Fluffy(56)

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.