Sandra's first thought as she walked into the restaurant was one of shock, as she recognized most everyone in the room, but their faces had changed so much in the ten years since she'd last seen them that they also seemed new and different. Which, she supposed, was the price one paid for cutting off contact when one fled town after high school. She hadn't looked back, either, until she'd gotten the invitation, forwarded from her mother, to the ten-year reunion.
She'd dressed well, she though, going for a mature ensemble: an emerald-colored blouse tucked neatly into a gray-wool pencil skirt. She'd put a pair of tall black pumps on her feet and liked the sound of her heals clacking on the wood floor of the restaurant as she walked around and surveyed the scene. And here were 100 of what had once supposedly been her closest friends, chatting over cocktails while trying to remember what it was like to be seventeen.
Sandra realized with dismay that she didn't have much to say to any of these people, and she nearly turned around and walked out, but then her eye caught the one person she both most dreaded and most wanted to see: Jason Klein.
He'd hardly changed, she noticed. He was still tall and lanky, though his dark hair was shorter now, cut more neatly than it had been in high school, and he wore the shirt and tie like he owned them and not like his mother had dressed him. He was talking to a short woman with dark blonde hair. Lisa Phelps from the looks of it, Sandra guessed.
Jason noticed Sandra, too, and nodded in her direction from across the room. Not sure what else to do, Sandra walked over to the bar and ordered a drink. When she turned around, Jason was still glancing surreptitiously in her direction. When she smiled at him, he smiled back. When she took a slow sip of her martini, she watched as he excused himself from his conversation and began to head her way.
---
Jason felt for maybe the twentieth time in the last year that, if he'd known senior year that being class president would have meant getting stuck on the Reunion Committee with Lisa Phelps ten years later, he might have skipped the whole thing. No amount of fame and fortune was worth that particular headache.
She'd been meticulous and fastidious in high school, but as an adult, she was a nightmare of anal-retentive fussiness. She'd called him weekly for the last six months, asking pesky questions and confirming plans. He supposed he could find some comfort in the fact that Reunion had finally arrived, and that after tonight he'd hopefully never have to deal with her again.
She was talking his ear off when a late-comer walked in, a woman he might have recognized anywhere, although she'd finally grown and matured into her body. Sandra Kellerman walked in on those long legs of hers, wearing a skirt that sat snugly on her hips and a blouse unbuttoned low enough to entice without giving it all away. She still walked like she was in a hurry to get to wherever she was going. He struggled to listen to what Lisa was saying to him but became distracted when Sandra looked over and caught his eye. He watched her walk over to the bar and order a drink. Lisa was still going on about name tags or something, but he cut her off and excused himself, then headed over to the bar.
---
It was hard not to see him as he'd been at fourteen, tall and awkward and sitting behind her in history class. Hard not to remember the field trip to the Jersey Shore when she'd lent him her Smashing Pumpkins tape, which he'd promptly lost; he spent the rest of the school year swearing to replace it but never did. Hard not to remember him picking her up to drive her to school that time her car had broken down. Hard not to remember grinning at him as he sat in the cafeteria on the afternoon junior year when votes for class president had been collected.
At the same time, she saw him dancing with Kim Becker at prom, his fingers laced through her long dark hair as they kissed during the class song. Or she saw him holding hands in the hallway with Lisa Phelps freshman year, or exchanging meaningful glances with Cindy Reyes.
She did a quick wedding ring check as he walked towards her. His hands were bare. That was a good sign.
"Hi, Sandra," he said when he got to her.
"Hello," she said. "It's good to see you."
"It's been awhile," he said. He smirked. "I'd offer to buy you a drink, but first, you've already got one, and second, it's an open bar."
"Did you fake-offer to buy everyone here a drink?"
"I have a few people, yes." He grinned more genuinely then.
"It's a little weird to see everyone here drinking. I haven't really seen any of these people since before we were old enough to drink legally, so I'm finding it odd to see them all with drinks in their hands. I might be twenty-eight, but it seems to me that everyone here is still eighteen."
"I'm definitely not eighteen anymore," he replied. "You look great, by the way."
"Thanks," she said, pushing a strand of her shiny brown hair behind her ear. "You do, too."
---
As he talked to her, he couldn't help be reminded of the moment in ninth grade when they'd been assigned to read Romeo and Juliet. She'd read the part of Juliet with, thinking back, the appropriate amount of awe and innocence. Matt Seaver had read the part of Romeo with vim and aplomb and had seemed downright cocky to Jason at the time. Then there was that one day that Matt had been out sick and Mrs. Carver had chosen Jason to replace him during the reading. That might have been the best day of his freshman year.
"Where are you living now?" he asked the now mature Juliet, with her impossibly shiny hair.
"Oh, I live in the city. Ninety-Sixth Street."
"Really? I just got a place in Hoboken. So, not close really, but not impossibly far, either. I write tech reviews for a computer magazine and I've got an office in Midtown where I get to go every day to play with gadgets."
"Sounds fun," she said. She smiled. God, she had a great smile. "I'm an editor at a children's book publisher. Our offices are also in midtown. Not so far apart."
"No. It's funny that we never ran into each other."
"I suppose," she said. She took a sip of her martini. He envied the rim of the glass. "Then again, there are a thousand people who work just in my building. It's easy to get lost in the crowd."
"Funny how things turn out, eh? I remember you were always a big reader. Figures that you wound up in publishing."
"Yeah, I suppose it does."
Not wanting the conversation to end, he added, "We were in Ms. Pratt's English class together senior year, remember? She adored you. I bet she'd be tickled to learn that you're an editor now."
She laughed. "She thought you were a mess, as I recall."
"Yeah, well. She might be horrified that I walked into a profession that requires me to write in exchange for money."
---
