Fluffy(53)

“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, complete 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.