Holding Out for a Zero

by Wardell, Heather

  His hands slide onto my lower back and he draws me closer. “Same to you. What’s your name?”

  “Valerie. Boring old uptight Valerie.”

  “You’re not boring.” He grips my hips and pulls me even closer. “Want some fun, Valerie?”

  I do. I so do. I can’t remember the last time I had any. “Yeah,” I whisper, and press my hands against his bare lower back.

  “Move down,” he whispers into my ear, then nips my earlobe. “You’ll like it.”

  He’s right. I’ve never touched an ass like this and I hope I’m not so drunk I won’t remember how perfect it feels.

  “I like yours,” he says, then slides his hands fully over it and slams me against his nearly naked crotch.

  This, I manage to think as his mouth comes down on mine, is the best. I get some action and I don’t have to deal with crap like being committed to someone, because he’s not interested in that. I’ve got to be the thousandth woman he’s brought back here. He just wants sex.

  I’m more than okay with that.

  I kiss him back, whimpering as he grinds me against him and his hands roam my body, then he pins me to the wall and suddenly I’m a million times more turned on than I was a second ago.

  He’s in charge. He’s in control. I’m not.

  I melt into him, almost sobbing with relief and passion, and am just wondering whether I still have a condom in my wallet when I hear, “What the hell?” and Dustin draws back from me and reveals a furious Mia.

  “What the hell? You whore!”

  I’m not sure whether she’s calling me or Dustin that, but she makes it clear by getting right up in my face and saying, “If anyone’s gonna make out with him it should be me. Or Mara. But not you. You’ve made the whole wedding time a nightmare so you shouldn’t get anything good.”

  Mara, arriving behind her sister, must hear this because she says, “Mia,” in a warning voice. “Shut up.”

  “Nope,” Mia says with a quick glance over her shoulder. “No way. She’s a bitch and she should know.”

  “I’m a bitch?” I say, while Dustin gives an embarrassed cough and takes off back into the main room. Seeing my chance at the sex I needed to take the edge off my stress fade away makes me even angrier and I don’t hold back. “You’re the bitch, lady. I’m not the one picking on people for their weight and—”

  “No, you’re the one who plans things like they’re a fucking war and doesn’t let anyone else do anything. You’re an uptight stupid skinny bitch and I can’t wait until the wedding’s over so I never have to see you again.” She wraps her arm around Mia. “You deserve better. I’m sorry your maid-of-honor’s such a—”

  I don’t let her finish. “She picked me,” I scream at Mia over the renewed shouting of the crowd. “She picked me because she knew you wouldn’t do anything right. And you haven’t! So I’ve made sure your sister’s wedding goes well. And you’ve done nothing but bitch and complain and stuff your stupid face with food. Because you’re useless. And I can’t wait to never see you again either!”

  Mia gasps and turns on Mara. “You going to let her talk to me like—”

  “Girls, come on,” Mara says, looking from Mia to me then grabbing the corner of the wall for support. “We’re all a little drunk and we’re saying stuff we don’t—”

  “I mean it,” Mia and I snap in near-unison, and before I can continue she adds, “She’s a bitch and a slut and a control freak and I mean all of that.”

  “Well, I mean this.” Something in the back of my mind is warning me not to talk but I can’t stop myself. “Dustin doesn’t want you because you’re fat and stupid and desperate. He likes me because I’m none of those things. You’re pathetic, wanting a stripper.”

  She laughs, while Mara weakly tries to protest. “Same to you then, lady. You were the one making out with him.”

  “I wasn’t going to try to keep him, though,” I say. “Not like you.” Since she’d said at the table that she’d love to date him, she can’t argue, so I carry on with, “That’s stupid. All commitment is stupid, but that’s the stupidest.”

  Mara gasps. “You think commitment is stupid and you’re my maid-of-honor?”

  “Told you,” Mia says smugly. “Told you she was bad.”

  “I’m not bad!” I shriek at her, so loud it hurts my throat. “I’ve got everything under control.”

  “Yeah, sure sounds like it.”

  I take a swing at her.

  Mara jumps in front, and it’s her I hit, right in the stomach. She groans and doubles over, and Mia screams and grabs her. Holding her sister close she looks at me and says, “Get out. Get the hell out.”

  “I…” I want to explain how sorry I am, how I didn’t mean to hit Mara, but as I look from Mia to the other bridesmaids who’ve arrived and are watching horrified I know nobody wants to hear it.

  I turn around and walk out, pushing through the crowd, and hail a taxi. When I’m halfway home, my cell rings.

  Mara.

  I shut my eyes and say, “Hi. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s kind of not good enough,” she says, sounding miserable. “You called my sister a bunch of names and you hit me.”

  “I didn’t mean to, I—”

  “You meant to hit Mia. I know. But that’s not any better.”

  “Kick her out!” I hear through the phone, no doubt Mia.

  Mara snaps, not to me, “Shut up!” Back into the phone, she says, “But look, Valerie, this isn’t like you. The yelling, the hitting, the… Dustin. And being all ‘commitment is stupid’? I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, knowing why she’s worried and not wanting her to say it.

  Of course, she does. “With Gloria… and all that uncertainty—”

  “There’s no uncertainty,” I say as firmly as I can despite my drunkenness. “She’s going to be fine. Don’t even think anything else.”

  “No, of course she will.”

  She doesn’t sound convinced, and I have to get that sound out of my ears. “She will be. Say it. She will be.”

  “She will be, of course,” she says quickly.

  It’s not enough, and I’m taking a breath to tell her to say it again when she sighs and starts talking. “I’ve been thinking the last few days… and especially after tonight… with your sister… you’ve got so much stuff going on right now… and there’s lots of work still to do… that maybe you’d rather just be a guest for the wedding. I wouldn’t be offended at all.”

  It takes me a second to work through her rambling statement, then I’m furious. “You’re kicking me out of your wedding party?”

  “No, I just know I couldn’t handle all the stuff you’ve got going so I thought—”

  “Haven’t I done what I needed to do? Have I given you the impression I’m out of control?”

  “I— tonight— no, not at all! Valerie, no, it’s just that with Gloria and your work and all that I just thought it might be easier for you— I didn’t mean at all that I wanted you to—”

  I’d had a fight with my mother, at least as much of a fight as we ever had, over my not being at the hospital because of today’s bachelorette party, and now Mara comes up with this? “Well, I’m out then,” I snap. “Other people do have more important things going on than your stupid wedding, you know. And we manage to handle them. Maybe you couldn’t handle everything, but I can. But I won’t. Yeah, I’m out. Good luck getting it all together on your own with your idiot fiancé and your even-more-idiot sister.”

  And I smack the end call button so hard I break a nail.

  Chapter Eleven

  When I wake up Sunday morning, with a bad taste in my mouth and a sick sad feeling in my stomach, I consider fixing both by going out for a rare treat of bacon and eggs at the café on the corner then remember that today’s the first day of my 2468 diet. I could postpone it, of course, but I won’t. I don’t even know how many drinks I had last night but they were probably each a hundred calories or more
and it’s time to correct that.

  I can’t correct my quitting Mara’s wedding, but I don’t want to anyhow. She doubted my ability to handle everything and that still makes me furious even now. Besides, I can use the time I’d have spent on preparations to get further ahead on my work and then I’ll have lots of time for the presentation if I need to do it. When. When I need to do it.

  I update my phone calendar so I’ll have an easy reference to how many calories I get each day, then decide it’s time for breakfast.

  “Two hundred calories,” I think to myself as I look around my tiny kitchen, “isn’t much for a day.”

  It isn’t actually much for a single meal never mind a day, but though a lot of the girls following this plan restrict themselves to one meal a day I don’t think that’s bright so I’m going to have three.

  After some more thought and a bit of cooking, I sit down to a breakfast of two egg whites with half a cup of red pepper. 57 calories. Though I try to eat slowly, there’s so little of it that it’s gone before I know it.

  I stare at the empty plate, and some little voice in my head says, “When’s the next food? Soon? How about now?”

  Rubbing my forehead silences the voice, but only for a moment. I don’t actually feel hungry, so I don’t know why the voice is so insistent, but it’s annoying.

  Something I read on one of the sites I used for research comes back to me, and I find a rubber band and put it on my wrist.

  “When’s the next—”

  I snap the band hard against my skin, and the voice shuts up.

  Good. That’ll let me get some work done.

  Or should I go see Gloria?

  I could, but Mom will be there for sure, whether or not Dad is, and I don’t want to see her. Besides, I’d get a lot more done if I stayed here, and then I could go tomorrow night and the other nights this week with a clear conscience.

  It doesn’t feel quite right, but going to the hospital doesn’t feel quite right either and staying home is easier, so I pour myself a big glass of water to keep my stomach full and go downstairs to my office where having to reposition the peppermint candle on my desk annoys me yet again. Why can’t the cleaners keep track of where my things ought to be left? It’s not brain surgery.

  Thinking that makes me think of Gloria and the awful things happening in her brain, but I take a sip of my water and snap my rubber band though I wasn’t thinking of food and get myself focused on my work.

  For a few minutes.

  Though I do my best, my brain feels quiet, other than the little food voice which pops up occasionally, and my usual ability to recognize connections between the various reports and ensure everything is done properly doesn’t seem to be working. Probably due to the brain cells I killed off last night.

  I keep working, though, drinking lots of water and snapping the rubber band whenever it’s necessary, and I’m surprised when I discover it’s one o’clock already since I don’t feel hungry at all. Tired, and a little sick, but not hungry.

  Still, I do need to eat, so I go up to the kitchen and rustle myself up the saddest-looking salad ever. Two cups of lettuce, four stalks of celery, and three ounces of baby carrots. The celery doesn’t give me any trouble once I’ve measured it to know whether it’s the same size as my calorie app expects, but the other two ingredients make me think. I spend a few moments trying to decide how tightly packed the lettuce should be before realizing I’m being silly and should just put it in loosely, and then a few more moments looking at the scale with 3.05 ounces of carrots wondering whether I should swap one out for a smaller one. In the end, I do the math and realize I’m talking about two calories’ difference at the most, so I pull out one piece of lettuce and decide it’s close enough.

  The salad, if a plate of naked vegetables can be called such, takes forever to eat, and I feel like a cow chewing its cud. I feel about as intelligent as one looks, too, since my mind’s still dull and tired. I try to read a financial report while I eat, but I don’t seem to be able to do both at the same time so eventually I set it aside and keep stuffing vegetables into my mouth until the plate is empty.

  I don’t feel any different after than I did before, but presumably my body’s happy with the extra nutrients. It had better be.

  132 calories so far.

  As I settle back down to work, I find myself smiling. I don’t know why at first, but then it sinks into my numbed brain. Eating like this, or rather not eating like this, isn’t something everyone can do, and I’m doing it and doing it well. I’m actually proud of myself. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, but I like it.

  What I don’t like is the headache that arrives after about an hour of work. It feels like a giant’s got hold of the top of my skull and is pushing down hard so my head and neck are squished.

  Does Tylenol have calories?

  I doubt it, and after a while I can’t work through the discomfort even if it does so I pop two pills and take a break, which I spend lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. I don’t seem to have the energy to do anything else.

  Eventually the need to be productive overcomes the dullness in my mind and I get up and drag myself back to my desk. I still feel so flat, though, and slow, like every brain cell has decided it’s not speaking to its neighbors. This has to be from the hangover, I assume. I hope. It’s not going to be fun sticking to this diet if I feel like this all the time.

  Well, I’m not in it for fun. I was after fun when I rushed to get ready to go out with my boyfriend instead of putting the balloons away properly all those years ago. Fun, my manicure, is why I wouldn’t meet Gloria before the wedding-food tasting, and if I had maybe she’d be her usual healthy self right now. Fun is the last thing I need, or deserve.

  A memory of Dustin pinning me against the strip-club wall flashes through me, making me shiver. Yeah, that was fun. Briefly. And then I got called a lot of nasty names and got kicked out of a wedding.

  Fun and I just don’t belong together.

  I have to take two more breaks before dinner time, and I spend the first hanging up the laundry I picked up on my way home from the hospital yesterday and the second trying to find the new bottle of nail polish I bought at the salon after the bachelorette-party manicures. It’s not in my bag, not on my color-sorted nail polish shelf in the bathroom, not even in my bedroom or the kitchen or by the front door.

  I search, getting angrier and angrier because it’s not where it should be and I can’t imagine where it is, and just as I’m about to give up entirely I find it and my quick-drying topcoat lying under the living room couch. I must have repaired my broken nail there last night before going to bed, but I’ve never once left my nail stuff in the living room and I hate that I’ve done it now. It’s a stupid little thing, I know, but it makes me crazy.

  To calm myself, I decide it’s time for an early dinner. I don’t have a lot of options in the house, which is fine since I also don’t have a lot of calories remaining, and though it takes me a while I eventually spot some cans of soup with a few other grocery items Andy left in my cupboard after a shopping trip and never got around to taking home. Mine now. Most are too many calories, but the chicken broth is low enough that I can use it, so after a bit of math I make myself a cup of chicken broth with a third of a serving of rice and half a serving of baby carrots. Cooked together until the rice is done, it comes out like chicken soup and it’s not bad at all. Definitely more enjoyable than the field full of vegetables I forced down for lunch.

  Eleven calories left for the day.

  And about four more hours before I can reasonably go to bed.

  Two hours later, I’ve had enough of being conscious, if this quiet flat feeling in my head can be called consciousness. I did do work after dinner but I have no idea how good said work is. Physically I don’t feel bad at all, except for the nagging remnants of my headache and my general lethargy, but mentally I’m like a car that can’t get into gear. Yesterday was rough on me, with the drinking and the late night after hou
rs of working at the hospital, so that’s probably why.

  I try to make myself get ahead on my tasks for another hour, but fifteen minutes in I realize I’ve been staring at the laptop screen for I don’t know how long without doing anything so I figure it’s time for bed.

  Once I’ve finished my nightly routine, it’s pretty much nine o’clock and I feel like it’s three in the morning. I’m just pulling back my comforter when I remember that I haven’t done my weekly planning.

  I stand, holding the comforter’s edge in one hand, torn. I so want to go to bed, but I have not missed my weekly planning in years and I know it keeps my life in order, which I need right now more than ever.

  It takes me a full minute to decide, which isn’t like me, but in the end I know I won’t sleep well without being ready for the week so I drop the comforter and haul my tired carcass into my office.

  Doing my planning while wearing the cotton gloves that hold my thick moisturizer in feels weird, so everything takes me longer than usual, but at last I’m finished and can climb into bed.

  Sleep doesn’t come, though. I keep thinking about the two entries on my ‘areas of chaos’ list: George Slattery the CFO and Gloria. George will be retiring once his replacement is chosen, and I will be that replacement unless the world has gone completely mad by then, so I’ll be able to take him off the list soon.

  Gloria, though… I don’t know when I’ll be able to remove her, and I hate that.

  But at least my stomach isn’t growling. If I can handle 200 calories today then the next three days of increasing food should be no problem.

  Gloria’s situation itself isn’t directly under my control, but now I know my size-zero goal is, and that’s something.

  Chapter Twelve

  At work the next afternoon, as I finish entering my lunch of lettuce and celery and baby carrots with this time a little cheese because I can spare the calories into my tracking app, my cell phone rings. I’m afraid it’s someone calling to commiserate about Gloria and make me feel bad, but when I glance at the screen I answer at once.