The Reunion Trip

I hadn't been back to Garza in eleven years. That number sat in my head the whole drive, ticking along with the odometer. Forty-four years old, feed store manager, never married, and I was driving three hours to my hometown because a man I used to live next door to had sent me a message that said, "Remember the fair? Come see it with me."

Lamar. Forty-six now. Three years of my late twenties and early thirties spent next door to him, and I never once told him the truth, which was that I thought about him more than I thought about anyone. Two years after that, he took a job up in Amarillo and moved out over a single weekend, and that ended things for a decade.

The town hadn't changed much. Schaeffer's Feed & Seed still sat on the main street with the same faded sign I used to stare at from behind a register. The paint I helped put on that building had to be due for another coat by now. I remembered that summer I was thirty-one and Lamar was thirty-three, the two of us on ladders in the heat, painting the front of the store white. We quit at noon every day and drank iced tea on my porch. There was an afternoon, one afternoon, when he handed me the brush and our hands stayed together on the handle a beat too long. He looked at my mouth. I looked at his. Then Mrs. Sutter's dog started barking and we both laughed and stepped back like nothing had happened.

I thought about that afternoon the entire drive.

* * *

Sutter's Diner still had the same cracked vinyl booths. Lamar was already there when I came in, sitting with his back to the door like a man with no enemies in the world. He'd gone gray at the temples and he'd filled out some, and I felt something old and familiar stir in my chest.

"Hank Bronson," he said, standing up. "You look exactly the same."

"I do not. I've got forty-four years on me now and every one of them shows."

He laughed and we shook hands, which felt ridiculous, like shaking hands with a brother. We sat down and a waitress brought coffee before we even asked.

"Church fair still going?" I asked.

"Saturday. In the square, same as always." He stirred his coffee. "You remember how we used to watch it from your porch? We'd get a fan going and sit out there like two old men while the whole town baked."

"I remember you complaining about the heat every single year."

"And I remember you saying the same joke every single year, that the fair was the one day Garza got exciting." He grinned. "Some things don't change."

The waitress took our orders. Lamar got chicken fried steak, same as he always got. I watched him order it and felt like I was thirty-one again.

"So talk to me," he said. "Eleven years. You got a wife somewhere? Kids?"

"No. Never married. You?"

"Same." He turned his cup around on the saucer. "So why'd we lose touch, Hank? Because I've been asking myself that for a while now. We were good friends. I move three hours away and we just... nothing."

"You know why."

"Do I?"

"You got busy. I got busy. That's the story I tell myself anyway." I drank my coffee. It was bad coffee, and I was glad of it, because bad coffee meant the place hadn't changed either.

"That's the polite version," he said. "I remember that summer at the feed store. Painting. You remember it?"

My face went hot. "Sure."

"There was a day. You handed me the brush and..."

"Mrs. Sutter's dog barked," I said.

He laughed, but it was a careful laugh. "Yeah. The dog barked. And I went to Amarillo a couple of years later and I told myself it was about the job, and maybe it was, mostly. But I'll say this now, sitting here, because I'm forty-six years old and I'm tired of not saying things. I thought about you the whole time I was gone. Every place I lived."

I set my cup down slow. "Lamar."

"You don't have to say anything back. I just figured one of us ought to be brave this weekend."

The waitress brought our food and mercifully shut the whole thing down for a few minutes. We ate and talked about safe things. The feed store, my boss, his work with a land surveying company. But the brave thing sat on the table between us like a third plate, and neither of us cleared it away.

* * *

The Garza Motor Inn looked exactly as I remembered it, peeling paint and a neon sign that buzzed like it was arguing with itself. Lamar had booked us a room with two beds, and when we carried our bags in, he stopped just past the doorway and put his hand on my shoulder as he squeezed by.

It wasn't much of a touch. Half a second. His palm warm through my shirt.

It went through me like a current. I stood there holding my bag and felt my pulse bang away in my ears, and I tried my best to dismiss it. We were two grown men in a motel room in Garza, Texas. Men touch shoulders. It doesn't mean anything.

Except it had meant something to me for thirteen years.

"Room's small," Lamar said, dropping his bag on the far bed. "You mind?"

"It's fine. It's one night."

"One night," he said, and looked at me a moment longer than the words needed.

I set my bag down and busied myself with the window unit, cranking it on, listening to it rattle. Anything to keep my hands moving.

"Dinner at Sutter's?" he asked.

"We just ate at Sutter's."

"Lunch and dinner are different meals, Hank. You know this. You ran a feed store."

I laughed and sat on my bed. The mattress creaked the same way it had in 2013 when it was probably new. "Fine. Dinner at Sutter's. Then what, we sit on the porch and complain about the heat?"

"If they'll let us borrow a porch."

"Fair's tomorrow."

"Fair's tomorrow," he agreed. He sat across from me, elbows on his knees. "Hank. Can I ask you something and you answer it straight?"

"Probably."

"When I touched your shoulder just now. Did you feel it?"

I looked at the floor, then at him. He was waiting, patient like someone who'd waited over a decade already. "Yeah. I felt it."

"Good," he said. "That's all I needed to know for now." He stood up and stretched. "Come on. I'm starving and you owe me a dinner."

I followed him out, and the whole walk to the truck I was telling myself not to read anything into the word "for now." And doing a poor job of it.

We ate dinner at Sutter's again, which Lamar called madness and then paid for anyway. Afterward we walked the main street in the dark. Most of the stores were closed. Schaeffer's Feed & Seed still had its faded sign, and the loading dock in back still had the old cinder blocks for steps.

"Sit down," Lamar said, and pulled two beers out of his jacket. "Been carrying these since Amarillo."

"You planned this."

"I planned everything, Hank. Sit."

We sat on the dock with our boots hanging and drank. The night was warm and the bugs were loud. I told him about the store, the orders, the driver who quit in March. He told me about survey lines and a coworker who talked too much. Then he got quiet, and I knew a real question was coming.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You keep asking that."

"This one's different. How long? For you. Since anybody."

I looked at my bottle. "Four years. A little over."

"Four years." He said it flat, no pity in it. "That's a long stretch."

"Yeah, well. Work. Habit. You get out of practice and then you're embarrassed to be out of practice, so you stop trying altogether. It's a real fun loop."

"I know the loop. For me it's been six. Since Mark and I ended."

I turned to look at him. "Six years?"

"Three of them were fine. Last three I just stopped. Moved back this direction last spring for the job. Started thinking about Garza. About you."

"You could've called."

"So could you."

I laughed and drank. He was right and we both knew it. We sat there a while, finishing our beers, and it was the same easy quiet we used to have on my porch, only heavier now, because we'd both said things out loud.

"Okay," he said finally. "Straight answer time. Are you glad you came on this trip?"

"Yeah. I am."

"Good." He hopped off the dock. "Come on, I want to see if the motel pool still has that plastic alligator in it."

"It never had an alligator."

"Then I want to see if it doesn't have one."

* * *

Back at the room, I was sitting on my bed unlacing my boots when Lamar came out of the bathroom. He crossed the small space and stopped in front of me. "Can I kiss you?" he said. I nodded, and his hand came up to my jaw and his mouth was on mine and my brain just stopped.

I pulled back. Not far. Two inches. Enough to breathe.

"Lamar, wait."

"Okay." He stayed right where he was. "Tell me to stop and I stop. I mean that."

I was looking at his mouth. The gray at his temples was close enough to see every strand. "I'm not saying stop. I'm saying I need a second. It's been four years and