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We exit the truck and circle the building to the outside patio where the reunion is being held. As we get close, we hear a lot of talking and laughing. I look at Allyssa. “How many people are here?”
“I think most of the class RSVP’d.”
“Great.”
“How many girls in my class did you date?”
“I don’t know.”
“Too many to keep track of?”
I scowl. “No. I mostly dated girls in my class or the one below me. Why would I date girls from your class? You were babies to me.”
“Wow. I’m pretty sure Trish Barton wasn’t a baby.”
I smiled. “Oh yeah. Trish. I forgot about her.”
“No way.”
“Temporarily.” I nod. “Trish. I wonder if she’s here.”
Allyssa takes my arm. “No roving eyes, sweetheart. Tonight, you’re with me.”
I’m okay with that.
We stop at the table near the entrance and are greeted by a woman I don’t recognize, but her name tag says, Debbie S. She hugs Allyssa and hands her a name tag, then looks at me.
“Link?”
I nod and Allyssa takes my arm. “It took me a while to convince him to come.”
Debbie looks at us for a moment. “Are you two together?”
Allyssa pats my chest, then flashes her pink plastic ring. “Yeah. We’re getting married in the spring.”
Debbie isn’t sure what to make of Allyssa’s ring, so I decide to help her out. “I just proposed and silly me, the ring is too big. It’s being sized. This is a placeholder.”
Allyssa looks at the ring. “Isn’t he so sweet?”
Debbie laughs. “Adorable.” She fills my name in on a blank name card, then hands it to me. “Here you go.”
I nod and stick it to my shirt, then we go into the room. Allyssa leans into my ear. “Good job. I think she bought it.”
“I didn’t want her to think I’m a cheapskate.”
I recognize about half the people who come up to us, but they all seem to know who I am. I was on the football team and basically did everything I could to draw attention to myself as the school rebel, so it makes sense, I guess. I shake countless hands and get kissed on the cheek more times than a six-year-old kid at a Sunday evening potluck. Allyssa answers all the questions and I wonder if she’ll be able to keep it all straight. But no one seems to pick up on the fact it’s all made up on the spot.
We find a quiet corner and watch the twenty-eight-year-old adults pretend that no time has passed since they graduated. There’s a lot of talk of marriage and kids. But the highlight of the event seems to be that Link and Allyssa are engaged.
When Allyssa nudges me, I look at her and she motions across the room.
“There she is.”
“Who?”
“Trish Barton.”
I look in the direction Allyssa indicates and see the woman I’d had a tortuous summer fling with when I was seventeen. We fought about everything, but couldn’t seem to stay away from each other. It finally ended right before my senior year started, when she fell for the new foreign exchange student from Istanbul. To this day, I don’t know if I was happy or sad that it ended.
