Tragically, all he finds is a deeply ingrained, hard-earned sense of the rules of Midwestern politeness. This is why what comes out of his mouth is a jovial, if still slightly too loud, “Long time, man! How’ve you been?”
It’s a stupid, useless question. It’s been more than a decade since he’s laid eyes on this man. They’d both beenboys: on the cusp of adulthood but still grasping for it, their fingers not quite catching the edge.
But it’s still the only thing he can think of to say. He can’t very well go with, “You seem extremely not dead! I, for one, think that’s neat,” or, “I want you to know I haven’t stalked you on social media at all, which I think shows a lot of restraint, unless you acknowledge the reality that Iwouldhave stalked you if your accounts were not private, which they are. Can you tell me what you’ve been up to and whether or not it aligns with what I’ve imagined, when I’ve allowed myself to imagine what your life might be like now?” It would be weird, for one thing, and for another Sam doesn’tdostuff like that. It’s the better part of dignity not to, and, honestly, only one person in his whole life has ever left him twitterpated enough to ramble on like that, like an overwhelmed teenager with a crush.
That person clears his throat, and shrugs, and drops his gaze down to the counter. “Oh, I’ve been, uh…” Jake laughs, lightly and humorlessly, and, without looking up, says, “You ever see that meme? How does it go—something like, ‘You know a Midwesterner is having the worst day of their life when you ask them how it’s going and they say, ‘It’s going?’”
“Ah,” Sam says, sympathy creeping over him in spite of himself. “I gather it’s going, then?”
“Gone, actually,” Jake mutters, and then looks up, and offers Sam what looks like a fairly forced smile. “Sorry, that’s nothing. Just, ah, weird to see you. Good? Weird. Hi.”
“Hi,” Sam says slowly, wishing suddenly but profoundly that he could go stick his head into the sink full of clean water in the dish pit. “Good and weird to…see you, too.”
“Right,” Jake says faintly. “Right.”
Again, Sam finds they are staring at each other. This time he’s able to absorb some details; when they did this a few minutes ago, the only thing Sam retained was,OH MY GOD YES THAT REALLY HONESTLY IS JAKE ACTUAL THOMPSON, the truth of it blaring loud in his mind like an alarm.
Now, with marginally more of a grip, he’s able to take in things he missed the first time. Jake is—older, obviously, of course he is, they both are. So his structures and angles have changed a little, rounded cheeks hollowing down into a slightly narrower face than Sam remembers. His chestnut brown hair is cut shorter, and has a looser, more matte, less gelled finish now than it did when he was in high school. He wears round-rimmed glasses these days, which is a surprise, and carries a cane, which isn’t. It would have been more surprising if hewasn’tcarrying a cane, and the one he’s got makes the ghost of a smile tug briefly at the corners of Sam’s mouth; it’s covered in stickers, the way his water bottles and devices and the bumper of his crappy teen jalopy always used to be.
But there’s something…different about Jake. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that a lot is different about him, but they’re all expected things, normal things, except for one. It’s in his eyes, Sam realizes, and the set of his shoulders, the twist of his mouth—something that had shimmered once is now barely glimmering, a hint of shine in the darkness.
Sam cannot, obviously, say this. “What happened to your effervescent sparkle, my guy? You misplace yourjoie de vivre somewhere?” would be unhelpful.
Jake clears his throat, looks away again, and says, “So, uh. You work here, I’m guessing? Unless I’m, like, interrupting youin the middle of some kind of bizarre, complicated con job—” He chokes himself off, eyes bugging behind his glasses, and then hastily corrects, “Not that I’m suggesting that you would be doing something like that! I wasn’t?—”
“Chill, man, it’s all good,” Sam says, lifting a hand, amused in spite of himself. This, at least, is familiar. Jake was often one little inconvenience or badly landed joke away from tilting into a frenetic verbal tap dance, as though throwing enough new syllables at a problem would make it go away. “And yeah, I work here. I run it, actually, although it’s kinda a trial period situation, for now. It’s my family’s place.”
For some reason, this makes Jake look at him as though Sam’s not only grown a second head, but one from an entirely nonhuman species. Housefly, maybe, or anaconda. After a long second, blinking hard on it, Jake says, “No it’s not.”
This, admittedly, throws Sam for a proverbial loop. “Yes it…is,” he says, his brow furrowing as he watches Jake’s face crease into a mulish expression identical to the one he sometimes wore as a teen.
“No,” Jake says sharply, the old light seeming to flare in his eyes if only in annoyance, “I know for afactthat David and Mara didn’t quit the medical profession to start adeli, they’re the scariest doctors I’ve ever met, it makes no sense! And—” He looks wildly around him, mutters something under his breath that sounds like, “God help me, there’s not even anybrandingin here,” and then his gaze seems to land.
Jake stalks over to the wall of photos that’s practically required at an old-school deli like this and points, with the flair of the high school drama student, at one in the center. Sam squints at it; it’s from the early seventies, when the sign had last been updated. With his finger hovering over the sign, Jake intones, “Silverman,” and then, turning to point at Sam, “Adelson! So! Check and mate, I think you’ll have to agree!”
Sam is torn. On the one hand, this is…odd, even for Jake, who always was a little odd, in a fun, distracting sort of way. What does he care who owns this deli? On the other hand, Sam’s more than a little touched that Jake’s remembered his parents’ names all these years. He’s even a little pleased Jake’s rememberedhislast name, an upsetting realization he files away to review later, at a better time.
So he shrugs, and says, “It’s, uh, my aunt’s place? For now, anyway; hopefully, mine soon. She’s Deb Silverman, and my mom was a Silverman, too, before she married my dad.”
“So you’re…here,” Jake says, staring at him. “In this building. Like. Every day? It’s not just that you have, uh, specific shifts or whatever, you’rerunningthe place. I mean. You’re probably a pretty regular visitor, right?”
“I live in the apartment upstairs,” Sam says, cocking his head slightly in surprise at this reaction. “So less a visitor than a…resident? But, yeah, I’d say I’m here pretty regularly regardless.”
This is neutral information, strictly the facts, but Jake cringes so drastically it changes his whole face. “Oh my God, I have to go,” he says, and before Sam can even reply, he’s turned on his heel and power-walked right out the front door.
Sam blinks, startled, after him. He’s not sure what part of that conversation he should attempt to parse first; actually, he’s not even sure he has the necessary mental equipment to parse it at all. When he’d been a teenager, being around Jake had often made him feel as though a giant was wandering across his mental landscape in steel-toed boots, gleefully kicking at particularly load-bearing areas and things he had, up until that point, been certain of. But, in retrospect, Sam had chalked that up to a side effect ofbeing a teenager. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to him that the problem would persist into adulthood, if only and specifically with this one man.
Of course, Sam hadn’t imagined he’d ever get the opportunity to test it out. Until five minutes ago, Jake was as much a part of the past as VCRs and Sam’s long-dead Digipet. Even in his wildest imaginings, the embarrassing, maudlin nights where he was maybe a little overserved at one of the West Sixth Street bars and let himself consider What Happened To Jake, Sam never imagined them meeting again. It had seemed so unlikely as to be unworthy of the effort; surely if Jake ever did see Sam out anywhere, he’d hurriedly turn the other way and pretend not to have seen him, or, if there was no escape, refuse to talk to him.
God, Jaketalkedto him. He talked to him like…well, not like he’d talked when they were teenagers, exactly, it was more stilted and panicky than that, butstill. He talked! He didn’t say, “Sam Adelson, I spit upon thee and upon this deli, and curse you for all your days.” Admittedly, that was probably because he wasn’t, say, a medieval witch, but it was a better conversation than Sam had ever dared to hope for.
“You…good?” Joey asks, sidling over in a way that they obviously mean to indicate they have only just returned, but in fact demonstrates that they stood and shamelessly watched the whole thing play out. Probably the whole staff did, carefully positioned in long-since-perfected spots in the kitchen that allow for overhearing without being seen. Testing this theory, Sam jerks his shoulder like he’s planning to turn around, and sighs when he’s rewarded with the scuttling sound of everyone scurrying back to their more usual spots.
Still. “Yeah,” Sam says, and is surprised to find he means it for the first time all week when he adds: “I’m good.”
And he is good. He spends the afternoon and early evening buoyed, a lightness in his step that’s a little unfamiliar. Sure, it was a weird conversation. Sam can acknowledge that. But to have had any conversation at all, even an odd one, feelswonderfully like closure. Even if he never sees Jake again, which he has to imagine he won’t, something sits easier in him to know their story now technically ends on a slightly different note.
Except that five hours later, as they’re preparing to close, Sam is wrapping up an unusually productive run of paperwork when he hears a bit of a commotion through his closed office door. Last he checked the deli was still stone-dead, so he sighs, expecting some belligerent, early-evening drunk who has stumbled in from the bar scene a block over.
