Second Spring ? Paul Lahote

Christopher Anthony Jacob Weber

When I didn't hear from Paul the third day after I ran into him at the beach I figured he'd just been humoring me when he gave me his phone and gave up any hope of hearing from him again. The fifth morning I woke up to a text asking me to meet him for drinks that night. Now I had enough self respect to know that I shouldn't text back first thing in the morning when a guy leaves you waiting for over four days. So instead I went on a long training run, took an amazing shower and ate breakfast before I finally opened his message again and answered. I have some time. Where do you want to meet?

That was how I found myself in a worndown booth in the diner I spend a significant amount of my senior year in, anxiously waiting for Paul. We had never been close but I didn't have that many real friends in Forks at the time and I was enjoying spending time with Jeremy. Paul was always a nice guy though, at first he didn't pay a lot of attention to me but after a few months I would have considered us tentative friends. Not the type of friends that kept in touch though.

"Hi, sorry I'm late," Paul slid into the booth and shot me a bright smile. "Car was acting up again."

"It's fine and are you seriously still driving that old rustbucket you drove last year? I'm surprised that thing is still running."

"I love that car. And being able to keep that car running landed me my job. Levi said that if someone managed to keep those pieces of scrapmetal together and functioning they deserved a job at the shop."

"So you're working at Levi's now?"

"Yeah, started on the weekends this fall and since graduation I've been starting to built up to more fulltime. I should be making an actual living by the time fall runs around."

"So no college for you?" I asked.

"I was never the bookish type. Might take a few classes down at the community college but no four years for me. Though it seems to be doing you good. You look amazing."

Paul teasingly ran his eyes down my body. "I got lucky with roommate assignments. My roommate is a crossfitter and he's the type of guy that just makes you be fit by association. Guess I finally grew into those limbs of mine now that I've put some weight on. You don't look to shabby either."

And he most definitely didn't. Paul was always attractive but a year ago he had still very much been a teenager, a kid starting his final year at high school. The guy sitting in front of me today looked all grown up and if I hadn't known better I would have guessed he was solidly in his twenties rather than barely eighteen. "I guess all those hours of carrying around heavy things in the shop did me some good."

He flashed me a smile that I didn't know how to interpret, if he'd been some guy I shared a class with or someone at the gym I would have sworn he was flirting with me. But this wasn't some random fit guy. This was Paul, a guy who had never shown a lick of interest in me or any guy in the time that I'd known him. Paul couldn't possibly be flirting with me.