Fluffy(17)

“Until your breasts become a meme that’s spread more often than the Ermahgerd girl, just stop.” Right after college, Perky fell in love with Parker Campbell, an assistant DA who loved her right back.

Until he leaked sexy pictures of Perky’s naked boobs with two dogs humping behind her head and the meme went viral.

No one could prove it was Parker, of course. And it didn’t help that Persephone had changed her nickname to Perky in the worst confluence of events ever. She dumped him, he begged her to come back and claimed to know nothing about the photo leak, and to this day, she won’t admit she still pines for him.

But yeah, what she went through is worse than this photo of what looks like me in a threesome.

With Beastman and Will.

“Anticipatory anxiety is real, Perky. You already know what the worst is that can happen. I’m a sitting duck,” I sputter. A million thoughts crash through my mind as I look at the article with the picture of the three of us, front and center.

Most of them come down to this: I’ll never work again.

“You look like you’re in the middle of being spit roasted.” Perky tilts her head. “Like the naked guy on top of you is fitting it in before getting up on his knees. What kind of lube did he use?”

“How would I know? We. Did. Not. Have. Sex.” My voice goes lower with each word until I’m basically an echo from the Earth’s core.

I've resorted to vocal fry as an emotional defense strategy.

Perky frowns. She’s deeply disappointed.

“Why is Will Lotham wearing a suit for a porn scene? Is this CEO porn? I love the hot CEO stuff. So dominant,” Fiona sighs. A slight blush pinks her cheeks and it hits me.

She’s aroused.

“You two are supposed to be my friends! Not get turned on by pictures of me with a naked Beastman and our high school quarterback!”

And what the hell is spit roasting? Are they calling me a pig?

Fiona and Perky share a look that immediately taps into fourteen years of petty slights that line up in a perfect queue inside my ninth grade self. “We are your friends!” Perky assures me, patting my hand sympathetically.

“And we can be turned on by your porn,” Fiona mutters.

“Stop calling it my porn!”

“What was it like, being that close to Will?” Perky asks, eyes all star-crossed and gooey. “Does he smell as good as he did in high school?”

“I wouldn’t know. You’re the one who stole his jockstrap from his locker in ninth and huffed it every night before bed,” I say, giving her my best mean-girls, dagger-filled look. No way will I admit to smelling him yesterday.

“Did not!”

“Oh, please. We all know you did,” Fiona adds. “If social media had been a thing back then, you’d have been busted. And shamed. And ruined. Your reputation would have been demolished by the giant memory bank that is Google.”

“Oh. Gee. How awful,” Perky deadpans, giving Fiona a killer look. “Given that already happened, I’m not too worried.”

Fiona just laughs in that way you can mock a friend who remembers your Sailor Moon phase, complete with underwear you made using fabric pens.

With every word they say, a piece of me dies. “Oh, God,” I groan. “I am ruined.”

“Huh?” Fiona turns to me. “What do you mean?”

“This did happen in the era of social media! Spatula posted those pictures and sold them to some scammy porn-industry gossip site! I am in the great memory bank! The memory bank that never, ever dies!”

“Not a memory bank,” Fiona says, avoiding eye contact. “More like a spank bank.”

“Success is fleeting,” Perky says with a nod, noshing on a piece of gluten-free brownie. “But porn is forever.”

“That is not helping.”

She shoves the remains of her brownie at me. “Here.”

“It’s gluten free.” I wrinkle my nose.

“So?”

“Yuck.”

“You are so picky, Mal.”

“I get to be picky when I’m traumatized. That should be a universal human right. Someone needs to add it to the Geneva Convention.” I huff. “Along with the right to masturbate.”

Fiona twirls a finger around one ear while looking at Perky, who is now busy typing on my laptop.

“You don’t have to be silent about it, Feisty,” I snap, using an ancient nickname for her.

She laughs. “Haven’t been called that in a long time.”

“Probably because you haven't kickboxed a linebacker into unconsciousness in a long time,” Perky reminds her.

“He deserved it! Chris Fletcher was such a jerk.”

“He pulled your bra strap. You drop kicked him.”

“The only way to deter a bully is to take him on, face to face.”

“Which you did.”

“Two weeks of detention and a stupid nickname was totally worth it.”

“Whatever happened to him?” I ask, curious.

Fiona turns a fiery shade of red, eyes jittery. “Who knows?”

“I know,” Perky announces. “I have magic powers!” She presses her fingertips against her temples. “O oracle, bring the essence of Chris Fletcher to me.” Yogic breathing comes out of her. She’s breathing in for four through the left nostril, out for eight through the right. This is possible only because she broke her nose in tenth grade, and ever since, she’s had a deviated septum.