Page 37 of Christmas Chemistry


Font Size:

I surveyed the room as inconspicuously as I could. Apparently, high school never truly ended, as everyone sectioned off into the safety of their former friend groups.

Ten years had demonstrably passed. I noticed receding hairlines and a few shaved skulls, feeling thankful for my still-thick head of hair. And I didn’t want to be a dick about it—since I was so conscious of my weight—but I took perverse pleasure from the fact that, while I’d been the largest teen in my high school, I’d thinned out a bit. There were at least two dozen guys here tonight with bigger bellies than mine.

Marley unwrapped a piece of candy from a dish in the middle of the table. “How do you want to play this?” she asked, popping the hard peppermint into her mouth. “At my reunion last year, we just went to The Landslide and took over the back room. A lot of us had stayed in Coleman Creek, so it wasn’t exactly a big deal. Mainly just catching up with the few folks who had moved away after graduation. I want to be a good wingman for you, James, but I’m not sure what to do. Do we just wait for people to come over and make small talk? Or find the people who were mean to you and start throwing punches?”

I laughed. “How about we get a drink?”

“Always a good idea,” Marley agreed. “It seems like a lot of folks in this room need a little liquid courage. This atmosphere is intense.”

She wasn’t wrong. Nervous faces littered the crowd. Men darting anxious glances, fidgeting with their ties. Women in picture perfect makeup and dresses, running palms across their mommy bellies.

These people had grown up wealthy, many of them from very prominent families. I imagined they were under enormous pressure to perform and produce in their adulthoods. There was a sense of power shifting in the room as it became clear who had “made it” in life and who hadn’t lived up to those expectations.

I had an epiphany.

As a teenager, I’d been an outsider, yearning to belong. But now, I felt only a deep sense of gratitude that I’d never been included in their world. Because it meant I wasn’t included in their competition now. The furtive glances and whispered gossip had nothing to do with me. I could not care less about scorekeeping and how I stacked up against people I’d never liked anyway.

“Hey, Marley,” I said, grinning at her like the Joker.

She cocked her head to the side, registering my expression. “Yes, James?” she asked archly.

“I just realized that I don’t give a fuck what these people think of me.” A lengthy breath spilled out from my lungs. “I don’t have a little group to talk to here. Not really. Because I was never part of this. And I’m not part of it now. It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, it’s funny you should mention that.” She tapped her index finger on her chin. “Because I don’t care what these people think of you either.”

It got easier after that. I’d accomplished my mission of holding my head up in this room. Anything else that happened would be gravy.

Marley and I went to the bar and grabbed two glasses of merlot. At the appetizer table, we filled a plate to share. I received a few more puzzled looks as we circled the room, similar to the one Nora had given me in the hallway. Once we’d returned to our table, Marley clinked our glasses together. “Cheers to you, James, for having zero figs to give about any of these folks.”

We each took a sip. It was excellent, and I had a fuzzy recollection of someone in my class whose family owned a winery. I glanced around again to discover more eyes on me, people turning their heads away quickly when I caught them staring.

Connor O’Malley and the rest of the jocks made up the largest group in the room, soft laughter coming from their corner. Someone in their pack—Jonas Wright, our football team’s star running back—looked over at me. I refused to turn away, forcing him to glance down first. This group had most likely been behind the puddin’ pie incident, but I meant what I’d said to Marley. I had no interest in re-litigating the past.

It took a few minutes to recognize Darby O’Hanlon at another table. I’d had a crush on the cute brunette who’d starred in all our school plays sophomore year. I’d thought I’d hidden it well, but someone had clued her in, and she’d shouted at me brutally across the crowded cafeteria, “Eww, James! Gross! Not in a million years!” That had been my last crush in high school. Now, Darby looked like a cookie-cutter bottle blonde, arm hooked around the attractive guy next to her with his nose buried in his phone. Like Jonas, she peered at me, and I met her gaze until she turned away.

“Do you think they want to say something to me?” I asked Marley. “Now that I’m here, I’m realizing it would be awkward as fuck for them to apologize. I don’t need it.”

Marley actually laughed out loud. “James—” she started, then chortled again, shaking her head.

“What?”

“These idiots have no idea.”

I glanced around again at the people in the room. A woman by the windows squinted at me. Another had her forehead scrunched as she tried not to stare. “What do you mean?”

“That’s why they’re all looking at you, champ. They’re wondering who the hell you are. Or maybe who I am.”

I gaped at her. “Not possible.”

“Not only is it possible, it’s happening.” She giggled as she shook her head. “You’re crooking your elbow to hold your glass so they can’t clock your badge. But they are absolutely trying to. They all want to know who this hot, dad-bod Jason Momoa-looking dude is who wandered into their reunion.”

Studying the room again, I acknowledged the truth of her assertion with astonishment. A man I recognized as our senior class president cast a furtive glance my way, gesturing toward me as he spoke to his tablemates. A woman who’d sat next to me every day in geometry for a year smiled shyly from the corner.

Jesus Christ. I’d been worried these people might be mean to me. Or embarrass me.

They didn’t even recognize me.

Marley’s eyes danced. “I love this for you,” she said. “Should you grab the microphone from the deejay and tell them who you are, followed by an ‘eff you very much?’ Or maybe we should just leave and they can wonder forever.”