The Banquet Hall

With nothing more to do, I head toward the banquet hall, where all the signage points me toward the entrance, where there's a table, with two women and a man sitting behind it. As I walk up toward the table, the chubby blonde, wearing a tight blue top with her ample cleavage spilling over the top smiles toward me and says, “well, I don't recognize you at all. I'm Samantha Gardner, three of the co-chairs of the reunion committee, along with Paula and Tobias,” while extending her hand.

Now that she says her name, I remember her. Unfortunately, while she doesn't look too bad, it's obvious that staying in town has not been the best for Samantha, who was a member of the cheerleading team and cut quite the lovely figure back in high school. I don't know whether she has had kids, or just let herself go, but any ideas I might've had of approaching her, quickly go to the wayside.

I respond, “you probably don't remember me, as we ran with different crowds back in the day, but I'm Jesse Henry.”

Samantha pauses for a moment, searching her memory banks of who I could be, when the slim fey man sitting beside her, says, “oh, Jesse! I was in the newspaper for one year with you.”

He extends his hand and says, “I was still a closeted little queen back then, but after living in New York for a while, I came out, but now I'm home for a bunch of reasons you probably don't give two fucks about, but I managed to get dragged into this disaster.”

I smile back at Tobias – honestly, I don't remember him that well, but he doesn't bring up any terrible memories, so he couldn't have gone that terribly.

“Well, man, I'm glad you figured everything out. As you can see, I made some changes in my life too, even though none of them involved realizing I was lying about who I was attracted too,” I say, as the willowy redhead hands me a nametag, to affix to my shirt.

I take a moment to take her in, as she's wearing a simple tight green blouse, that looks good on her slim body, and brings out her freckled body.

“Thanks,” I say, pressing the sticky nametag to my chest. “Paula, right? I think we had English together.”

She shrugs noncommittally, then says, “it was all such a long time ago.”

“True, true,” I say, knowing when to tell when somebody isn't interested. “Guess I need to find a seat or something.”

Samantha responds, “you can sit anywhere you like. It's open seating. Let's people catch up with people they may not remember, instead of immediately being clique-y. Also, you can pick your three free drink tickets at the bar. Obviously, you can drink more, but that's on you to pay.”

She adds in, hopefully, “I'll see you around.”

“Maybe,” I say, not really looking at her, then moving towards where I'm going to actually sit down for the moment.