by Julia Kent
“Don’t you get it? You rejected Harvard. Harvard, Mallory. You said no to the top school in the country.”
I know what he's really saying. He didn't get into Harvard.
I did.
“Dartmouth wasn’t exactly a bottom-tier school, Will.”
“I’ve done fine. Dartmouth, Rhodes Scholar, the whole bit. I succeeded on the hamster wheel of academic success.”
Here it comes.
“But you made your decisions based on what you wanted. Not based on what other people told you you should do.”
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
“That’s right,” I finally choke out. “I did.”
“You did back then, you do now. No one does that, Mallory. Especially not eighteen-year-olds who are nothing more than chess pieces for adults to play in a game of status strategy.”
My eyes drift to the door Mom and Dad just went through. “That’s not who I am.”
“I know. That’s not who you were ten years ago, either.”
“Do you make your decisions based on what other people expect?” I ask him, head tilting as though it will help me understand his answer.
Step. We’re three feet apart as he moves closer. “Not anymore.”
Bzzzz.
My phone goes crazy in my pocket. I can’t ignore it. Breaking the spell between us, I step back and look. Four texts, the reminder about the reunion in one, the other three from Mom, Perky, Fiona.
The usual suspects.
“Go with me,” he says, bringing the magic back. But it feels like there's a wall between us, one that shimmers with transparency but still separates us.
“Where?”
“To the reunion.”
“Me?” It comes out as a sonic boom of surprise.
“All my friends are married or have dates. I need to save face.” The words are joking. Tone is light. But those eyes, oh, those eyes are making offers I can’t believe are true.
Are they?
“I’m the last person you bring to a ten-year reunion if you’re trying to improve your reputation, buddy.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Look at me.”
“I am.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“It’s obvious you don’t see yourself the way I see you. I don’t understand why you would say that. You’re gorgeous. And smart. And funny. You’re the whole package.” He breathes, the sound making all the hair on my body tingle, moving like waves of grass on a windy day, drawn to him. “I was too stupid to see it ten years ago. I’m not quite as stupid now.”
“You’re pretty close.”
“Is that a no?”
“No. But look,” I say with a tiny, huffy laugh, “this isn’t some John Hughes movie from the '80s where the popular guy plucks the shy, brainy girl from the crowd and kisses her over a birthday cake on a table and they live happily ever after.”
“What’s a John Hughes movie?”
“You–I–you’ve never seen Sixteen Candles?”
“No.”
“Pretty in Pink?”
“Is that a Barbie princess movie? Because I used to hate it when my sister watched that kind of stuff.” He frowns. “Besides, why would you watch movies from the 1980s? We weren’t even born then.”
“They’re classics. My mom watched them with me.” And, I can’t admit to him, they were emotional sanctuaries where, for once, the shy, nobody girl did get the hot, popular guy.
Fantasy, right?
“I’ll have to watch them someday.”
“What did you watch when we were in high school?”
“Saw movies. The Ring. You know.”
“Eww!”
“Don’t judge it until you’ve seen them.”
“I am totally judging Saw movies, sight unseen. Or not unseen. Karen the overly officious cop made me watch fifteen minutes of Saw 3 when I was six and it warped me for life.”
“Not very open minded of you.”
“I embrace my intolerance for gore. I own my judgment on this one. Call me Miss Judgment.”
“I misjudged you, all right.”
Something in his voice makes my breath hitch.
“Say yes.”
“What?”
“Say yes, Mallory. Be my date. Let’s show those assholes that we’re adults. We’ve matured.”
“We have? Speak for yourself. I still can’t watch horror movies without a blanket to throw over my head and I have no idea how to change the oil in my car.”
“That’s your measure of adulthood? If so, I’ve been an adult since I was eleven.”
“I’m a late bloomer.”
His eyes graze over my body. “You definitely bloomed well.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you need a date. I need a date. We both have needs. Let’s meet each other's needs.”
There is a point in conversations with people you could sleep with where you find yourself in a demilitarized zone of language. This is one of them. Is Will flirting? Joking? Being ingenuous? Mocking me? I can’t read his words right now. The most reasonable interpretation is the one I can’t bring myself to believe possible:
He’s sexually attracted to me and is making his intentions known.
Occam’s razor says this is the most likely, and best, interpretation.
Murphy’s law trumps Occam’s razor, though.
Anything that can go wrong–will.
Will.
If I’m wrong, I lose Will. Lose the friendship, lose my not-quite-a-job, lose the tenuous sense that maybe all those hopes and dreams and fantasies from years ago weren’t in vain.
So I can’t.
I can’t be bold.
I can’t be mature and direct.
I can’t hand him my heart with my palm outstretched and the dependable organ beating for him.
I wish I could.
But if I could do that, I wouldn’t be me.
I decide to be me.
“If I go to the reunion with you,” I say, holding one finger up in protest as his face breaks into a delicious grin of victory, “you have to promise me one thing.”
“I promise.”
“I haven’t even asked yet! Why would you agree to terms you don’t know?”
“Because I trust you.”
“Because you don’t think I’m hardass enough to screw you over.”
“With you, Mallory, it’s the same thing.”
“And with you, Will, it’s another sign that you underestimate me.”
“Then surprise me.”
“By screwing you over?”
“By making me promise something challenging. You just got a blanket promise from me. Use it to your advantage.”
“If you just handed me a blanket promise, then I don’t want to waste it. I’ll hold onto it for future use.”
“Wait a minute. I thought this was a promise involving the reunion!”
“I never said that. Not explicitly.”
He pauses, thinking it through. “You’re right. You didn’t.”
“I am the queen of delayed gratification, Will. I am holding onto this promise of yours for a good, long time.”
“You play a long game?”
Fourteen years run through my mind in a long, long thread. I smile. He smiles back, a little bemused, as I inform him:
“You have no idea.”
15
Have you ever walked into a mixer at a high school reunion?
It looks like every standard corporate networking event, but with a mild odor of desperation, the occasional whiff of panic, and a general sense of poor life choices catching up to people who realized too late that actions have consequences.
Which isn’t really all that different from corporate networking, now that I think about it.
“Mallory Monahan! I heard you’re a porn star. Is it true? Because that is so great. I think being fat positive is wonderfully liberating!” says Alisha Buonacelli, comple
te with hair flip and all.
Nice extensions, I think but don’t say, because what’s the point? Match her pettiness with my own? Seems like a losing proposition. Alisha was a cheerleader (of course) and the girlfriend of Michael Osgood, one of the football players who threatened me when I wouldn’t give them my notes in ninth grade.
Alisha and I are Facebook friends now. She sells makeup and special probiotics for a living.
Facebook friends who become MLM sellers are like vegans: you never, ever have to ask them about it because you damn well know.
Will’s body tenses with her words. So it’s not just me. He squeezes my shoulder with a possessiveness that makes me want to cry tears of joy. “Actually, she works for me. Head designer,” he says, amusement tinging his words, his low rumble making me relax. He finds her stupid, too.
Good.
“You design heads? For what?” She does a double take at my date. “Wait–is that you? WILL!” she squeals, flinging herself at him like he’s a river and she’s on a bridge, attached to a bungee cord harness. Kissing his cheek with an audible smack designed to make people look, she leaves a bright red mark on him.
Like she’s claiming territory.
He moves away from her and wraps his arm around my waist. I find the ever-present pack of tissues in my purse and hand him one. It takes everything in me not to give her a wolf smile.
“Hi, Allison,” he says, wiping his face.
Her eyes widen. At least, as much as they can. Are we really doing Botox at twenty-eight now?
“It’s Alisha.”
“Oh. Right.” Carefully cultivated social skills I do not possess fill the space between the three of us, Will obviously a master at whatever strange game we’re all playing.
Perfect eyes with long eyelashes too beautiful to be natural bounce between us, her gaze resting on Will’s hand on my hip. “You two?” If her eyebrows could lift, they would.
He grins. It’s so natural. A shrug and a tighter squeeze are his entire answer.
Alisha’s fingers twitch, moving for her purse, like she needs to text. As if texting about the unreal experience of seeing Will with me is her oxygen.
“I can’t believe it!”
Neither can I.
“Wow! After that whole porn thing? Really, Will?” Punctuating her words, she points to her phone screen, which has the picture of me, Beastman and Will the Dom on it.
No, really, that's the caption: Beastman and Unnamed Dom Spit Roasting.
Reproach fills her voice, but I know it has nothing to do with the porn-set misunderstanding. Will’s not breaking any social codes there.
It’s me.
I’m the violation.
Will kisses my temple and looks at her with a smile.
“Who would have ever guessed Little Miss Perfect and Will would end up together?” she says, deflating me on the spot.
There’s that name again. Little Miss Perfect. The past comes roaring back.
His hold on me tightens. One of my eyebrows is practically on Mars as I tip my head up for an explanation.
Which is interrupted.
“MALLORY AND WILL! OMIGOD!” screams Perky, running across the country club’s event space in high heels like toothpicks, dressed in a sleek red cocktail dress that makes her look even perkier than she really is while pulling off an intoxicating sophistication that makes my classic little black dress seem like a nun’s habit.
“Persephone,” I gasp, knowing she'll appreciate the use of her full name.
Exuding excitement, she gives me a hug, jumping up and down as she whispers, “Screw them all, Mallory. You’re here with Will Lotham and they don’t know what to do with that fact inside their little minds made of tiny boxes.”
“You are the best,” I murmur into her coconut-scented, overly styled hair. There’s so much product in there I’m pretty sure it doubles as a hamster habitrail.
“Can I get you a drink?” Will asks me, then looks at Perky with an expectation that she’ll cough up an answer, too.
“Cocktails?” Perky asks, impressed.
He shrugs. “Whatever they have at the bar.”
“I’ll have a Little Miss Perfect, Will,” I say dryly. “But refresh my memory: what, exactly, is in one of those?”
“Remorse, vodka, and a lot of forgiveness begging?” he replies.
“You forgot the heaping dose of bitters and and two olives on a stick big enough to beat egos to death.”
Leaning in, he whispers, “It was a stupid name one of the guys made up for you. I’m sorry. I should have apologized a long time ago. I thought we were all long past that.”
I look at Alisha. “We are. She isn’t.”
“Then let’s ignore her and let me get you a drink.” A firm touch from him, his hand territorial in a way I like very much, punctuates his words.
“Surprise me!” I say, impulse driving me to loosen up, to be spontaneous. I’m here as Will’s date, so what other people think doesn’t matter. I get to be me.
Maybe this is me.
One side of his mouth goes up, the grin appreciative. Squeezing my arm gently, he fades into the crowd, stopped instantly by a guy who looks like a much more muscular version of Vin Diesel, only twenty years younger and blended with the top two Bollywood actors.
Sameer.
The two do a guy hug. I groan.
Perky leans in and whispers, “Sameer bulked up nice and big. Look at those biceps.” She licks her lips. “The whole package is mighty fine.”
“The whole package is tainted by memories of what an asshole he was.”
“That’s not enough to taint,” she argues back.
“Asshole behavior is like mold on bread.”
“What?”
“You have to throw the whole loaf out once you see even a single spot.”
“Why not just cut off the mold spot? That’s what my grandma does.”
“Because spores don’t work like that, Perk. They bore into the–”
“You are not seriously giving a lecture on fungi at our high school reunion, are you, Mallory Monahan?”
“What? No. I was just–”
Over Perky's shoulder, I see Fiona float in, wearing a gauzy dress that a woodland sprite probably hand spun with silk from her wings. She's every shade of lilac and cream and peach. Hair, too. Big glasses, like Elton John started a crystal company, adorn her face. Most people don't recognize her.
Only the ones who stayed, like me.
Fiona spots us and points to the bar. She gets lost in a crowd, which isn't easy when you're basically a cloud from Avatar in human form.
Perky snorts. “You and your biology lectures. Because you pulled that shit on prom night and it was stupid then, too, only that one was about spirochetes and syphilis.”
“Speaking of people who haven’t changed since high school,” I sniff.
“People change, Mal. You’re not going to last an hour at this shindig if you can’t see that.”
“Shindig?” I look her over. “Where did my BFF Perky go? Who are you in your sleek red dress, ogling Sameer Ramini?”
“I am Persephone Tsongas.” She fluffs her hair, which really doesn’t work given the sheer amount of product in it. Her fingers brush against the strands like she’s testing out a bed of nails. “And Sameer Ramini would be damn lucky to get between my legs,” she says dramatically, like a 1940s glamour actress.
“Is that an invitation or a dare?” says a man from behind me. His voice is smooth and suave, but it comes across as unctuous and cringe-y, too.
Fiona appears, and nudges me as he finishes.
“Gross,” she murmurs into her drink.
Perky gives Sameer a very obvious once over. “You’ve changed in ten years.”
“Same.” His mouth quirks up on one side and he holds his arms slightly away from his body, as if to show them off. “You look like you need a drink, Perky.”
“You look like you need a date, Sameer.”
“Got one a
lready.”
“Oh?”
He thumbs behind him. “My wife.” Is that Amy Whitman he’s pointing to? Backstage drama person who loved poetry slams? Whitman Construction, pretty much the richest girl in town? Okay, I'm remembering now. I heard they got married a few years ago. They live in Atlanta, I think.
“Oh!” Perky titters at him, eyeing his ring finger the way she studies her phone when she’s recovering her password to a new dating site. “I didn’t see a wedding ring. My bad.”
He holds up a naked left hand. “Not wearing one.” The way he waggles his eyebrows makes it clear he takes his wedding vows about as seriously as he took the football team honor code when he tried to force me to help him cheat.
Once a cheater, always a cheater.
I grab Perky's arm and drag her away, Fiona following in our wake. Will is in the middle of the room, looking for us. The man has magic hands.
No, really. Who balances three cosmos and a beer like that without spilling a drop?
He’s a wizard.
He’s a wizard because he magically knew my favorite drink, too.
“Here,” he says, handing the drinks around to all the intended recipients. Fiona chugs her existing drink, taking the new one with gratitude and placing her empty on a table corner.
Perk, Fiona, and I suck our drinks down like they’re medication.
Will grins at me before taking a swig of beer. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, noticing how many people are noticing him, the impending crush of older versions of all the archetypes from my teen years making my heart go into palpitation mode.
Or maybe that’s because Will’s hand settles on the small of my back as we stand there, drinking and scanning the crowd. It finds its place, the palm sturdy, fingers resting like they're positioned on piano keys. He’s playing music on my spine, ready to compose, his touch a melody.
The move is possessive. Instinct makes me lean closer, just a few centimeters, my body responding before I can make a conscious choice.
His grip shifts. He smiles as Chris Fletcher comes over, big and boisterous, arms out for a bro hug.
But Will doesn’t move that hand until he has no choice.
“DICKHEAD!” Fletch bellows, grabbing Will like he’s a baby goat, lifting him a good two feet in the air.
“Some people haven’t changed one bit,” Fiona says, mouth like a tightened purse string before she opens it to down the rest of her drink.