Fluffy(60)

One corner of Sanni's mouth goes up in an intrigued smile while Raye blushes hard, looking over my shoulder as I turn to find–surprise!–Will standing there, eyes soulful, hands on his hips, the yes hanging in the air like a golden snitch I just have to reach up and pluck.

“Hi, Rayelyn,” he says to her.

“Will,” she smiles, not correcting him with her preferred name, eyes bouncing from me to him over and over as if she's decoding a secret message that has an answer she thinks she knows.

I, on the other hand, have no idea what is going on.

“Sorry to interrupt, but Mallory and I have some very important unfinished business,” he says to Raye and Sanni, pulling me away with gentle firmness that is as impossible to resist as it is paradoxical.

“May I have this dance?” He starts to lead us toward the dance floor.

“What? But I want to talk to Raye and–”

“Dance. Dance with me, Mallory.”

“Why would I dance with you?”

“Because you're my date and because I took dance lessons for my sister's wedding and don't want them to go to waste.”

“So now I'm a pity dance?”

“You're not a pity anything.” Carrying beyond the two of us, his voice has an insistent finality to it. As if he knows exactly what's happening and is trying to help, the DJ is playing Ed Sheeran's "Perfect." Will's right hand goes to the small of my back and his left hand takes my right one in his, our bodies making the awkward transition from two people with differing agendas to one couple moving in concert.

Except I'm not melting into him the way a true dance partner would.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmurs as we turn in a circle, the DJ's lights blurring and forming a strangely distant rainbow between patches of darkness.

“What? No. I’m fine.”

“What Osgood said is not fine. What Alisha said is not fine. Nothing about this night is fine.” The words skim over my heart, the touch light and protective.

“No. It’s not. But I am fine.”

His hold on me tightens. That hand flat against my lower back is awfully possessive as he pulls me closer. The thin fabric of my skirt is loose against my thighs, and boy, can I feel the coiled power in his legs.

I’m feeling something else between us, too, and it’s turning me on.

I can’t. I can’t. Will was sweet to invite me to this reunion, but what just happened is proof that nothing really changes. I mean, I’ve changed. I’ve grown. I’ve analyzed and reflected, but while I’m an adult now, I’m really not all that different than I was ten years ago.

If anything has changed, it’s my attitude.

I don’t care.

Clarity has a funny way of showing up when you need it most.

Seeing Rayelyn didn't cause a sudden, life-altering realization, but it confirmed what I already know: I get to decide who I am. Not this crowd. Not my parents. Not Will Lotham or Perky or Fiona. Me.

I always have.

I just let a lot of psychological clutter get in the way.

Time to clean house.

The music winds down, the slow melody turning into the opening chords of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer."

Ah, irony.

I start to pull away, realizing it's true.

I don’t care.

I don’t care that Will’s wolf pack group of friends from high school is stuck on standards that never mattered in the first place. I don’t care that half the people in here have graduate degrees and spouses and kids and houses and I don’t. I don’t care that my life’s trajectory has taken me way out of the arc of expectation. I’m not a machine. I’m not an object. The surface of any given scene isn’t all that matters.

I am deep ripples in a glacier-carved lake. Most of these people only care about what that lake’s shining surface mirrors back to them.

Pulling away slightly, I make sure I can see Will’s face. His eyes are unfocused, and he’s watching me with the most bewildered look. As we lock on each other, his attention, well...

Deepens.

And then he goes out of focus as he moves in.

Is he doing what I think he’s doing?

The brush of light stubble on my jawline makes me start and pull back, nerves like skittish horses in a thunderstorm. I’m so alive in his arms, but stuck in the past on the inside, my heart marshaling my internal troops for a long, steady march into the present.

I’m so many different people, all living memories in disparate times.

“Mallory,” he says, pulling me closer until I can’t see him, my glasses making him blur. His scent is so delicious, soap and light cologne, his ever-present scent of lime and mint. The low, anguished tone doesn’t really match the music, and now our feet are barely moving in spite of the insistent beat. I swallow, hard, as all the people inside me suddenly join together as one, fully present, here and watching.

This is it.

This is real life.

And you know what?

I really don’t care.

“I really don’t care,” he says, like he read my mind. His lips are against the soft skin below my earlobe. I shiver.

“Don’t care about–” I hold my breath until I can’t take it anymore. “–me?”

“Don’t care about Osgood. Or Fletch. Or Ramini. They’re all assholes.” His nose rubs against my hair and he inhales slowly, a savoring kind of torture that turns every inch of my skin into fire.