Fluffy

by Julia Kent

“I am not taking a job just because you two want me to spare you the pain of my existence.”

  “That’s not why. You need the money. Plus, Will is well connected.”

  I hate that she’s right.

  “Do a good job for him and he could help you get another job. Full time, with benefits, like you had when you worked for the Tollesons.”

  “Why did they have to sell the business? And why did they sell it to a heroin dealer?”

  “Pretty sure that wasn’t intentional, Mal.”

  “I know. But I really loved my life. And it all got ruined when Sven and Joyce decided to retire and sell off. And then the DEA showed up and took my work computer away. And my Soylent.”

  Fiona grinds her teeth. “That powdered meal supplement is disgusting. And they took it because they thought it was fentanyl.”

  “I know. I went through decontamination, remember?” That was also the last time anyone other than my gyn touched my boob. I don’t blurt that out.

  I have some standards.

  Besides, Fiona and Perky already know that, so it doesn’t matter.

  “Think about it this way. You spent all those years wanting something from Will you could never have.”

  “Uh... thanks? You’re really selling it.”

  “Your crush on him took something out of you.”

  “And?”

  “Maybe getting to know the real Will could help you to reframe. Refocus. And move forward by getting something out of him.”

  “Like what?”

  “A permanent job? A lead? Or even just a reclamation.”

  “You sound like a therapist.”

  “I’m a preschool teacher. Same thing.”

  “Fiona...”

  “Promise me you’ll take it. Email him and say yes. Worst case, you quit on day one. Best case, you end up married with kids and a family real estate business.”

  “That is one hell of a lot of room between two extremes.”

  “It’s a spectrum. Just go with it.”

  “If I don’t take the job, you two will never, ever get off my back, will you?”

  “Have fun watching Jeopardy every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. while your dad clips his toenails in the living room on a hand towel, Mal. If you lose your apartment, that’s what you’re facing.”

  “Maybe I’ll get a roommate.”

  “You live in a one bedroom apartment. Good luck with that.”

  “Toenails and Alex Trebek, or Will Lotham.”

  “I can see how this is such a difficult choice,” she says dryly. “You suffer either way.”

  “I do! I really do.”

  “Email Will before Perky hacks into your account and sends an acceptance email on your behalf.”

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “You’ve been friends with her as long as I have, Mal. You seriously think she hasn’t already?”

  Damn.

  I quickly check email.

  “Liar!” I accuse.

  “Made you open your app. Now it’s simple. Find Will’s email and reply, “I accept. When do I start?”

  I stare at Will’s email:

  I like how you started to re-arrange the living room. And that feng shui theory sounded ludicrous, but then again, I’m superstitious enough to bury a statue of St. Joseph when trying to sell a property. I need someone to handle staging for our company. If you’re willing to do a one-month trial as a consultant, I’ve got a gig for you. No coconut oil, and sorry–clothing isn’t optional.

  I type:

  One month. Fully clothed. And I am charging you a 1% commission if the house sells within that month. No negotiation. Take it or leave it.

  Fiona’s reading over my shoulder and gasps.

  “Mal! You’re not serious. You–that reads like Perky wrote it!”

  I close my eyes and tap the screen.

  “You sent it! Oh my God, you sent that?”

  I did.

  I did, and before I can even close the app, a notification informs me I have a reply.

  “He’s replied already!” I choke out.

  “Refresh the screen.”

  “I can’t. I’m paralyzed.”

  Fi takes the phone from me and reads aloud.

  One percent commission and no hourly rate. If you think your feng shui is that strong, prove it. :) As for clothing, we can be flexible.

  “Oh, ho ho!” Fiona crows. “He’s a crafty one, isn’t he?”

  A surge of adrenaline rips through me.

  Deal, I type.

  “Mal!” Fi’s mouth is open in shock. “You need guaranteed money. You can’t control whether a house gets sold or not. One percent of nothing is–”

  I hit Send.

  “One percent of nothing is nothing to lose,” I tell her. “He thinks he’s so smart? He thinks he has all the power? I’ll show him.”

  See you tomorrow, he says, giving me his office address.

  “I think I have a job,” I whisper.

  “I think you have a masochistic streak.”

  “Same thing.”

  7

  I can’t quite catch my breath.

  It’s my first day at my new job working for Will, and I forgot about the fringe benefits. I may not be an employee, technically–just a contractor–but my, my, my, does Will look so fine in that suit.

  He’s on his phone and angled away from me, face turned up to the arched ceilings that soar as high as my pulse right now. It’s summer, so he’s wearing a lightweight tan suit, the kind that looks really good on models in Nordstrom’s ads but horrible on everyone else.

  Unless you’re Will Lotham.

  If Tom Brady became a supermodel like his wife and started doing Ralph Lauren ads, he’d be one tenth as hot as Will right now. White dress shirt open at the neck. No tie. Tan suit, dark brown leather shoes, and patterned socks, a flash of color peeking out from under his pants cuff. A leather belt the same shade as his shoes bisects his body, the flat abs a wall of yummy goodness as he pivots, turning his body to write something down on a notepad.

  In a flash, sunlight glints off the pen he’s using, a silver pen in a hand that moves gracefully.

  “Mmm hmm. Yes. No. Ten percent. Deliverable is fine,” he says as I stand there, suddenly awkward. I move, just enough to make a sound so he knows I’m here. Will looks over, waves, and turns back to his call.

  No smile. But I’m mature enough to know his lack of a smile has nothing to do with me.

  Um, right?

  He’s wearing reading glasses, perched on the bridge of his nose the way people who haven’t worn glasses most of their life balance them. Whoever he’s speaking with has his full attention. He doesn't notice that I'm watching him.

  Out of the blue, a grin spreads across his face, making him change from a hard-edged business executive to a carefree, sigh-able man. He’s all ease and achievement, relaxed and unwaveringly stoked. The energy in the room changes so fast.

  And now he’s ending the call.

  The downtown headquarters of The Lotham Group turns out to be in a former yoga studio. Brass elephants line a very high shelf that runs a few feet below the tall ceilings in a room painted in purple and mustard tones that make my trigeminal nerve do the samba. The place is clearly not finished, giving off the feel of an office in limbo. They've either just moved in or are preparing to move out.

  I close my eyes. I let the feeling find me. There it is. The space tells me.

  Moving in.

  “Who is your, um, interior designer?” I ask him, nervous, needing distraction as he approaches me, his eyes hard to read.

  “My mother.”

  “She’s in the field?”

  “No. She just has opinions.” He looks up, eyes scanning as he takes off the reading glasses and tucks them in a case, a wry grin making his dimples appear.

  “So do I.”

  “And? What do you think of the color scheme?”

  “I think your mother loves you and wants you to be in a warm, productive env
ironment.”

  He smiles wider and looks around.

  “Which is why this entire office needs to be remodeled.”

  His fingertips rub his left eyebrow. “That’s not what I hired you for.”

  “Oh, I know. But I can’t come into a room that almost seems designed to suck energy out of its inhabitants and not say something.”

  “Are you going to be like this in every single physical setting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I need to set some limits with you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Don’t tell me every single room in my business office needs to be remodeled. I don’t have a budget for that. We're straddling two locations right now as we migrate into this space. All my employees are still in the old offices until next week.”

  “I can tell you what you need to know. Once you know, you can prioritize.”

  “Remodeling is not a priority.”

  “You don’t care about productivity?” I ask, giving him a hard stare.

  His double take is so gratifying. “Of course I care about productivity.”

  “How about profits?”

  “I care even more about profits.” Will goes from mild annoyance to interested attentiveness. I like being the focus of his attention.

  Like it a little too much.

  “Then you’d better let me remodel every inch of this place,” I declare in a haughty tone that covers my nervousness.

  “First of all, no. Second–why would you need to remodel every inch?”

  “Intuition.”

  “I didn’t hire you for your intuition. I hired you to reorganize the space and feel of my properties to help them sell. Starting with my parents' house.”

  “Which means you hired me for my intuition.”

  “I hired you for your skill.”

  “Skill plus gut feelings equals intuition. I have a sixth sense when it comes to space.”

  His attention becomes derision. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who believes in woo.”

  “Woo?”

  Will eyes my purse. “You don’t have a smudge stick in there?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “It's in my car. I pull that out at the end, after we’ve cleared the energy blocks.” I give him a big smile.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “If you want him involved, you need an ordained minister or priest. I don’t specialize in that kind of energy clearance.”

  “You were the valedictorian of our graduating class, and now you burn sage for a living?”

  “I do way more than burn sage, buddy.”

  “Don’t tell me you use crystals?”

  “Crystals? Do I look like an amateur?”

  He cracks a grin.

  “I do spells,” I inform him. It’s hard not to smile back when someone so deliciously hot is grinning at me, but I do not. I am resolute.

  “Spells?”

  “Witchcraft.”

  “You do not.” His chuckle is low and throaty, and it makes me tingle.

  “I’m distantly related to Rebecca Nourse, you know. The famous accused witch.” We’ve grown up a short drive from Salem. Every schoolkid in New England knows who Rebecca Nourse is. It must be written into the history curriculum that proper education includes having the crap scared out of you in fifth grade by going to the Salem witchcraft museums.

  “We’re all distantly related to people from 1690s New England,” he shoots back. “Confess, oh, witch, that ye be a liar, ye seductress o’ the night.”

  “You sound like a pirate. Not a Puritan.” Oh, how his mouth revels in the word seductress.

  “Both start with p. Close enough.” He laughs easily, with a confidence I remember all too well. Not arrogance. A surety that who he is, how he is in the world, is enough.

  “Fine,” I admit. “I don’t do spells.” My voice is breathy. Ethereal. He makes me feel like I’m floating away, barely here, turning into stardust.

  Wet, thrumming stardust.

  He walks across the room to an unoccupied desk and gestures for me to sit behind it. He takes the visitor's chair.

  “My bottom line is this: I need to unload my parents’ house. I have a price threshold. If you can get it to sell, you get one percent of the selling price.” He slides a folder across the desk to me. I open it. A contract is inside.

  “That’s the agreement we had in our email. What’s in here?” Pulling all the loose pieces of myself together and focusing on business is harder than it should be.

  “Standard legalese. Plus your budget.”

  I almost blurt out, I have a budget? but I stop myself. Instead, I pretend to be a wise, edgy business woman and read the legalese.

  “There isn’t a line item for dandelion root in here,” I joke.

  His eyes narrow. “Where did you go to college again?” he asks. A part of me is hurt he doesn't remember, but my cool, sophisticated grown-up parts hand her a Lisa Frank journal and some glitter pens so she'll be distracted.

  “Brown.”

  Eyebrows shoot up. “That's right. They taught you the woo at Brown?”

  “I taught them the woo at Brown.” I bat my eyelashes as he chuckles. Hearing him laugh is its own reward. “And quit talking to me while I’m reviewing a contract. It’s bad business.”

  “It’s good negotiation.”

  “Are we negotiating? I thought the terms were set.”

  “Contracts are never set. They’re just set for now,” Will says, but then he goes quiet.

  Two and a half pages later, I’m happy but troubled. Happy because the contract is fine.

  Troubled because Will seems to think I shouldn’t be happy. Shouldn’t settle for what he’s offered.

  His expectation that I will negotiate is the only reason I am going to negotiate.

  “I want to add to the budget.”

  “What do you want to add? Dandelion root?”

  “A live elephant.”

  “An elephant.”

  “And nine ounces of platypus milk.”

  “Really? What does that do to the energy of my parents’ house?”

  “You ride the elephant around the outside of the house while drinking the milk.”

  “And that does what?”

  “It makes me laugh. And when I laugh, it gives a space good energy.”

  “You really went to an Ivy League school and this is the result?”

  “It’s okay, Will. You don’t have to understand. Not everyone does.” I give him a pitying smile, calculated to be condescending. “And if you’re having second thoughts because you know you’ll lose–”

  “No second thoughts.”

  I sign the contract. “Great. Done. Now get me some platypus milk.”

  “You didn’t attach an addendum.”

  “Damn.” I look around the office, which is atrociously claustrophobic in spite of the fact that it’s about five thousand square feet of tall-ceilinged warehouse space. “I’ll have to find one of the critters and milk her myself.”

  “You are a woman of many skills, Mallory.”

  “Or I’m easily distracted. You pick.”

  “My pick is for you to go back to my parents’ house with me and get started on the fluffing.”

  “Excuse me?” I pretend to be offended, but my blood is supercharged. The mental image Will’s joke conjures....

  Rich laughter fills my ears. “House fluffing. Did you really answer that Craigslist ad and not know what a fluffer was?”

  And... here we go.

  “Not all of us spend more time reading Urban Dictionary than The Atlantic.”

  “It doesn’t take being well educated to know what a fluffer is, Mallory.”

  “Survey any ten random strangers on the street and I’ll bet you three of them have no idea the term fluffer is for porn. In New England, I’ll bet half will think you’re talking about fluffernutters.”

  “Is that what you call an insane fluffer?”


  “You’re about to get a stapler to the nose, Lotham.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time my nose took a hit.” He pinches the bridge of it. “But it would be the first time a woman threw something at me in anger.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “I tend to date nonviolent women.”

  “Or ones who are exceedingly patient.”

  As the words come out of my mouth, I feel his breath hitch. The air between us changes. I don’t know why he offered me this job. I also don’t know why I look up and catch his eye.

  But I’m glad I do.

  Because that half smile on his face is the best.

  Will leans across the desk and taps the stapler. “You don’t have a license to wield a deadly weapon, Mallory. And I didn’t hire you to fling inanimate objects at my face.”

  I wonder about animate objects I can fling at his face.

  Wait. No. Halt. Ahhhhh! Stop thinking that. I wince, which makes him frown.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, looking at me intently, making this so much worse.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look like you’re in pain.”

  “It’s my contact lens.”

  He stands up and steps close to me, so I stand, too. “Why are you wearing these when you have contacts?” he asks, touching the arm of my glasses.

  “That totally explains the pain!” I gasp. Whew. An excuse.

  His thumbs and index fingers delicately grasp the edges of my glasses, pulling them forward, giving me time for a deep breath that fills me with the scent of Will. Instantly, he’s in soft focus. He seems more solid, the sharp edges blurred, making it easier for me to quell the growing storm inside me.

  “Better?” he asks.

  “Much,” I lie.

  “Good.” I can’t really see his face, but I can read his body language. Hear his breath. Smell his aftershave and the soapy scent of a man who showered an hour ago, lime and mint mixing with something earthy, something cotton. He’s close enough to smell coffee on his breath, and I have to stop moving, stop inhaling, stop the world because it’s spinning faster than I can think.

  Slower than I can feel.

  His head tilts. “You look different without them.”

  “Most people do.”

  “I can’t decide which I like better.”

  My heart stops beating.

  “Which do you prefer?” he asks me, handing the glasses over, his fingers grazing mine.