” I whispered into his ear, “how are we going to remedy this?”