As much as I stared him down, he stared me down, double. And he was much taller, so he had more stare-down ability. I understood that this was a test of our relationship. Would he let me win, or would I be doomed to follow his stupid, crappy rules? It was a test of strength, which sucked for me because I was weak as hell. So I did what a weak person does: I lied.
“Okay. No coffee.” I had been on every diet ever invented, and I knew how to cheat, hide, and sneak food. I gained ten pounds on the grapefruit diet. If I could do that, I could live through whatever Hudson threw at me. From now on, I would remember to drink my coffee before Hudson showed up in the mornings.
He squinted at me, suspicion oozing out of him. “All right, Eliza. We’ll work on it. But you have to listen to me. I know better than you.”
“Oh, yeah? How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
I grunted. “The bra I’m wearing is older than you.”
“That brings us to the first commandment,” he said, smiling. “New beginnings need new.”
“New what?”
“Everything, but let’s start with your bras. We’re going shopping this morning. Don’t you know your breasts are important?”
I put my hands up over my chest in a defensive posture, and I was reasonably sure that my face was bright red. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Okay, how much do you weigh?”
Under duress, I took a quick shower, but I refused to put on makeup out of principle. No, I didn’t tell him how much I weighed. Even under torture, I wouldn’t divulge that information. I pulled my wet hair back into a ponytail. I tried to wear my Crocs out of the house, but he forced me to wear a pair of Adidas that I had stuffed in the back of my closet.
“There, I look like a suburban grandmother,” I said, gazing into the mirror. “Your plan to change me is off to a rousing start.”
“Come on, smartass. Your breasts need me.”
Probably every woman’s breasts needed him, but I was a married woman and old enough to be his mother. Or at least his aunt or older sister or maybe his second cousin once removed. It was okay to get involved with a second cousin, right?
I closed my eyes and tried to scrub the image of Hudson’s hands on my breasts out of my mind. Nope. It didn’t work. The image was wedged in there pretty good. I couldn’t look Hudson in the eye because I was sure he could read my mind, and I didn’t want him to laugh at me.
He opened the passenger door of his car. It was a black, vintage Camaro. I had never been in a muscle car before. Riding in a fast car with a hunky military man was a totally new experience for me. “Don’t go too fast,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“There’s no seat belt in here.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I don’t know where we’re going.”
Hudson put his hand on my leg, making my heart race and my body tense up. Ridiculous. He was Channing Tatum, and I was Kathy Bates. My heart didn’t have the right to race anywhere near him. “Don’t worry about it,” he repeated slowly, enunciating every syllable, shutting me up, nicely.
He didn’t believe in listening to the radio while he drove. He didn’t like distractions. Hudson may have been cool, but he was also intense. We drove for about twenty minutes until he parked in front of an ancient store with a front window full of broken mannequins wearing dusty lingerie.
“I thought you said, ‘new.’ This doesn’t look new.”
“New for you.” He hopped out of the car and opened my door for me. We walked into the store. It was even dustier and dingier inside. There was a glass counter with a small cash register on it and boxes were piled on the floor. A tiny, old lady with enormous breasts, purple hair, and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth shuffled in from the back.
“Hello handsome,” she said when she saw Hudson. Her cigarette balanced on her lower lip, as if it was surgically attached.
“Hi, Auntie.” He kissed her on the cheek. I was surprised he didn’t lecture her about her purple hair or the cigarette, and I was jealous that he was nicer to her than he was to me.
“You brought an emergency,” she said, staring at my chest. I fought the urge to cover myself, again, but I should have. She stepped toward me and squeezed my boobs with her little hands like she was searching for ripe fruit. “You’re young, sweetie. Why do you want to look old?”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Everyone is doing Botox and filling their lips with God knows what. Meanwhile, their bosoms are crying for help and making them old. They want better bras. You understand me, sweetie?”
