Fluffy(21)

I need to procrastinate. Hard.

Because I have a job offer I really, really need to refuse.

At the coffee shop yesterday, Will told me to check my email. This is what I found: I like how you started to re-arrange the living room. That feng shui theory sounded ludicrous, but then again, I’m superstitious enough to bury a statue of St. Joseph when trying to sell a property. I need someone to handle staging for our company. If you’re willing to do a one-month trial as a consultant, I’ve got a gig for you. No coconut oil, and sorry–clothing isn’t optional.

The words weren’t the problem.

It was the smirk.

And the fact that I’m so desperate for a job, I’m actually considering his offer.

The bastard.

As if it’s not enough that I crushed on him for four years, he also had to save me from being arrested, and now he has the power to give me a consulting gig that saves me from eviction.

See? What a jerk.

If I close my eyes and transport myself back to that moment yesterday, I can feel him. Not through touch. That would involve going further back, to the porn incident.

No.

I can feel the essence of Will, the space inside myself I created fourteen years ago, a habitat deep in my core where he lives. Sounds creepy, right? Like I’m lowering a bucket full of lotion to him. But hey, it’s my imagination. My brain.

My heart.

And having grown-up Will make grown-up Mallory a job offer is the closest thing to teen Mallory being asked to the prom by teen Will.

It will have to do.

Yet–I know I can’t say yes.

My career isn’t the issue. Even my bank account, as starved and frail as it is, isn’t the issue. The issue is remarkably simple: I can’t take my personality and turn it back ten to fourteen years. Working for Will Lotham would do that to me.

As the lights dim in the theater, the creaking old seats make an asynchronous melody of their own, the ten or so ticket buyers settling in. I munch happily on my cheap popcorn, heedless of the hydrogenated coconut oil I’m feeding my arteries. If I’m going to have coconut oil in my life, I want it like this.

Not smeared all over me by a naked porn star.

The Diet Coke habit I can’t shake–only at the movies!–makes me feel like I’m home again. My mouth is happy, at least.

“Home” being a relative term. I have about a dozen different internal settings for home.

One of them, unfortunately, involves Will.

A trailer for a big, sweeping historical drama starts, the quiet classical music setting the tone that this is a serious movie coming our way just as I tune out, the backdrop perfect for self-reflection.

Or maybe self-indulgence.

“Hey! Why are you sighing so loud?” rasps an old lady behind me. “You having an asthma attack?”

Twisting in my seat, I look back to find a helmet of tight curls attached to a half-worried, half-angry old lady holding a barrel of popcorn bigger than her head.

“No,” says a familiar voice. I look up to find Fiona at the end of my row, holding a box of Junior Mints and an enormous bottled water. “She’s just hiding from the world.”

“Ain’t we all?” the old woman says with a surprisingly girlish giggle.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss at Fiona, eyeing the candy. I had planned to be good and not sugar binge, but when your friend brings the sugar, it’s not your weakness. It’s hers.

Therefore, it doesn’t count against you, right?

“Looking for you. You turned off your phone and we figured you went into turtle mode.”

“Turtle mode?”

“That’s what Perky and I call it when you do this.”

“I don’t do ‘this.’ There is no this. I am availing myself of some of the finest contemporary cinema at a cut-rate price. I am being a careful consumer, but also a well-educated member of society who–”

“This is a movie about male strippers, Mal. Don’t push it.”

“The score was nominated for a Golden Globe! And male strippers are an under-appreciated sector of society.”

“Damn right about that,” says the old lady behind me.

I try again. “This movie is a complex social commentary about upward mobility in American society being thwarted for males by–”

“Why haven’t you taken Will’s job offer?” I can tell by the look on Fiona’s face that I can’t snow her.

Shoot.

“Shhhhhhhh!” the old lady behind me says.”You’re ruining the movie.”

“I’m not spoiling anything,” I protest.

“You’re trying to turn it into a thinking movie! I didn’t come to stare at abs so I could think!” Creak creak. The old lady settles her butt in the seat and sniffs.

“Look,” Fiona says, dropping her voice. “You need a job. Will offered you one. He also kept you from being arrested. Why not make hay while the sun shines?”

“That saying really doesn’t apply here, Fi.”

“You know what I mean. Count all your eggs before they’re in one basket.”

“Stop, Fi. Please.” Before I can point out that she's combined two old sayings, she jumps in and says: “You need to take Will’s job offer.”

“Why?”