Fluffy

by Julia Kent

  Fletch and Fiona have a past.

  “Perky says you’ll never have fun with that attitude,” I snark at both of them.

  Fiona turns to Perky and says, “Fuck you.”

  “Nice mouth for a preschool teacher!” Fletch says with mock horror. “You shape young minds!”

  “You want her to drop kick you again? Because she totally could,” Perky goads as Fiona takes big mouthfuls of her drink.

  “Try me, baby. Try me,” he calls out, face red with a combination of alcohol, mild embarrassment, and joy.

  I never had a problem with Fletch in particular, other than the fact that he was one of the crowd of guys who felt entitled to tease anyone with an IQ even one point above average.

  That, and pushing Fiona to drop kick him in seventh grade.

  “Let's not stain our tenth reunion with violent rehashings of our pasts,” I strongly suggest.

  “No kidding,” Fletch mutters, eyeing me with the fresh gaze of a man shark who has discovered a bleeding seal pup. “How about we talk about your porn career instead?”

  Will makes a growling sound in the back of his throat that forces Fletch look at him and instantly, nonverbally, back off. His body leans away from me, a primally obvious sequence of small muscle shifts I feel rather than see.

  “Kick him, Feisty,” Perky growls in her ear. “Kick him hard.”

  “Feisty!” Fletch shouts, tipping his head to the sky, hands on hips like a superhero movie villain without the costume. “Haven't heard that in years. You missed your calling. You'd make a great roller derby player.”

  “You know I'm a preschool teacher. Your nephew is in my class.”

  “He's not that far off. Preschool teacher, roller derby,” Perky says under her breath. “Some of those hellions Fiona's in charge of are brutal little fu–”

  “Preschool teacher, huh? Good for you. You'll be paying off those student loans forever,” says Alisha, who appears double-fisted, two drinks with pineapple in them. She sips one and gives Fiona a nasty look. “I always thought you'd go into something more violent.”

  “Like being your Brazilian waxing technician?” Fi says, blinking sweetly.

  “What?” Alisha doesn't get it. Fletch rolls his eyes. A pang of something close to guilt hits me. She really doesn’t get it.

  This is when I hate myself the most. When I overthink. My conscience is too large, grossly over-inflated like some people's egos. But then my brain kicks in and analyzes and I short circuit, turning to alcohol, food, and Dance and Dairy festivals for comfort.

  I look at the clock on the wall. Too late for the festival. Damn.

  Will finishes his beer in one long series of gulps as Fletch asks, “Heard you're using your parents' home for porn production. That pay well? My grandparents have a property up in Rowley and–”

  The playful punch Will delivers to his meaty shoulder makes me settle down. They're kidding. They weren't before, when Will made him stand down, but they are now. The familiarity between them says they've hung out recently. They're friends who reconnected.

  My stomach drops.

  Is this just a replay of high school? Five-year reunions are nothing but repeats. But ten? Ten years is long enough to grow and change.

  Right?

  Fletch's eyes narrow as he looks at me. “You're the valedictorian. Mallory.”

  “And a porn star,” Alisha gushes, eyes taking me in from toe to head, her gaze entitled, like she has a right to document my failings so publicly. “Was it for the chubby chaser section of some website?”

  Even Fletch has the decency to give her a WTF? look.

  Will's arm snakes around my waist again. Fletch notices, one eyebrow arching as he looks at Will for a message. My date gives no quarter. His hand on my hip silently communicates what Will is saying.

  Loud and clear.

  I'm waiting for him to defend me. To say something to neutralize the sting of Alisha's words. I didn't earlier, when she was a gadfly, buzzing her nastiness with me, but now there's an audience. My “date” is here, listening to her pettiness, her need to shame someone she hasn't seen in ten years.

  This cannot go unchallenged.

  That's how this works, right? The nasty insult has to be countered. If one of us doesn't shut her down, she wins. Verbal judo works this way. The hierarchy of high school social groups relies on the mortar of put-downs, squeezed in between the bricks that make up the wall that keeps some people out.

  And the select few in.

  Without saying another word, Will uses his fingers and arm to turn me away, leaving Alisha's chubby comment hanging there, uncontested. Tears threaten the back of my throat, stupid and childish.

  Will leans in and says, “She can't help herself, can she? Some people haven't changed a bit since high school. She's not worth another second of attention.”

  “Hmmm?” Worlds are ending inside my throat and heart and behind my wet eyes.

  “Attention. That's what she's seeking. That's what that ludicrous put-down was about. The second she gets attention, she's being fed. Good, bad–doesn't matter. Her goal is to make us look at and focus on her. Not going to do it. Not when I have better objects of my attention.”

  I glance at her, face tipped up, eyebrows knitted as it dawns on her Will is giving me his full attention in every way, shape and form. Publicly.

  He squeezes my hip, but–that's not quite my hip.

  Did Will just cop a feel?

  And did I just move... closer to him?

  How can my body seek his touch at the same time my psyche thinks he's rejecting me somehow by not following the rules of the game at which he was a master?

  I let out a small laugh through my nose. It hits me.

  Because my body is twenty-eight, but my mind is still a teenager.

  None of those rules is real. Will just said as much. Alisha is stuck in a reality from a decade ago.

  I don't want to be in that club anymore.

  “Hey,” he says, interrupting my thoughts. I welcome the intrusion. “What's wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did her comment bother you?” He moves back a foot and looks at me appreciatively. “Because it shouldn't.”

  “I–”

  “It really, really shouldn't.” Warm eyes meet mine as I look up, caught in his gaze, too many discordant thoughts trying to occupy the same space as the whirling dervish of emotion inside me.

  “WILL!” a man's baritone calls out from behind us. Will groans.

  “It's going to be like this all night, isn't it?” I whisper as I lean in, the scent of his aftershave and soap filling me, the press of his cotton shirt on my bare palm a kind of foreplay that gets me wet so fast, I blush.

  He pauses. Blood pounds through me, my cheeks aflame as each breath closes the distance between high school and now, the way his fingertips brush the soft skin of my wrist an invitation that extends far beyond being his platonic date for a high school reunion.

  “It doesn't have to be, Mallory. We can decide how tonight goes. Just us,” he murmurs, hot breath tickling the outer shell of my ear, the fine fibers of his shirt turning my skin to a tingly pleasureland as I run my hand up his arm.

  Only to be brutally shoved out of the way as a meat wall grabs Will and hugs him.

  “LOWMAN!” Michael Osgood screams, looking as much like a pale version of The Hulk as anyone can. Many of the bulging muscles that made him a great nose tackle seem to have migrated to a spot just above his belt buckle. His hair, thinning already by senior year, is largely gone, shaved close to his scalp. He's wearing a navy polo shirt, khaki dockers, and brown leather shoes.

  “Ozzy,” Will chokes out, giving me a look that either says Hey, my friends love me or Call an ambulance because he just squeezed my spleen until it burst.

  I seriously can't tell which.

  Ozzy sets Will down and turns his back to me, Will stretching his neck to peer around the mountain of a man in order to re-establish eye contact with me. Norma
lly, I'd leave, but I'm standing my ground, instantly furious.

  Because Michael Osgood is the one who threatened me.

  Over homework.

  Back at the office, when Will asked for the name, I don't know why I clammed up and didn't give it. Now that we're here, and Osgood is just, you know, a guy and not a threat, I feel silly. Laughter bubbles up inside me as I stare at his back, thick shoulders moving as he gestures animatedly at Will.

  “I run the insurance agency with Dad now, but you wouldn't know that, would you, Lowman? You split the second we graduated.” Two towns over, the Osgoods run a well-known insurance office, a franchise of a national company. Osgood knew from day one that's who he would be and where he would work. He doesn't live in Anderhill, or I'd run into him more often.

  Thank God he doesn't live in town.

  “Well, I'm back now,” Will says, giving me looks that say, Come over here. His head tilts, a nudge to join them.

  “Heard you're managing your parents' property company. Good for you. How's your coverage?”

  “Coverage?”

  “Business liability. Renter's insurance. Who do you send tenants to?”

  Will makes a scoffing sound. Our eyes meet. He smiles at me, the grin fading fast as he turns back and says, “Ozzy, you're not seriously pumping me for business at our high school reunion, are you?”

  “No better time, man. We're salespeople. We're always on. Every person in this room is just a dollar sign to me.”

  “Not me, man. Not me. That's not how I run my business.”

  “Then good luck ever being successful. We have to be sharks.”

  “You think that's true, Mallory?” Will asks me as I step closer.

  Ozzy happens to move, blocking me from Will. It's clearly unintentional, but it makes me freeze.

  I'm a wall, a curtain, a piece of furniture. I'm nothing to Osgood as he talks to Will, the disregard for my existence so evident that I shoot past anger to astonishment.

  “Who?” he asks, face blank.

  “Mallory Monahan. You remember,” Will says, turning politely to me.

  “No.”

  “Valedictorian? In our American Government class senior year?”

  Head shake. “Nope.” One eyebrow goes up. “Why are you here with her?” he asks in an undertone, barely turning away to cover his words. It's clear he feels entitled to say them in front of me. “Look at Alisha. She's hot as hell, and I know she's interested in you, Lowman, because she–”

  I walk away.

  One step at a time, I just do. Years ago, when Osgood threatened me, I was a trapped rabbit, hunkered down in my warren, waiting for the threat to pass. Like Alisha, Osgood thinks he can say whatever he wants about me because I am unimportant. He has a mental structure that lays out the order of the universe for him, and in that strictly layered planogram, I am nowhere near the top.

  He only acknowledges the people at the top.

  His top.

  “Mallory!” Will calls out as I pick up my pace, feeling the wind outside coming in from an open door. Blood pounds in my ears, the breeze pushing my carefully coiffed hair off my brow. The high heels suddenly feel sturdy, authoritative, the stretch of my stride giving me more boldness than I would have thought possible. I am walking away from high school, from a past riddled with the misconception that I have to let people treat me like Osgood, Alisha, Ramini.

  Like Will.

  “WIIILLLLL!” squeals a gaggle of women I've just passed, their glittering sequined dresses bouncing light off the dance floor disco balls, my skin cooling as I work my way out from the heat of social clustering.

  I'm free.

  “MALLORY!” he shouts once more, and then I cut to the left, running on the balls of my feet, my stride boosted by the one force I didn't think could propel me forward, but one with more kinetic energy than I ever imagined.

  A broken heart.

  16

  Where are you? Fiona texts me as I sit on the toilet in the women's room at the country club.

  In the bathroom, I text back.

  Did I hear Will shouting for you? she asks.

  I guess. Pretty sure he was eaten by a sharknado of cheerleaders, I reply.

  Meow, she texts. Mallory's getting catty.

  No, I think to myself as I sniffle. I'm just tired of hoping to be treated differently.

  And then I hear a man's voice call out: “Mallory?” in the hallway.

  The clack clack clack of jogging footsteps halts, followed by a pause, then the door opens. Heavy breathing echoes in the tiled room, the bathroom nothing more than a temporary sanctuary, stall after stall in a row, the doors too short to provide a real hiding place.

  And no way will I lower my dignity further by standing on a toilet seat to hide my location. Who does that?

  “Mal?”

  I hold my breath.

  “I can see your shoes. I know you're in there.” Through the wide space between the door and the frame I see Will lean his hip against the line of sinks, the counter a gorgeous piece of granite with a faux-broken edge, designed to look raw and natural.

  “Do you always lurk in women's bathrooms and stare under the doors?”

  “Only when my date's been chased off by an ogre and I should have stepped in sooner to tell him to go fuck himself.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Tell him that?”

  “Yes.”

  I sniffle again.

  “Oh,” he says, voice low with meaning. “Are you crying? Damn it.”

  “Yes, I'm crying. I ate a piece of shrimp and I'm allergic to shellfish, so I came in here to stick an EpiPen in my thigh before anaphylaxis sets in and now I'm crying as I recover.”

  “I've watched you eat shrimp in your lunch at work, Mal. Bad pretend excuse.”

  “Well, it matches my bad pretend date.”

  “Pretend?”

  I stand, unlock the stall door, and march out, finger in his face. “We are not having this conversation. You don't get to play Mr. Nice Guy in private and treat me like a cardboard cutout of a human being in public.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Will. I'm not a teenager anymore.” Pivoting on the slippery piece of new shoe leather under my toes, I spin around to get the hell away from him.

  But I can't.

  Because he grabs me. Not hard enough to hurt. Using just enough pressure to keep me in the bathroom, he stares at me with an intensity that shuts me up. Reflected over and over again in opposite mirrors that make us infinite, I can see our misplaced couplehood in stark relief, my face red from crying and anger, his burning with an emotion I must be misreading.

  “No, Mal. You're not a teenager. Neither am I. Nothing about asking you to this reunion was pretend.”

  “Why did you really ask me? Wait.” I shake my head hard, just as a group of women burst into the room, one of them shrieking at the sight of a man in the bathroom.

  Not just any man.

  “WILL!” Alisha gasps. Her eyes don't even bother to cut over to me to take in my existence. “What are you doing in the women's room?” Whipping around, she screams to someone behind her, “OMIGOD, Gemma, I found Will!”

  Gemma. Will's girlfriend for part of senior year.

  Wrenching my wrist out of his hand, I walk away, head held high, leaving Will Lotham to deal with all the questions from his groupies as they descend on him like fish in a tank as the flakes are being sprinkled for meal time.

  Blurred vision from crying makes it really hard to see where I'm going. This country club isn't familiar to me. I need to find the exit, get to my car, drive home, and sit in stunned, ringing silence for a few eternities, right now.

  That's the closest I can come to equanimity.

  I make a right turn at the end of the hall, the tiled floor changing to carpet. Blaring music and blinking lights make it clear I'm facing the event space, so I turn around.

  “Mallory?”

  A soft, in
quiring voice, feminine and light, stops me dead in my tracks. I'm looking into kind brown eyes, framed by stylish, oversized black eyeglass frames. Long brown hair with curls at the ends, a soft grey dress cut in a tight, flattering peplum style.

  “I'm sorry,” I say genuinely, smiling with an awkwardness driven both from what's just happened with Will and from having no idea who she is. “Have we met?”

  “It's me. Raye.”

  “Raye?” My eyebrows try to meet as I squint at her, then I do a double take. “Raye? Rayelyn Boyle?”

  The eyes widen as she grins. “You do remember!”

  “Of course I remember, but wow–you look nothing like you did in high school!”

  “Is that good or bad?” Her grin is infectious, but her eyes are wary.

  “Good! All good! Look at you!” My need to reassure her is total projection. I know this as the words come out. I'm a mess, straddling the past and the present like I'm working on an Olympic-level split for the balance beam, and for a moment, I realize some part of me assumed everyone else is living my reality, too.

  Rayelyn–Raye–gives me a self-assured look that says she's way more comfortable in her skin than I am in mine.

  A woman in golden silk pants, loose at the hips and knees but tight at the ankles, joins us, her flowing white silk shirt embroidered around the neckline with small crystals. Raye's arm goes around her waist in a loving manner, the woman's thick, dark hair in a heavy braid behind her back, long eyelashes fringing minky eyes.

  “Mallory, this is Sanni, my wife. Sanni, this is Mallory, my friend from the newspaper in high school. Remember?”

  Sanni extends her hand to me, the fingers covered in silver jewelry. Polite smiles are exchanged and they look at me, waiting. There is no pretense. No judgment. No one upmanship. Just the social nicety of being reacquainted in that slightly awkward way that is normal.

  Normal.

  “I'm sorry I keep staring, Rayelyn–Raye–it's just that you've changed so much. Where do you live now? What do you do for a living?” I'm babbling nervously, authentically happy to run into her. Of all the friends I had in high school, she's the one I've lost touch with but always wondered about.