“Yeah. I should probably get back.”
“Says who? You should stay and talk with us.”
Pathetically I did, spellbound by his snaggletoothed smile. Idon’t even remember what we talked about, just the buzz in my gut as he poured his undivided attention all over me, the glorious froth of laughter between us.
The other two went inside, leaving us alone. I made some stupid joke and he shook his head, grinning aslant.
“You’re so fucking cute,” he said, massaging my arm. “I just wanna cuddle you.”
My heart was doing backflips. Here was my chance.Say something, I thought.Say ANYTHING. “We should do that.” “I’m game if you are.” “Want to get out of here?”
Like an idiot, I froze. Then the front door opened again and more people tumbled out in a flood of music and chatter, clutching bottles and cigarettes. Aaron drew back his hand.
“I should go,” I said, and before he could say another word, I was racing back toward my car, my heart leaden and heavy, pumping shame and self-loathing through every inch of me.
And that was the end of that. We continued to chat and flirt before class, but never like we had that night. The perfect opening I was hoping for never came. I didn’t even have his number.
The semester ended and our schedules diverged. I graduated sad, alone, already starting to gain the weight back. No matter how healthy and calorie-controlled my diet was, I’d never been able to fully ditch my sugar habit. Little by little the pounds crept up on me. In an instant I was fat again.
I went back on hCG, but my lifestyle had changed. I was working full-time at Target and student-teaching on the side. It’s one thing to be fatigued when you’re just sitting around and another when you’re working on your feet all day. Still, I thought I was managing okay until one night at the store my heart suddenly started pounding like I’d just stepped off a treadmill. The guest service desk spun around me, the world thrown off-kilter. If my coworker hadn’t grabbed me, I probably would’ve hit the floor.
My mom came and took me to the ER. The doctors were less than impressed to hear about my five-hundred-calorie diet and the supplements they said probably contained no hCG at all. At best they were placebos. At worst I was slowly poisoning myself.
“I agree,” I overheard Mom saying to the doctor. “I’ve always told my kids, if you want to lose weight, a healthy diet and exercise is the way to do it. Everything in moderation.”
Such was the end of my hCG misadventure—to this day the only diet I’ve tried that’s ever shifted significant weight.(STARVATION! IT’S A WEIGHT LOSS MIRACLE!!! WHO KNEW?!?)
Honestly, I never really believed the supplements were doing anything except make me feel better about my voluntary eating disorder. Because when you strip away all the pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo, the hCG diet—like most of them—is pretty much just expensive anorexia.
As the months passed, my old habits returned in full force, and the weight piled back on even faster. Four years later, I’m even heavier than I started—and continuing to gain.
I recently ran into one of my old grad school friends at Vons and she didn’t even recognize me. “It’s Emmett,” I said, already wishing I hadn’t stopped her. “From SDSU?” Still nothing. “Sorry, I look a little different—”
“No!Of courseI recognize you!” she said, her cheeks flaming. “Emmett! So sorry, I’m not wearing my glasses! And you changed your hair! Wow, I love the purple!”
Now if I run into someone from my skinny days, I hide. It’s easier for both of us. They don’t have to feel sorry for me, and I don’t have to hate myself (at least not in their presence—save that shit for the privacy of my home like a normal person ).
But seriously, I’m glad I did lose weight that one time. It proved Icanslim down. Does it mean I feel that much angrier with myself when I fuck up? Yes. Yes, it does. (Seriously, why is it so hard for me to get back to that place??)
But it gives me something to strive for, a mountain to (re)climb.
One day I’ll find him and I won’t let him go.
No, I’m not talking about Aaron. I mean the true me.
CHAPTER 7
Nearly an hour after he left the apartment, Emmett pulled up outside a four-bedroom Craftsman in the well-to-do coastal suburb of Carlsbad. White shutters, white door, two white SUVs parked in the drive. Chris and his wife, Jayla, had paid close to a million for it after selling their “starter home” for a profit of $400,000, more than a hundred thousand for every year they’d owned it.
Chris was always telling Emmett, without an ounce of irony, that he needed to get on the property ladder, as if his refusal to live the American dream were a matter of arrested development rather than total financial ineptitude. Chris, who had lived with their dad rent free until he was twenty-six, had flunked out of community college, paid for by Dad; gotten his real estate license, paid for by Dad; and bought his first property at twenty-seven, again thanks to Dad, who made it clear that any financial support that might have been earmarked for Emmett had been squandered on his undergrad tuition. Foolish of Emmett not to have dropped out and bought a fixer-upper instead.
He sat in his car, hair disheveled from driving on the freeway with the windows down. Sweat bloomed across his lower back, as hot and sticky as a fungal infection.
He didn’t hate this brother, who hadn’t had the easiest childhood himself. But that Chris refused to acknowledge the ways his lifehadbeen easier—would probably always be easier, for reasons he could never fully understand—made it hard not to resent him.
With a sigh, Emmett got out of the car, grabbed Harper’s present out of the back (embellished with a quartet of smiling balloons), and rang the bell. Inside he heard his brother’s voice and the shrieking laughter of children. He wished Lizette had been able to come. After months of trying to attract the attention of potential investors in GORDITA, she’d finally managed to schedule a lunch with some big-shot venture capitalistwho was in town from Miami for the weekend. It was the only time he could meet, and Lizette couldn’t miss her big break.
The door swung open and there stood Chris, golden-haired and barrel-chested, a surf tee pulled over his board shorts. He greeted Emmett with his usual forced enthusiasm.
