Chapter 2 #2
Will remained still, like a hunter trying not to spook a deer. Lena was asking questions no one at Nightly Global News would dare ask, not even him. Freya’s private life was strictly off limits. Could this nosy but disarming bartender get something out of her?
“No, Abby and I didn’t date. There’s no history.” No dice. Nice try, Lena.
“Oh, these two have history,” someone said behind him.
Then someone else added, “Can you say, 9021-oh my God, drama?”
Will turned to see two women walking towards them, blond ponytails poised high on the top of their heads and swishing like excited cat tails with each step.
Freya must have known them because her lips pulled into a smile, and she gasped, but they seemed oddly disinterested in her.
Instead, they walked past Freya and set up camp directly between him and Lena.
The first woman, whose nametag read, “Hi, my name is: Penny Davis,” waved them closer with her finger. “Listen, you want the goss?” He did, in fact, want the goss. He couldn’t help it. This felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that he couldn’t miss, and he leaned in.
“It’s simple,” the other woman, Ashley Brown, according to her nametag, said. “In high school, Freya here was a queen. And little Abby over there was jealous. It was so obvious she wanted to be popular.”
“Exactly,” Penny said.
Ashley made sure Will and Lena were paying attention before she continued. “She reminds me of those yappy little chihuahuas that always bark at the bigger dogs.”
“Oh my God, exactly. And Naomi was always hanging on to her like a bad case of fleas. The whole thing was bizarre.”
Will involuntarily pulled back. A bad case of fleas? He couldn’t claim to know Naomi very well, or at all, really, but that portrayal of her caught him off guard. Then again, he told himself, Ashley and Penny did seem to enjoy the hyperbolic side of life.
“Yeah, it was so sad. But also kind of entertaining. Like four years of binge-watchable, so-pitiful-you-can’t-look-away, d-r-a-m-a.” Ashley looked to Penny for confirmation. “Pen, stop me if I’m wrong.”
Penny shook her head. “Nope. Can confirm that is one hundred percent accurate.”
Freya laughed, but something about it told Will that she wasn’t enjoying their little performance as much as she was letting on. “Will, meet Penny and Ashley. My absolute best friends from school who know a little something about drama themselves. You two haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
“Not where it counts!” Ashley said. “We’re as pretty and as catty as we were freshman year.”
“If I had a drink, I’d cheers to that. But I got interrupted,” Freya said.
Penny gave a very serious nod. “Oh, we know.”
Ashley placed a hand on Penny’s shoulder. “Why do you think we made a beeline over here? Not that we weren’t excited to see you anyway. But that kind of upped our timeline for coming over here.”
“You saw it?” Freya asked.
The solemnity in their eyes was gone, replaced by scandal-hungry eyes. “Are you kidding?” Penny said. “Abby drink-slapped you. Everyone saw it.”
“Everyone,” Ashley said.
“I wish I could say I was shocked. But I’m not,” Penny’s attention was back on giving Will and Lena the goss.
“No, not in the slightest,” Ashley confirmed, even though no one had asked. “If I were on the reunion committee, I can tell you I would have lost her invitation, that’s for sure. It seemed inevitable that she was going to do something to try to ruin this for you.”
The bartender let out a high-pitched phew. “Guess I dodged a bullet then, as I was about to give her my number.”
Will looked at the bartender, grateful he wasn’t the only one finding himself in this situation. “I was about to give my number to Abby’s friend. Things went, um, south before we could.”
“Okay, what?” Ashley said.
“Um, no.” Penny aimed her finger first at Lena and then turned to Will. “And no.”
“No?” Will echoed, feeling a little more deflated each time the duo took another shot at Naomi. He would probably never see her again, but it would be nice if she could at least remain a happy memory.
“Weren’t you listening? Yappy chihuahua’s fleas? That’s Naomi,” Ashley said.
“I’m sure Naomi is a perfectly nice human being,” Penny said. “But if she’s stayed friends with Abby all these years, imagine what kind of Stockholm Syndrome she must be living with.”
“Wait a minute.” Ashley’s eyes grew as wide as an anime character’s. “If you were going to get Naomi’s number, then that means you and Freya aren’t here together.”
There was nothing between him and Freya, never had been and never would be.
She was a superior, a colleague, a mentor, a friend.
Freya didn’t even seem like she had the time or inclination for romantic relationships, and his respect was too intertwined with a healthy dose of fear to make room for any attraction.
But he didn’t want any of that well-defined boundary to be spoiled by insinuations that could plant seeds of concern in Freya’s mind.
The sudden rush of discomfort forced the words out of his mouth too quickly.
“Us? No, no, no.” He knew as soon as he said it that he had made a rookie mistake.
Ashley and Penny’s pupils dilated to saucers, thinking they were on the trail of some more goss.
He knew better than that. When it came to people’s perceptions, vehement denial was as good as an admission. The best thing to do was to answer a question with a question.
Freya, of course, didn’t miss a beat. Before they could get a word in, she laughed and said, “You think I’d bring a date in a T-shirt?”
He knew what she was doing. She was matching Mean Girl for Mean Girl.
Setting herself up as the meanest of all.
But Penny and Ashley couldn’t see the wires behind the illusion.
His graphic tees, in this case an image of the Dunder Mifflin logo from The Office, were an ongoing joke between them.
In the early days, she had side-eyed his laid-back style, a direct contrast to her flawlessly curated appearance.
She probably still didn’t love it, but somewhere along the way, her disapproval had softened into amusement and teasing.
And so, he kept collecting shirts, but now each one was carefully placed in the hopes that they might earn a reluctant smile.
Either way, her plan had worked. Ashley and Penny tried to laugh off their mistake like it had all been a joke.
“No, of course not,” Penny said.
Now that she had them off balance, Freya set about putting the record straight. “Will is my Associate Producer. We’re heading out to London tonight for the G7 Summit right after I accept this award. He offered to wait in the car, but I said he should come in and have a few drinks.”
For the first time, Penny and Ashley had nothing to say.
“Speaking of the award.” Freya reached into her purse.
“I need to head over to the stage. But it was a highlight to see you both. We should catch up soon! Lena, it was wonderful meeting you.” Her hand came out of her purse with a bill folded between her fingers, which she tucked into Lena’s palm.
Then, without another word, she turned and began walking away.
Will followed after her, but behind them, he could still hear Lena.
“Did you mean to—ma’am, this is a hundred dollars.”
Of course, she’d meant to. She was always one step ahead of the story.
She was counting on recency bias to change the narrative around what had transpired when Lena, Penny, and Ashley told their friends what had happened.
Gregarious and generous, Freya Jonsson was the type of person who tipped a bartender at her reunion one hundred dollars.
That’s what they’d remember. The drink incident would only be folded in as part of the story, rather than the main attraction.
Freya didn’t stop, didn’t respond. She only gave a toodle-oo wave of her fingers.
Will had to make full use of his long legs to keep up with Freya.
“Your friends seemed …” He wanted to say something kind but was having trouble finding anything genuine.
“Nice.” The way he said it almost came out like a question.
“They were right about one thing: they haven’t changed one iota. They’re still as shallow as a kiddie pool.”
“I mean, they’re your friends, so I wasn’t going to say it, but … yeah. I mean, who says ‘the goss?’”
She gave him the first genuine smile he’d seen from her all night. “They were good friends to have in high school.”
If all those things were true, then maybe everything they said about Naomi wasn’t. Maybe there was still a chance. “You think they were right about Naomi too? She seemed pretty … amazing.”
Freya didn’t even look at him. “I don’t know,” she said brusquely. “But it’s too late now anyway, isn’t it?”
His sigh was silent, but deep. She was right.
It was too late. Which was probably for the best. Dating the best friend of Freya’s high school nemesis probably wasn’t going to end well.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little crestfallen.
“Yeah, I guess so. It’s too bad. She seemed like something special. ”