by Ali Parker
“Now I see why Chris was such a hit with the ladies. He had your wisdom in his back pocket.”
“And his reputation. That plays a bigger part.”
“Not for everyone.”
She gazed evenly at me. “Don’t try to tell me your reputation hasn’t done you any favors.”
“It’s done me many. But it’s also sabotaged me.”
“Fair.”
I set my drink down and rested a hand on my knee. Vanny had yet to take a sip of her fresh glass of wine and I watched her set it down. She didn’t take any more food but leaned back into the sofa, getting comfortable between the two throw pillows on either side of her.
“So why are you still at the dress shop then?” I asked. “If you know what you want to do, what’s stopping you?”
“Just because I know what I want to do doesn’t mean I can just go off and do it. That’s not how the real world works.”
Had she just taken another jab at my bank account? If so, ouch. If not, I wondered dimly if there was a way she’d let me pay to put her through school. If finances were the obstacle, of course. But I had a feeling a girl like Vanny would write me off for good if I ever offered to pay for something like that, so I kept my mouth shut and pushed her a little more.
“What’s stopping you then?”
Vanny lifted her gaze to the ceiling. She wasn’t rolling her eyes at me but rather looking up as if there was something on the ceiling that could help her. I realized she was considering whether or not she should tell me the truth or feed me a line.
Finally, she said, “I’m not ready yet.”
“When will you be ready?”
“I’m not the woman I need to be to take that step. Not yet.”
“Who do you need to be?”
She licked her lips, picked up her wine, and drank greedily. When she set the glass down, a quarter of it was gone. “I need to be stronger. Healthier. Thinner.”
“Fuck off.”
Vanny blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. Fuck off.” I braced my elbows on my knees and stared hard at the girl on my sofa. She had no idea how stunning she was inside and out.
“I’ve struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember, and I don’t want to start my next journey in the same spot as I am now. It’s not—”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Says the guy with a killer body and a perfect wardrobe and a face made for sitting on!”
The room went still with silence. Vanny’s eyes widened with horror as she realized the words she’d just spat at me, and then she turned bright pink when I started to grin like an idiot.
“Say that again,” I said.
“Oh God.” She covered her face with her hands and shook her head. “Oh God.”
Laughing, I rocked back into the sofa. “A face made for sitting on, hmm? You must write that into our vows.”
“Stop it.”
“I can’t. It’s too good. And you think I have a killer body? I’m flattered.”
“This is so humiliating.”
“For the record, I think you also have a killer body.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she said.
“Vanny, I swear to God. I’m not lying to you. You’re perfect the way you are. And if I’m being perfectly candid, I have to say you’re a fool if you don’t pursue your dream job because you think you’re so overweight. Bodies are just bodies.”
Vanny sighed heavily. She sipped at her wine and didn’t say anything for a while. I could feel the sadness radiating off of her in waves. Sadness and something else, something heavier. Was it embarrassment? Shame? Did she really feel such loathing for her own skin? I hated that she felt that way. I wanted to gather her up in my arms and kiss her deeply and show her with my lips and my body how worthy she was of anything and everything she wanted.
I wondered if she would believe me then that she was beautiful.
The words of my only confidante, Nessa Night, rang in my ears from our last phone call together. She’d told me that when it came to love, it was worth all the trials and the efforts, and I believed the same thing about pursuing your dreams. They brought you fulfillment just like love did, and chasing your dreams was the ultimate form of self-love. As someone who’d gone for it and made my name separate from my father’s, I believed this to my core.
So I tried a bit of Nessa Night’s wisdom on the sad girl on my sofa.
“Vanny, listen. I know you think I’m not the right person to give advice because of the privilege I come from, and you’re probably right. But a wise person once told me to never stop trying. Your dream of becoming a marriage counselor is worth the effort, the disappointments, the denials, the trials it will put you through. Fighting for what you want is the best part about being alive. You have to stick to your guns and you can’t let anything stand in your way. Including yourself.”
To my surprise, Vanny was smiling at me.
“What did I say?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t embarrassed myself for the last time in front of her.
She giggled softly. “Where did you get this wise advice from?”
“You’ll laugh if I tell you.”
“I could use a laugh.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “You ever heard of the radio show Nessa Night?”
She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth. “The love guru?”
“Yeah.”
“You just gave me career advice coined from a radio-show love guru?”
I shrugged. “I guess I did.”
Her laughter bubbled out of her. It filled up the whole room and I started laughing along with her, wondering what it was I’d said that was so funny but feeling grateful I’d said it. Because now that I’d heard her laugh this hard, I was determined to earn this sound a hundred times over as I got to know her in the days leading up to the reunion.
Chapter 19
Vanessa
Ryan stole a donut off my plate during the two-minute ad window between the previous caller and the last one of the night on Wednesday evening. Naturally, he selected the one I was going to reach for next, a scrumptious vanilla-frosted delight with strawberry jelly in the center and a dusting of burnt coconut shavings on top. I tried to hide my disappointment by tucking my chin into the scarf wrapped around my neck. My mom had given it to me for Christmas last year. It was a beautiful silky soft burgundy shade with elegant black design on it that resembled lace. It smelled like my vanilla perfume.
“I get why you’re so obsessed with these.” Ryan licked his fingers clean. It was not nearly as sexy as when Rhys did it. And by not nearly, I meant not at all. “They’re so good. Where do you get them from?”
“I don’t buy them.”
“Oh. Who picks them up then?”
I shrugged.
Lizzy strutted into the room with a commanding air about her. “Ryan, out. We’re going live in sixty seconds. You need anything, Vanny?”
“Nope. I’m good.”
Ryan tucked his hands into the pockets of his khaki-colored Dickies. “Not even a Mountain Dew?”
I almost flipped him off but nodded at the half-empty one on my desk. “I’m covered.”
Ryan flashed me a cocky smile that I wanted to slap right off his face. “Who brings these donuts and shit in any way? And how do I get a hookup?”
Lizzy put her hand between his shoulder blades and began pushing him out the door as I put my headset on. “The case of Mountain Dew is dropped off every week by a delivery guy. I have no idea who sends them. And the donuts arrive daily. I assumed it was Vanny or a secret admirer.”
I pulled my headset off. “What did you say?”
Lizzy paused in the doorway and frowned at me. “That someone has been dropping a box of donuts off daily? Or the Mountain Dew part?”
“I didn’t know any of that.” The countdown to being back on the air read thirty seconds. “How long has that been going on?”
“Um. At least a year and a half.”
Lizzy and Ryan left me alone in the studio and closed the door behind them. I channeled my inner Nessa Night and pictured myself as the marriage counselor I imagined I might be one day. In my mind’s eye, I was sixty pounds lighter—maybe seventy, but it would be all right if my weight fluctuated because that was healthy, damn it—and dressed in a form-fitting pencil skirt paired with a blouse and rose-gold jewelry. A vision is only as good as the details. I’d wear my dark-framed glasses, which I was wearing now, and I’d be sipping green tea instead of Mountain Dew because that was what healthy people did.
And I would help people in a legitimate, honest way. Not from my little studio, pretending to be someone I was not.
Doug waved at me from his office to signal the five-second mark.
I pulled in closer to my desk and let my hand hover over the red light. When the countdown ended, I punched it and the line filled with that muted static sound. I was on the line with another stranger.
“Hi there, caller. What’s your name, and how can I hope to heal your heart today?”
“Hey, Nessa.”
My breath caught in my throat. I looked up through the studio window at Lizzy, who was grinning from ear to ear. She recognized the voice, too. Deep. Masculine. A little gritty, like he had something stuck in the back of his throat.
Rhys.
Or as Nessa Night knew him, Mr. No Name.
I struggled to find my words and make sure I sounded like Nessa Night, not like Vanny Hampton. “Hi. Two calls in the matter of a week? What did I ever do to deserve this?”
Rhys chuckled into the line. I pinched my knees together as all my lady parts clenched with need.
Someone send help.
“Yeah, I’ve found myself in a bit of a situation and I was hoping you could weigh in.”
“Only if said situation is the business of love,” I cooed into the line.
Doug gave me two thumbs up. Lizzy cupped her hands to her cheeks. Ryan unscrewed the cap on one of my Mountain Dews.
Fucker.
“It is love related.” Rhys hesitated. “Well, maybe not love. But it’s about a girl.”
Right. Of course this was about a girl. Probably someone he’d met at the club before he ran into me. “Who is this girl?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing for days. Turns out, I’ve known her a long time. Over a decade actually. We recently bumped into each other and now I’ve committed to something that might be a bad idea.”
“Oh?” He couldn’t possibly be talking about little old me, could he? No. There was simply no way. Rhys was a man’s man. A rich man. A man with access to anything he could possibly want. Under no circumstance was it possible that what he wanted could ever be Chris’s chunky little sister. “What commitment is that?”
“I don’t know if I want to get into it on the air. She’ll know it was me.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway. She’s a handful. Truly. She keeps me on my toes unlike any girl I’ve ever been around. And she treats me like… like I’m not me. Does that make sense?”
His words left me equally confused as I was curious. “Not really. Can you explain?”
Rhys sighed into the line. I could picture him on the other end, probably sitting on his sofa, one arm draped lazily over the back. It was easy to see the crease that would inevitably have settled on his brow. His eyebrows would be drawn together, his jaw tight and flexed and doing that sexy thing that all guy’s jaws did when they were concentrating. “She treats me like I’m just some other guy.”
“Are you not just some other guy, Mr. No Name?”
He chuckled again. Damn him and his toe-curling fucking laugh. “I’m not.”
“How confident of you.” I knew full well what he was referring to. He wasn’t any other man because any other man didn’t have access to the sort of funds he did, nor did they have the same level of fame Rhys possessed. Not that he was followed endlessly by paparazzi or anything, but I was certain he was recognized almost anywhere he went. “Why do you think she treats you like this?”
“Because she’s not interested.”
An interesting conclusion. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested. It was that he was so far out of my league it was almost embarrassing. This whole thing we’d devised of him being my fiancé was fun and all, but that was all this was. Fun. I wasn’t going to end up as one of his toys that he got bored of after two weeks and tossed aside like a chew toy whose stuffing had been torn out.
“How can you be sure she’s not interested?” I asked. I had to remember not to let my knowledge of who he was show. I had to maintain the ruse of Nessa Night. I had to ask questions regardless of how wrong it felt to already know his situation from the inside out.
“She’s evasive. And she talks about things no woman would discuss with a man if she were interested in him.”
“What sort of things?”
Rhys was quiet. “This might have been a bad idea.”
“This is a safe place.” I didn’t mean that. I certainly didn’t feel safe. Not right now. What was he going to say about me? The real me? The me who was hurt as easily as she caved to donuts and soda.
“She talks about her weight a lot. It bothers her. But…”
My throat felt tight and my face was hot. “But what?”
Please God, don’t air my self-hating dirty laundry on the air.
“But she doesn’t see herself as she is. I’m just some guy. I know. What could I know about a woman’s insecurities and body issues? But it bothers me. How she talks about herself. I wish she could see herself the way I see her.”
I glanced up at the studio window. Doug was listening intently. His fingers were clasped together, his chin resting upon his knuckles. Lizzy, standing over his left shoulder, had a hand on her chest like she’d just let out a dreamy sigh, which she probably had. Rhys was saying all the right things. For a horrifying minute, I wondered if he’d figured out I was Nessa Night and had called the station to play some cruel trick on me.
But that wasn’t possible.
Nobody knew I was Nessa Night, except for my parents and Kim. They wouldn’t blow my cover. Especially to Rhys.
I tried to find the right words to say. My brain felt like it was caught up in quicksand and my tongue was thick and heavy in my mouth. How was I supposed to give nonbiased advice to a situation that directly applied to me?
This is karma for living a double life and telling people how to fix their love lives when you have no love life to speak of.
“Nessa?”
“Yes. Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “Just gathering my thoughts. It sounds to me like the woman you’re talking about has some… body-image issues.”
Ugh. Ick. Fuck.
Kim had told me a thousand times over I had body-image issues. She’d also told me I saw something in the mirror that didn’t exist, that I wasn’t the heavyset lumberjack I saw myself as. She’d also said my aversion to being overweight was troubling for more than just the reason of my damaged body image. She’d said I needed to prioritize what mattered, and being overweight did not.
I understood where she was coming from. But that kind of talk was easy coming from someone who wore a size two dress.
“Body-image issues,” Rhys said. “Is that something I can help her with?”
“Probably not,” I said a little too quickly.
“Why not?”
“It’s something you should let her figure out on her own. I don’t know about this girl, but I wouldn’t want a guy coming in trying to fix me. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course it does.”
Neither of us said anything. I thought about the evening on the sofa with him in his apartment. I thought about how much he’d made me laugh and how we’d challenged each other. If I was being completely honest with myself, I’d enjoyed myself more in those couple of hours with him than I had in the last few weeks. Or months even. And hearing that he liked my company back was a little unner
ving.
I didn’t do relationships. Especially not with guys who were as affluent and popular as Rhys. He would want an experienced woman. Someone who knew what they were doing… down there. And me?
Ha.
I didn’t even know what I was doing between my own thighs, let alone a man’s. I’d never traveled north with a guy before. And I didn’t intend on doing it until I was happy with the figure under my clothing. And based on the fact that I was still on a minimum three donut a day diet, it didn’t look like that day was coming anytime soon.
“Thanks for the chat, Nessa. As always, it was enlightening.”
“You’re welcome. Best of luck to you, Mr. No Name.”
Rhys ended the call. I sat in silence in the aftermath of it all, wondering what the hell had just happened. How was I supposed to go through with our reunion plan when he wanted something more from me than I could reasonably give?
Chapter 20
Vanessa
I drove straight to my parents’ house after my shift at the station. Rhys was on my mind the whole time. I could hardly make it through the four calls that followed his. He hung around in the back of my head like an incessant buzzing wasp.
I needed a distraction and there was no better place for that than home sweet home.
When I walked through the front door, Bear came and greeted me with a thick wagging tail that bumped against the narrow table in the hall. I lunged to stabilize the picture frames of family photos and, once they were safe, hooked a finger in Bear’s collar and pulled him away from the table. I dropped into a crouch and held his dopey face in my hands, massaging his cheeks with my thumbs.
“Hey there, handsome.”
Bear’s tongue lolled in a goofy smile. Some people didn’t believe dogs can smile, but those people had no heart. All happy dogs smile. And Bear was a very happy dog.
I pressed my lips to the top of his snout in a kiss, and then the pair of us followed the sound of music down the hall into the living room, where both my parents were curled up on opposite ends of the sofa. Mom had her nose buried in a Harlequin romance while Dad watched YouTube videos on his tablet with his headphones in.