Page 15 of Shroom for Improvement

Where I’d always waited for him.

All along, my plan had been to steal his cufflink and alert him to that fact, getting him all riled up and annoyed, so the next day he would march straight up to me and demand what for. Thereby creating the perfect-ish scenario for us to finally chat—for me to finally convince him to go on a date with me.

Academically speaking, of course.

I’d built myself up to it. No longer dancing around my nervous chatter, I would have come clean about my research project and admitted how three years of attempting conversation with him had all been for science.

Yep, for science. Definitely nothing else.

This morning, I had caught the train like I usually did, despite not even needing to be at the university, and hey, guess what? He hadn’t been there again. The man never took a day off, and suddenly it was four days in a row.

I’d asked Patricia why Claude was so uncharacteristically absent and had she any idea when he’d return, and her response was,“Who?”

I let my head hit the end of the mattress and released a sigh. What was I meant to do for two whole weeks until term started again? Go in to work still? Get the train every morning in the hopes Claude was just taking a few days’ rest? Go into the lab, and stare at the same data I’d been staring at for years?Hope that something, anything, will mean first-hand research is obsolete? Or look for another shroom fae to experiment on? It was difficult finding the first one, but there had to be others. I could try other cities, maybe. Or other grotty, gross U-Rail stations.

I’d wasted three years of my life trying to get one shroom fae to agree to have a fucking coffee with me. I couldn’t stand to waste another three.

Maybe it was time to fuck my entire project in the bin and think up something else? I’d exhausted every piece of literature about mushroom magic I’d gotten my hands on. Not that there was a lot.

But I didn’t want to quit.

I’d come so far, and if I could help someone, somehow... if it held answers...

Surely it was not a want or a need, but a duty.

So maybe I wouldn’t give up, at least not yet, but I definitely needed a break. Claude would be there in two weeks’ time, just as present and steadfast and reliable and miserable as ever, on the eight-thirty to Downtown. I’ll let him give me a bollocking then, and afterwards, I will demand a date—

Not a date.

An academic interview.

My phone buzzed, and I glanced at the screen.

Mash:

You coming tonight, or what?

I gathered all my breath in puffed-up cheeks and let it out really slowly. Maybe a break was just what I needed. A chance to not think about all of this for a night. Maybe I would drink from Mash’s big yellow keg, get absolutely wankered, and forcefully scrub these thoughts from my mind. Or maybe I’d meet a cuteguy—we’d hit it off, fool around, fall in love, get married at Gryphon World, and I’d forget all about Claude.

What did Mash say Marnie’s friend was called again? Josh? Was it Josh?

Me:

Sure. Need me to pick anything up on my way?

Mash Cassidy lived in Waterside, not too far from my own apartment. Just across the river, in fact.

I chose my building based on the communal rooftop allotments and the beautiful view out over the docks and piers, but Mash chose his because of its proximity to the bars, and nightclubs, and gyms, and generally anywhere he deemed decent “hunting” ground. So it was always bedlam in the few blocks surrounding his place. Pure noise pollution, and light pollution, and smell pollution—if that was even a real thing—and actual pollution. Like takeaway-food litter, empty cans and bottles of whatever, and people using the streets as toilets.

Mash loved it. I think he still considered himself a student at heart. I was probably too old for it all now, but Mash was insatiable. He was the horniest person I knew, and a hedonistic fucker to boot. And while this meant his parties were usually lots of fun and very well attended, he sometimes lagged somewhat when it came to effort invested in our friendship.

I couldn’t say I minded too much. We were colleagues more so than friends, and I didn’t often have cause for complaint on that front. He was never late. He was reliable. He always pulled his weight. It was just... I wished the relationship was more reciprocal. I wished we could do things I enjoyed sometimes. Like hiking, or gardening, or sitting by an open logfire with a good book and a great glass of wine. Not every outside-of-work interaction needed to end with Mash vomiting in a bush, or off his tits on party drugs, or abandoning me in some grimy little hovel of a bar because he’d met a human woman with a knotting kink.

They were his Achilles’ heel—human women.

Sometimes I even questioned the validity of his work ethics. Did he care about saving the planet? Or was it the“I’m a professor of dendrology at Remy University”pickup line that sold the profession to him? And the easy access to the students?

I shuddered and buzzed myself into Mash’s building.

---