Fluffy(58)

“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, inquiring 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.

The kind of person I imagine when I envision reunions.

“We live in the Bay Area. I'm the communications director for an online genetic-testing company, and Sanni is product line manager for a tech company that helps NGOs with refrigeration for public health initiatives.”