“Oh, fuck off,” Lizette shouted at the TV, snapping Emmett out of his reverie. “She’s not even that big.”
The episode was “The One That Could Have Been,” reimagining the friends’ lives had they taken different paths. Monica’s hypothetical error was that she was still as fat as she’d been in her teens and therefore could do nothing but obsess over Kit Kats, Rice Krispies Treats, and full-fat mayonnaise. Every other aspect of her personality—her obsessive cleanliness, her competitive streak, her mother hen persona—suffocated beneath the weight of her bodysuit.
Emmett excused the show for being twenty years old, but even he felt uncomfortable. He’d watched devotedly with his mom when he was a kid and, it was true, he remembered Fat Monica being much larger. Maybe it was the way her friends mocked her and everyone agreed that no normal man could love her this way that made him remember her bigger—almost as big as he was now.
“We might need a new show,” Lizette said as the credits rolled twenty minutes later, Fat Monica dancing idiotically while stuffing her face with a bagel, then collapsing on the coffee table, panting like a dog. “I don’t know if I can keep watching this shit.”
“That was pretty bad,” Emmett agreed. There was no point denying it, especially to Lizette.
Even in elementary school, Lizette Castillo had been the poster child for body positivity. As loud and brazen as her best friend was reserved, she never missed an opportunity to step into the spotlight. There was no lead role for which she would not volunteer, no insult that could pierce her confidence. Now twenty-nine and a size twenty-four, Lizette was the kind of woman others called “big and beautiful,” unapologetic in her fuck-it attitude toward life. Her clothes, like the ones she designed for GORDITA, were splashy, colorful, and skin-baring (either midrifforcleavage—she wasn’t a total prostituta). She showed off her tattoos with pride, even the cascade of oversize roses down her back, which they both agreed had been a mistake. She never underordered or hesitated to clear her plate at a restaurant. She refused to make herself small in public spaces. While Emmett often felt too big for the world, Lizette lived as if it were the world that wasn’t the right size.
She had long attempted to persuade Emmett to her worldview. Fat-shaming wassotwo-thousand-and-late. It was high time he accepted himself and embraced his fat body as an integral, natural, and beautiful part of him.
He wished it were only that easy, but his feelings about the body positivity movement were complicated. It was one thing, he felt, to ask society to make room for fat people, to treat them with as much compassion and respect as anyone else. But the movement as Emmett understood it wanted to take fat acceptance to a new level of delusion. He couldn’t help snorting at some of the stuff Lizette shared on social media—claims that, far from undesirable, to be fat was a good thing, abeautifulthing, a thing to be celebrated if not actively striven for, health concerns be damned.
I may be 355 lbs but I work out 6 days a week and can deadlift my weight. My doctor says I’m medically healthier than most of her thin patients. If you think fat = unhealthy, educate yourself. #FatAndFit
Okay, girl, but you still look like a pig in Fabletics, he’d think, then immediately want to kick himself in the balls. How was it that he could feel like “one of the girls” most of the time when his internal monologuewas so fucking sexist? It said a lot that the voice shitting on women in his head wasn’t his dad’s, whose misogyny was primarily of the “bitches and whores” variety. It sounded far more like his mom’s, who had always told him he was perfect and had never, as far as Emmett could remember,notbeen on some kind of diet.
Lizette asked Emmett about work as they cleared up after dinner, and he told her about what had gone down in Rick’s office. She lost her shit so thoroughly the dogs ran under the table.
“That fucking hijo de puta goatee motherfucker.”
Emmett smiled, appreciative of the outrage Lizette seemed to possess in infinite quantities. She uncorked a bottle of cheap red. “Want some?”
“No thanks.” He filled a glass with ice water, feeling parched. Excessive thirst—another warning sign of diabetes.
Or that you’ve just demolished a metric ton of sodium, you fucking idiot.
“Anyway, there’s something else I need to tell you. Nothing bad,” he added as she met his eyes. In fact, itwasbad—Lizette would think so, anyway—but he needed to her to know. More than that: he needed her permission. “Just something I saw on Instagram. An ad for this weight loss clinical trial.” Emmett pretended not to clock the disapproving lift of her penciled brow. “I clicked on it just to see what it’s about, and they’re looking for bigger people to participate. It seems legit, and there’s this information session coming up. I thought maybe we could—”
“We?”
“I don’t expect you to sign up. I just thought maybe you could come with me—”
“Jesus Christ, Emmettito. How many times do I have to tell you, you don’t need to lose weight.”
“I’m not happy, though!” He didn’t mean to say it like that, halfway to a shout. He sighed, checking his tone. “I’m not like you, okay? I’m never going to be happy like this. I just want to be—”
“If you even think the wordnormal—”
“I wasn’t—” He clenched his jaw. It was bad enough not being able to lose weight without his best friend making him feel guilty for even wanting to.
He headed for the door, then turned back so suddenly he splashed water over his hand. “Just remember, I didn’t agree with you driving down to Tijuana to get that ghetto, wannabe–Cardi B back tattoo. Butwhen you said, ‘I don’t care, this is what I want to do anyway,’ I was there by your side the whole way.”
“Telling me I was a fucking idiot!”
“Yeah, well. That’s the job, bitch!”
Lizette rolled her eyes, smirking, and swigged her wine. “Fine. When is this session thing?”
“You’ll go?”
“To make sure they don’t fucking harvest your kidneys.”
Emmett wanted to hug her, but even by his best friend he didn’t love being touched. “I mean, that’s gotta be a couple of pounds right there, right?”
“Stop.”
