AllFreeNovel
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Where are you? Fiona texts me as I sit on the toilet in the women’s room at the country club.
In the bathroom, I text back.
Did I hear Will shouting for you? she asks.
I guess. Pretty sure he was eaten by a sharknado of cheerleaders, I reply.
Meow, she texts. Mallory’s getting catty.
No, I think to myself as I sniffle. I’m just tired of hoping to be treated differently.
And then I hear a man’s voice call out: “Mallory?” in the hallway.
The clack clack clack of jogging footsteps halts, followed by a pause, then the door opens. Heavy breathing echoes in the tiled room, the bathroom nothing more than a temporary sanctuary, stall after stall in a row, the doors too short to provide a real hiding place.
And no way will I lower my dignity further by standing on a toilet seat to hide my location. Who does that?
“Mal?”
I hold my breath.
“I can see your shoes. I know you’re in there.” Through the wide space between the door and the frame I see Will lean his hip against the line of sinks, the counter a gorgeous piece of granite with a faux-broken edge, designed to look raw and natural.
“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.”
