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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.”
Chapter Fifteen
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.
