Heavy Issues (28 page)

Cole had been close by all the time, helping out, which meant of course that Rose had been around too, sneering at her. Since officially declaring open war on her, and apart from that flimsy respite she got when she and Cole had stopped seeing each other in public, Botox Barbie and her minion crew had been unbearable to have around. They were jealous. She could understand. She was getting laid by Cole and they weren’t, but it was time to get over it and move on. Other fish in the pond and all that shit. But no. No one could accuse those vicious rags of not giving it their best shot.

She tried to block out all the backbiting, ignore them the best she could, but boy, it was difficult. The derogatory way the girls looked at her and their mocking remarks wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t feed into her own insecurities.

Truth was, most times she couldn’t understand what a guy like him saw in someone like her. Why he’d want her, Christy, over anyone else. But he did, and she was walking on cloud nine because of it.

Their relationship had progressed to the scary point where not only did they spend all nights together, but sometimes they didn’t make love; she just snuggled into him and they talked until they fell asleep. They were officially a couple, and although he still wasn’t big on lowering his shields around her, he was getting better. Somehow.

He was willingly volunteering things about himself, but there were always walls within walls with Cole. He’d admitted to wanting a relationship with her that day at Rosita’s, true, but he hadn’t elaborated on that ever since. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had feelings for her, though. She could see it in his face, hear it in his voice, in the way he fought panic every time he found himself opening up to her.

As the last visitor left, Mrs. Wilkinson locked the front door. On Monday the doors of the library would open for business as usual, but for today they were done.

Now there was going to be a small luncheon in the room adjacent to the history section for the town’s authorities and everyone who had taken part in the library’s overhaul, which pretty much included half the town.

Christy had had her hands full, so she’d been happy to let Rose and her entourage organize the party. She hadn’t even gone in that room, preferring to stick around out here with the books and the computers. Besides, many visitors had been interested in the electronic book collection and the e-devices, and it had been lots of fun to show even the most reticent patrons how to benefit from the new technologies.

As the people started moving to the reception room, Christy finished turning off the computers and headed that way. She’d mingle, drink some soda, stay away from the goodies, and get the hell out of there soon.

Cole started walking toward her, but the mayor caught up with him. Something about a new project, so Christy left them there and went ahead. When she entered the room, it took her a second to realize what was wrong. As her brain processed what she was seeing, her blood froze in her veins. Someone had gone all Xerox on the place and the walls were plastered with pictures of her. Pictures of when she was 200 pounds plus.

“What’s that supposed to be?” Christy heard Mrs. Wilkinson asking.

“And more important, who is that?” someone added. She was wondering the same thing too. No matter how many times she looked at pictures of herself from that period, she couldn’t for the life of her recognize herself.

Even though everything inside her rebelled against it, she forced herself to look. There were several close-ups of the same picture, the one taken during that damned wedding where she’d been wearing that horrible orange dress that made her look like she was a supernova about to burst and the whole world was in the blast zone. Oh God, and that wasn’t all. Someone had been adding speech bubbles to her image.
Look at me, I’m so fat no one wants to fuck me.

She couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes and didn’t dare to read the other bubbles.

Annie was the fastest to react. “What the fuck…?” she cursed as she shot a murderous glance at Rose and began hastily taking the color copies from the walls. They hadn’t spared any expense. No cheapo black-and-white attempt to make fun of her. She’d gotten the deluxe, high-definition treatment.

As realization dawned on Sophie and Holly of who it was in the pictures, they joined Annie in ripping papers down. Christy was grateful for their quick response. She’d told them about her weight problem, but she hadn’t gone into detail about how bad it had been. Only Annie had actually seen.

“You’ve gone too far, Rose,” Holly hissed.

Rose batted her lashes. “What makes you think I had anything to do with this? I’m as bewildered as the rest of you. Shocked actually.”

Christy felt sluggish, and her ears were buzzing so badly she couldn't hear all that well. She glanced at Rose, at her smug face, her arms crossed over her chest. The bitch was so proud of herself.

Aunt Maggie and Max were also ripping papers down. Cole and the mayor had just entered the room.

She’d thought those pictures were as good as gone. Damn Facebook and all the other social networks. It’d been much easier to get rid of evidence before, when all you had to do was snatch pictures and rip them. Burn the negatives. Nowadays any bozo could upload it to the Internet and
kaboom
, it’d stay there forever, in a digital limbo, ready to kick your ass at a moment’s notice and when least expected. It was such an irony that she was being screwed over by the same technology she so strongly rallied behind. She would have laughed if she hadn’t feared tears would come out instead.

Her first impulse was to run and hide, but she crushed it. She willed her body into action; she wasn’t giving Rose the satisfaction of seeing her falling apart, not without saying a couple of things first.

Christy strode up to her and glanced to the buffet table. It was supposed to be a frugal luncheon with some finger food and several fruit baskets, not the decadent dessert party she had in front of her. A diabetic could enter sugar shock just by staring at it.

“What did you actually think? That I’d see all these goodies and throw myself at them before I even saw the wonderful wall of fame you have organized for me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if the shoe fits…”

Annie stepped forward and began saying something, but Christy halted her. The support was great, but she had to do this alone.

Christy slowly shook her head, her gaze intent on Rose. If she glanced somewhere else or that orange color caught her eyes again, she was liable to lose it. She drew a calming breath in. “You’re a bitch, Rose. A venomous bitch that can’t even blame age for her bitterness.”

Rose brushed it off. “And you’re a liar. Making everyone think you’re normal when in reality you’re…that!” She gestured at a picture near her. “A fat, disgusting pig that does nothing but stuff her face. Did you actually think you could hide this from us?”

“I haven’t hidden anything from anyone. Yes, this was me,” she said to the room. Then she turned to Rose. “Satisfied, Rose? I pity you. I really do. Outsides are fairly easy to change, no big secret there. You just need some money and some sound fashion advice and you’re set, but changing your insides is another matter altogether. You may be skinny and young, pretty even, but on the inside you’re rotten. Jealousy is eating you up. And guess what…it’ll catch up with you. The rotting will spread; you can’t keep such ugliness hidden forever.”

Rose opened her mouth as if to say something, but Christy pushed on.

“You think you’re gorgeous, but how long is that going to last? How long will your skin keep from wrinkling? Your ass from falling? Your boobs from sagging? Time’s ticking. And there will always be someone younger around, and skinnier. Where will that leave you, Rose?”

Rose puckered. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

“Sure it’s about me. That was me almost six years ago. I had some problems, and I dealt with them in the wrong manner, by eating. I took it out on myself. Not that you could wrap this concept around your tiny pea brain. You have a hell of a problem too, but you take it out on others. You’re mean and spiteful, but you’re nothing special; not even your physical appearance is, because nowadays perky tits grow on trees. Believe me, I know—I’m from LA. You’re just another nasty bitch out to get others because not even you can stand yourself.”

Christy thought she heard Annie laughing. Someone cheered. Rose was saying something, but Christy wasn’t listening. Cole was moving toward her, but she darted out of the building. Someone called out to her. No way was she stopping. She needed to get out of there.

* * * *

He found her pretty easily. He knew she didn’t like being home alone when she felt out of sorts, and she avoided being on the street, so, taking into consideration that her car was in the repair shop and all her friends were still in the library, there was really only one place she could be, and that was the park. She didn’t acknowledge him in any way, didn’t even turn to look at him when he sat next to her.

“You left before the best part,” he began after some time in silence. She didn’t lift her gaze to his. “Your friends said some nasty things to Rose. My aunt too. You should have stayed. I don’t exactly know what Max told her, but she went as red as a tomato.”

He himself would have chewed her head off, but he’d been busy going after Christy, more interested in reaching her than wasting a second speaking to Rose. All that he’d wanted was to hug his woman and reassure her everything was okay.

He would have caught Christy right away outside the library, but his aunt had stopped him.

“Give her two seconds, Cole,”
she’d said.
“She’s upset, and she needs some space.”

He’d managed to give her space, a full ten seconds of it, and then he’d gone after her.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” he asked, tired of her silence. She’d seen him coming her way, but she hadn’t waited for him or signaled in any way that she wanted his comfort, which, although he’d drop dead before admitting it, rode his ass badly. Even now she kept him at a distance.

She didn’t answer.

“And why the fuck are you freezing me out?”

She turned to him and gave him a “duh” look. “Isn’t it self-explanatory? You saw the pictures. You don’t have to pretend anything. You’re off the hook. You can go. We’ll pretend this”—she waved her hand between the both of them—“never happened.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Christy. What kind of shallow bastard do you take me for?”

She kept her mouth stubbornly shut for a long while, and he breathed in deep, praying for calm. He wasn’t going to get anywhere by screaming. “Why would I go? And why would I pretend us never happened? You told me about the weight. I knew.”

“It’s one thing to know I was two hundred pounds. It’s much different to see it.”

He rolled his eyes, but before he could say anything, she sneered at him dismissively. “Don’t dare give me that condescending look. You haven’t been fat a single day in your life, Cole. You have no clue how it was.”

“So tell me how it was,” he shot back at her.

“It was insane, okay?
I
was insane. Do you understand?” Her voice was now rising, and she jumped off the bench and began pacing in front of him. “Insane. I’d finish work and go to three or four different grocery stores because I didn’t dare to buy all my fixes from one—what would the people there think of me? Even then I’d lie to the cashier about a party I was hosting to justify all the crap I had in my shopping cart. Or I’d hit several drive-throughs on the way home after work, pretending I was on an errand for my office and my colleagues had given me a list of what they wanted. You know, one double cheeseburger without ketchup, and ah, yeah, for Paul a big bacon burger, extra mayo. Marge wanted the double milkshake. Like the people behind the counter couldn’t see from my size that all that junk was for me. When later on I heard other people like me talking about how they’d pick food from the garbage they themselves had thrown away, I was horrified. I thought, well, I’m not so bad. But guess what? I was worse than they were, because they at least had a moment of clarity and threw the food away. I never had that moment of clarity. Never mind how stuffed I was, I never threw food in the garbage. I was the garbage. You with your beautiful body and your stable mind don’t know what it’s like to have to stuff your face in order to be able to breathe. You don’t know squat about the fear of realizing you can’t stop eating and are outgrowing every single piece of clothing you have in your wardrobe, and soon the ones in the store for fatties. You don’t know what it’s like to live like that, Cole. The shame, the loathing.”

She looked at him defiantly as if daring him to contradict her. No, he didn’t know what it was like to live with that kind of anxiety choking you. His fingers were itching to reach for her and bring her to him, to make her stop pacing, to wrap her in his arms and tell her that all that was in her past, but in her current mood she wouldn’t go for it, so he kept still. She was on a rant. She was bound to run out of steam sooner or later. He’d just wait.

“There is no worse hell on earth than being a fat kid, Cole. No worse mind job. And a fat teenager? Ha! Don’t get me started on that. There are only two instances when being fat is socially acceptable: you need to be either a rapper or a sumo wrestler. I obviously was neither.

“Rose is right. I’m a cheater. This now is not me. The person in the picture is me. Rose—”

“Bullshit. Rose is a bitch, she’s wrong, and she can go fuck herself,” Cole all but roared.

They stared at each other in silence for a while. “Do you want me to tell you when that picture was taken?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Do you remember I told you about my friend Lisa from high school, the one whose mother neglected her? That picture was taken at her wedding. I spent all day giving the photographer the slip, but I was ambushed several times. This was one of those.”

Christy dragged out a breath and sat down. “I’d been isolating myself systematically for so long, I’d managed to alienate most of my friends. Not Lisa. She wouldn’t give up on me, and she even made me one of the bridesmaids. When I was asked about the size for the bridesmaids dress, I lied. I was going to lose weight, right?” She snorted. The self-deprecating look on her face was full of pain and scorn, and sliced right through Cole’s heart.