Parker

My reunion starts in one hour and four minutes, and I am a flipping disaster. It’s so bad, I think even Sia and Willow know something’s wrong.

We’re still at the library. The program was amazing, and now there are about four hundred more books that I want to read. Which will have to wait, because we need to go.

But Knox is still talking to Nancy, the newscaster who did the bachelor auction. She remembered me too, and I think she sniffs a story. She’s still peppering him with questions while her cameraman films it all. Even Judy’s chewing on a fingernail.

Knox’s boss—not Gertie, who’s a total sweetheart, but the grumpy bald dude whose face reminds me of one of my ex’s infected testicles—has been getting twitchier and twitchier, but he still has nothing on me.

“I really need to go,” I whisper to Judy. It’s physically impossible to stand still. “We need to go.”

The Times reporters are gone, as are most of the people who came to the program, including Sia, Willow, and Lila, who snuck out without a word to Nancy the Newscaster. A couple bloggers are still chatting with the last two authors and one of the reporters.

Knox cuts a look at me.

Go on, that look says.

I’ll meet you there, that look says.

I’m pretty sure my face replies Oh, fuck, no.

One eyebrow twitch is all I get back.

One eyebrow twitch of you can do this, Parker. I believe in you.

Dammit.

“I have to go,” I say to Judy again. “Tell Knox—just tell him to meet me at the high school. Wear whatever. But I need to go get changed.”

“He’ll be there as soon as he can.” Judy squeezes my arm. “If he loses this job…” she murmurs.

“I know.”

More than that he needs a job, he loves this job. And his patrons love him. Or so I assume by the number of women who stopped on their way out to tell me how lucky I am, or how his recommendations changed their lives, or how much they hate those Times reporters and how glad they are that he put them in their place.

He belongs here. Even if his blog could put food on his table and keep a roof over his and Nana’s heads, it wouldn’t give him the human interaction he needs.

Same for Lila’s job offer.

“Go on,” Judy says. “Your classmates aren’t going to recognize you. I can’t wait to hear all about tonight.”

I just can’t wait until it’s over.

Instead of going home, I race to the nearest department store and grab the first dress that fits, then splurge on a pair of Louboutins that the sales lady assures me will say fuck you, high school bitches, check out my shoes now.

My knee bounces the entire ride to my old high school. No renting out a hotel ballroom for this reunion. Nope, we need the full experience of lingering cafeteria food smell, squeaky tile floors, and the dank mustiness of sixty years of high school misery. But I’m barely out of my Lyft before I spot disaster. “What the hell?”

All four of my brothers are lingering just inside the fence surrounding the school grounds. Rhett, Gavin, Brooks, and Jack, all in suits, none of them fresh-shaven, all sporting identical We’re going to kick someone’s ass faces.

“Ready for your reunion,” Rhett says.

Jack looks like he’d rather gouge his eyeballs out with a dull spoon than be here. I can relate.

“Figured sissy-boy could use some backup,” Gavin adds. “Where is sissy-boy?”

“Stuck at work. He’ll be here soon.” Never thought I’d hear myself say that about Knox, but there it is. I texted him when I hopped in the car, and I’m still waiting for his reply.

“Also, you are not coming in,” I say, earning a curious glance from a couple in matching jeans and Julian Oakland High sweatshirts.

Oh, fuck. Was this supposed to be casual?

“No defense for sissy-boy working?” Brooks asks with a smirk.

“Go have your pissing contest somewhere else. Aren’t you supposed to be playing a game tonight?”

“Family emergency.”

My brothers combined are almost as big as Sia’s brothers combined. In a normal situation, with normal humans, they stand on their own and are supposedly a fairly intimidating bunch. I’ve known them too long for them to be anything other than four annoying nuisances.

Also, Knox can hold his own with each of them. I’m almost positive.

Whenever he gets here.

Which better be soon, because I don’t know if I can do this.

Still, I shoulder through the wall of my brothers like I’m large and in charge. And I can’t deny some comfort at knowing they’re trailing me up the stairs and into the tan-brick-and-windowed building.

We check in at the registration desk, a fancied-up cafeteria table, which—of course—is manned by the former head cheerleader. Nary a wrinkle, gray hair, or sag to her boobs. She probably married a billionaire and had some work done. Would it be petty of me to hope he’s also left her for a younger model?

“Oh my G-O-D,” she says. “Did Pimple Popper Parker hire you to play her tonight?”

Nope. Not petty.

My heart rate is leaping into the stratosphere. The terror of reliving the trauma of high school floods my mouth, and my confidence shrinks to the size of a pimple. She looks Brooks up and down and mrrowls. Seriously. She mrrowls at my brother. “Hello, you handsome devil. What’s your name?”

Brooks gestures to his nose. “Ah, you’ve got something…”

Her eyes flare and she lunges under the table, coming up with a compact mirror. “What? Where?”

“Oh, sorry. Thought that was your nose, but your asshole’s showing, and you sprouted two,” he says. “You’re not in high school anymore. Grow up.”

Her jaw hits the table. He peels the backing off my nametag, and rubs it onto my breast. “Do me, baby?”

I’m going to kill my brother. But not until someone actually recognizes him as my brother. “Again?” I grit out.

I push too hard making sure I get that nametag on good and solid. Still, it’s working, because my blood pressure is actually going down.

Brooks tucks my arm into his elbow and turns us to follow the crowd of my former classmates trailing past lockers to the cafeteria.

Behind me, Ms. Former Head Cheerleader is sputtering to my other three brothers. “You can’t go in there without an invitation. I’ll call security.”

“I am fucking security,” Rhett growls, and I know he’ll do something insane like climb the walls to Spider-Man his way across the ceiling to get in if he has to. “And you’re fucking pissing me off.”

Okay, fine. Sometimes having brothers isn’t so bad.

“I still don’t understand why you’re here,” Brooks says.

“Closure.”

“Liar.”

“It’s because her jackass boss wants her to talk to Mr. Pickle,” Rhett supplies.

Gavin growls. Jack doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s back there, lurking with us.

After a lap around the cafeteria, we’ve concluded Randy Pickle isn’t here. We’ve also concluded that only half the football jocks got fat and bald and took jobs selling furniture at their uncle’s stores—or something similar—and some of them think thrusting their hips at me while their wives or dates or whoever watch is appropriate, and the rest think Whoa, dude, you grew up to be a girl is a nice thing to tell my boobs. My brothers take turns as my escort, with three branching out to look for Randy while one makes sure I don’t need to suddenly be whisked away and saved from myself or anyone else.

“Not so sure I would’ve bid on Tarzan, but I’m beginning to think that bachelor auction is the smartest thing you’ve ever done,” Gavin tells me after we’re propositioned for a three-way by my old geography teacher.

Who, for the record, was student teaching back then, so he’s not that much older than me. Also, he should know Gavin’s my brother, but he’s now sporting more hair out his ears than he is on the top of his head, and I’m wondering if the space between his ears has suffered as much as his hairline.

“You’re such a dick magnet.” Jack plays the quietest of my brothers—keyword being plays—and has uttered exactly five words since we got in the building. “If Tarzan fucks with you, I’ll fucking kill him.”

“I can kill my own ex-boyfriends,” I tell him. “Butt out.”

“Parker? Parker Elliott?”

I recognize the hint of a squeak in the feminine voice, and when I turn, I actually squeal. “Melly Schnozzleheimer!”

“Melly Johnson,” she corrects with a smile. “Thank God I didn’t get married until my late twenties, right?”

I laugh and give her a hug. Melly’s underbite has been corrected, she’s either had laser eye surgery—like me—or she’s wearing contacts, and while she’s rocking the mom jeans, she’s still among the more slender members of our graduating class. We had lunch period together half of high school, and we’d crouch in a corner with Randy and a few other geeks and losers.

And if you can’t figure out for yourself what the jockholes and smearleaders called her, I’m certainly not going to tell you. Though I have to agree—being one step from being Smelly Johnson probably would’ve been worse.

I introduce Gavin and Jack—Rhett and Brooks are on the prowl—and she introduces her husband. David’s a congenial orthodontist whose hair is thinning in that sophisticated way men can pull off. They have three boys under the age of seven, a house not far from the one my parents moved to on Long Island three years ago, and a parrot who apparently thinks he’s a goat.

I’m not going to ask.

“I know we said we’d never have children and make them go through what we went through,” Melly says to me, “but the world needs more nice people, so we’re doing our best to raise them right.”

Something hollow tugs at my heart. “I’m sure they’re amazing. How could they not be?”

She beams. “And David’s already correcting our oldest’s underbite,” she says with a self-conscious laugh that tugs at my heart again, this time with something more substantial. “I married well.”

“He seems like a great guy.”

“I take it you’re not seeing anyone?” she says.

“Oh, I am,” I say. “He’s stuck at work. I got him at a bachelor auction.”

We share a look, and we both crack up. Because whether she believes me or not, I don’t know, but it’s actually awesome to laugh with Melly again.

Jack, surprisingly, has made instant friends with David, saying all the right man-things when David flips out his phone to show off kid pictures, and calls Brooks over to look.

Not because Brooks likes kids.

But because we all recognized the look of a Mets fan having a holy shit, that’s Brooks Elliott moment.

And because my brother isn’t a total shithead, he slips David a signed baseball.

“Where were you hiding that ball?” I demand.

He winks at me. “Where do you think balls go?”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Hey, whoa, you’re Brooks Elliott.” One of the former football jocks squeezes his big ass into the Jack-Brooks-David triangle. “Can I get a picture?”

“You remember my sister, Parker?” Brooks says.

“Oh, yeah, yeah. We go way back,” he says with a glance at my boobs. “Always loved Parker.”

“Get your fucking eyeballs off my sister’s chest,” Jack growls.

The jockhole starts.

“He flushed my trigonometry homework down the toilet once a week and dumped a carton of chocolate milk on me in the cafeteria,” I tell Brooks.

Brooks hooks his chin at the crowd, where I suspect Rhett is watching us. “Swirly time,” he calls.

The jock-ass blanches and stumbles back. “Some other time.”

“When hell freezes over.” Brooks rolls his eyes. “I’m getting bored. When’s Mr. Romance getting here?”

Melly blinks at me. “Mr. Romance?”

“Knox,” I say. “My, ah, fiancé. He writes this blog—”

She interrupts me with another squeal. “Oh my god, you’re Mr. Romance’s fiancée? I love him. I never would’ve tried Carol Pavliska’s Color Me Crazy if it weren’t for him. Love that book. And his blog. It’s so amazing. That letter to the Times editor was just the best.”

“Melly goes to romance signings every chance she gets.” David smiles at her. “She burned breakfast reading all the comments on that letter Mr. Romance wrote to the Times.”

“And it was a delicious burned breakfast,” Melly says.

“Divine,” David agrees quickly like the smart man that he is. “Best breakfast ever.”

High school really was that bad, but Melly made it more bearable. We chat a while longer, until a hushed buzz of excitement sweeps through the cafeteria.

“Tell me they’re not crowning a reunion queen,” Melly says with a roll of her eyes.

I check my phone, because I’m hoping it’s Knox.

Rhett’s been lurking. Though he doesn’t say a word, he disappears effectively into the crowd, and I know he’s going to find the answer to that question, along with destroying said crown if the answer is yes.

Because that’s what Rhett does.

Gavin has drifted away, but I know he’s nearby, most likely staying out of trouble. But possibly causing a little.

“Parker!” Melly grabs my elbow and points toward the hallway. “That’s Randy.”

My pulse launches itself like a rocket, my toes go numb, and the pit of my stomach threatens to crack open and let all my internal organs splat to the floor. I try to be casual about glancing over, but I’m suddenly back in the gym, sporting a crooked blue graduation cap and hearing Madison Farthington and Brittany Fellow behind me whispering. I wonder if they did it. What do you call bumping uglies when they’re so much more hideous than just ugly? Like, humping hideouses? Their kids will probably have buck teeth and hunchbacks and deformed privates. I heard he couldn’t get it up. Not that she’s worth getting it up for…

“Do you still keep in touch?” Melly asks.

I shake my head. Of course she knows about our…thing.

But I never told her about the letter. I didn’t tell my family either.

You ruined my life, Parker. Don’t ever come near me again.

“What the fuck is he wearing?” Brooks says.

I squint. “Is that—”

“A lettuce suit?” Melly finishes for me.

It is.

He’s pulling a vegetarian Lady Gaga. And his wife, who was a total babe in their engagement picture, is sporting a matching, though significantly more revealing, outfit made of…spinach?

No, kale.

Those are definitely the scalloped edges of kale covering her hooha and her anorexic supermodel-sized breasts, which makes her knockers smaller than mine, but nobody cares, because she’s working a bedroom smolder, Botox lips, shampoo commercial hair, and a kale dress.

I square my shoulders.

I’ve worked in organic foods for the last fifteen years, and my target has just entered the building sporting vegetables.

It’s showtime.