“Bitch,” Emmett whispered.
“That’s harsh,” admitted Abby. Her Barbie Jeep had at least elicited a scream.
The front door inched open behind them, and a man in his late thirties entered. Emmett did a double take, not recognizing him at first.
“Hey, Em-Dog, what’s up.”
Niño, whose given name was Nicholas Hofstetter, had been Chris’s best friend as long as Emmett could remember. He was one of the few who’d never minded Chris’s chubby kid brother tagging along on trips to the mall and the beach. These days his naturally dark hair was peroxide blond, giving him the look of an aging fuckboy. The shirt under his blazer was unbuttoned at the top, revealing just enough of his sculpted clavicle to reawaken Emmett’s boyhood crush.
Emmett obliged him in a clapping handshake. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Just working. You know.” The glint in Niño’s eye suggested he’d been selling. A pharmaceutical sales rep with a penchant for chaos, he was known to use his industry access to moonlight as a high-class dealer. Percocet and codeine samples mostly. Premarket and downstream prototypes when he could get his hands on them.
He greeted Abby with a quiet hug and kiss on the cheek, then skulked off to find something to eat.
I’ve got something you can eat, Emmett thought.
Soon the mountain of gifts had been slain and the party moved into the open kitchen-dining room. The birthday song was sung with an addedcha cha chafrom Chris, before slices of Costco sheet cake circulated on Disney Princess plates. The sight of it unleashed something raging and animalistic inside Emmett. His stomach howled.
Fearing his diet was about to come to an abrupt end, he retreated, locked himself in the bathroom, and stood in front of the mirror, white-knuckling the counter.
His eyes rose to his reflection. Truthfully, he didn’t hate it. Dieting always had this effect on him. He probably hadn’t lost more than a pound or two, but the emptiness of his stomach alone was enough to make him feel thinner, more confident. It reminded him why he was putting himself through this torture and how much better he would feel if he just stuck with it.
The door handle jiggled. “Oop, someone’s in there,” said a woman’s voice. “We have to wait our turn.”
Emmett wet and dried his hands, opened the door, and smiled at the mother and child who shuffled in after him.
When he returned to the kitchen-dining room, it was empty. Emmett could see the others out back through the glass slider, forming a loosecircle on the lawn. A blindfolded Harper took swings at an Olaf the snowman piñata with a tee-ball bat as Chris coached her.
Emmett’s gaze fell to the food covering the kitchen counters—not just half a dozen leftover plates of cake, but everything his sister-in-law had brought in from outside. Huge piles of uneaten patties and franks, open bags of buns, condiments, a platter of toppings. He didn’t mind that the meat was cold and the lettuce wilting. It was the hit of fatty protein he craved, the refined carbohydrates spiking his blood sugar, that first anesthetizing wallop of fullness—a literal gut punch of relief.
He stood there so long the mother and kid, finished in the bathroom, walked past him and headed out back while Emmett pretended to answer a text.
He began to follow, but his feet failed him. A lizard-brained impulse tugged him back toward the food. His hunger was no longer hunger but something more urgent, more insistent. A climbing white-hot need for satisfaction, as overwhelming as orgasm.
He could do it, should do it, while everyone was outside.
If he acted now, no one would see.
Before he could think twice, he grabbed a bun, slapped together a burger, and, stepping out of view of the window, shoved the sandwich into his mouth. He barely chewed, impatient for relief.
The mouthful collected at the top of his gut, the almost uncomfortable fullness spreading a sensation of soothing calm through his body. He was eight years old again, back in the house on Whispering Tree Lane: standing in the walk-in pantry, door closed, lights off, scarfing down whatever he could, as fast as he could. Cookies, Cheez-Its, trail mix. Ears trained above the champing of his jaws, attuned to the sounds of movement outside the door.
He wasn’t full enough yet. He made another.
Eat it down quick, before he comes.
A few bites into the second, a spectacular fullness radiated through him like he’d tipped his head back and swallowed an avalanche.
But now that his craving for fat had been satisfied, his sweet tooth had to be appeased. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t stand another bite, that he feared he might be sick.
This had never been about hunger.
He grabbed a plate and shoveled cake into his mouth with his hands.One bite, two, and a slippery satisfaction slid over him, underpinned by a growing threat of regurgitation. Still he gorged, programmed to clear his plate no matter the cost.
The slider opened. With a frisson of horror, Emmett threw the plate down on the counter.I wasn’t—not mine—someone else—
It hung off the edge and flopped backward, cake side up, onto the floor.
