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His house?
Did he just say his house?
I’m fourteen.
In an instant, I’m back to being a freshman. I’m seeing Will Lotham for the first time, in the hallway where we have assigned lockers next to each other. L and M. Lotham and Monahan. Just like that, with a human grizzly bear scrambling into torn jeans and Spatula screaming into his smartphone, I’m frozen, transported back to 2004.
Will Lotham is talking to me. The Will Lotham.
Talking to me. On a porn set.
In his house.
He bends down and touches me, nudging my shoulder. “Look at you. Glassy eyes. Non-responsive. What are you on?”
“On?” I chirp, finally finding a voice and the will to move, pulling myself up off the ground on legs so numb, I might as well have bathed in Novocaine.
“You’re high as a kite.” Disgust ripples through his voice, but he stops himself mid-breath, his head cocking slightly. “Wait a minute. You’re really familiar.”
Beastman turns and interrupts. “You said you didn’t do film, Mal. Maybe you lied? This guy’s seen you in something?”
“Mal?” Will says, eyes narrowing, mouth firmly set in anger. Then he softens. “Mallory?”
Spatula inserts himself between us, Will dropping my shoulder. He waves his phone in Will’s face. “I have a signed rental contract. We paid the deposit to rent this place for today and tomorrow, fair and square. It’s all done through the online booking agency, and–”
Red and blue lights flash, fast, into the house from outside, the cut-off screech of sirens finally breaking through my awareness.
“Tell it all to the cops,” Will growls at him. “You broke so many rules.”
Oiled up and panting, Beastman stands tall, spine straight. His, uh, beastdom stands even straighter. “You got a problem?”
Will Lotham was quarterback for the Harmony Hills Hornets. He’s a tall one–six two, one eighty, nothing but muscle and flow. All his stats come streaming back into my brain like I’m a computer program. My eyes cut to Will and I’m guessing he’s added twenty pounds of muscle since we graduated, so I have to adjust my Will Lotham database. He is thicker.
But Beastman is big and hairy and glistening, and in a match between the two, the odds are ever in favor of the guy who smells like coconut oil and looks like Hagrid’s porn twin.
Until Will cocks his arm and decks him.
Beastman goes down.
And no, that’s not a porn joke.
Because he brings me down with him.
All three hundred or so pounds of slick muscle hit me like a rock slide, shoving the entity that is Mallory Monahan into the floor, the anal-bead string wedged between my ass cheeks as I deeply regret the wrap dress I chose for professional style. All the wind knocks out of me as his oily skin slides against my clothes, my arms, my face, and soon I’m pinned beneath a man who doesn’t know the difference between a euphonium and a euphemism, but does know one thing.
“Mal” is another word for bad.
And this, my friends, is the very definition of bad.
“Son of a bitch,” Will swears, shaking his hand out, the air moving as he winces, Beastman toppled on his side, Spatula pressing his hands against his ears.
“Crystal jaw, man,” Spatula mourns. “That’s why he couldn’t keep on with the WWF wrestling.” Eyes darting to the window, Spatula looks at me, then Will, then down at Beastman.
Will bends down, offering me his good hand. “You’re Mallory Monahan. From Harmony Hills? Class of ’09? I knew you were familiar. Jesus, look at you. From valedictorian to this.”
If I could breathe, I’d answer him.
And I would lie. Wouldn’t you?
