by Cassie Rocca
She was quite happy about it all. As far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter that her fiancé had asked his family first, or that he had proposed to her on the phone in the least romantic way possible. He had behaved like that because he knew her well enough to know she would be okay with it. Both of them knew that she wouldn’t want some huge diamond and that a mushy proposal would only make her uncomfortable. As far as she was concerned, sentimental stuff like that was for the kind of women who saw the world through rose-tinted glasses. And she didn’t even remember the last time that she had felt romantic.
“Don’t you start too, Mom,” she replied, clenching the fist of her free hand. “My friends are already making my life a misery because they’d like me and Justin to be more romantic. Don’t make it even worse.”
“Well, I can’t really blame them. I remember how excited I was about my first wedding! I must have gone through hundreds of magazines looking for a dress that would make me feel like a princess, and I remember spending hours planning the ceremony, and the honeymoon and dreaming about having my first child…”
And do you remember how it ended too? Liberty was about to ask her, but this time she managed to bite her tongue in time. They both knew that despite its romantic beginnings, her mother’s first marriage had ended in tragedy, but there was no need for her to bring it up again.
“Everything is going to be fine, Mom. Trust me, I feel relaxed, and Justin is the perfect match for me. He’s a very capable guy, and like me he thinks the wedding is just a formality. We’ve already been together for four years, and so even though the decision might have looked a bit sudden, we’d already been thinking about it for ages. So don’t worry – I know what I’m doing.”
“I really hope you do, darling.”
Liberty then said she was in a rush because she had to close the shop and said goodbye to her mother as quickly as she could. Once she had hung up, she sat there enjoying the silence, which was exactly what her overloaded mind needed. She still wasn’t feeling well, and her stomach was bothering her. It wasn’t just a physical thing, though: what she felt was a sort of dissatisfaction – an emptiness that was getting deeper and deeper.
She had felt that way all through her teenage years, but since she wasn’t the type of person who enjoyed losing control, she had never tried to fill it up with alcohol, cigarettes or drugs. She had never even had one night stands with guys, nor had she ever just packed a bag and set off on an adventurous journey by herself. Those solutions might have worked for other, more courageous, rebellious, or even irresponsible people, but not for her. The solution she had chosen was far less exciting – but perhaps at the end of the day just as stupid.
Food was her only addiction, and although she had managed to break out of it a long time ago, in situations as stressful as the one she was in right now, the temptation to give in to the bad habits of her past became stronger.
Every time she felt that absolute emptiness, she had to fight very hard against the impulse to open the fridge and devour the first thing that she saw. She knew that eating would only make her feel fulfilled for a few moments anyway, and afterwards she would only feel even more depressed and discouraged, especially if she ate sugary food.
She had eventually realized that she’d touched rock bottom one day years before when she’d looked at herself in the mirror. She was trapped inside a body that she didn’t like and that didn’t feel like it was hers. The situation felt as though it was putting a barrier between her and other people, and that made her feel lonely, so after thinking about it long and hard, she had decided to stop consoling herself with food and to starting taking care of her body and her mind so that she could become somebody other people would like.
First of all, she had gone on a strict diet. Having an empty fridge helped her not to give in to temptation, just like not having a social life kept her safe from any possible sentimental disappointments. Getting attached to people was as dangerous as eating too much food, and that was why she kept her distance from both. It wasn’t easy, and she sometimes had to accept compromises and open herself up a little to allow other people to get to know her better. It was necessary, if she wanted the world to have a good opinion of her. She had ended up having a few friends and even a boyfriend, although none of it had happened spontaneously – she had always carefully calculated every move.
And gradually, she had changed. The thirty year old Liberty was nothing like her teenage self, and she was quite satisfied with the results – although not with her life in general.
Every time she felt anxious, her first thought was still to grab hold of the nearest unhealthy thing to eat and start wolfing it down, and she had reacted to that instinct by making her diet even stricter. That spiral of behaviour was a clear symptom that something was wrong, but instead of dealing with it, she had learned how to control herself. She had made her life so very busy that she didn’t have time to think about her problems too much.
Every once in a while, though, some residual part of the teenager hidden deep inside her would show up. And this was one of those times.
Liberty went back to her chair and looked at the bottom drawer of her desk. It was locked and she rarely opened it. Inside that drawer she kept all the mementos she had decided to ignore for the past fifteen years. The only reason that she hadn’t thrown everything away was because sometimes looking back at all that stuff made her feel again some of the emotions that she needed to be able to remember in order to write her stories.
It probably wasn’t a great idea to open that box of memories right at that particular moment, but something had been on her mind for the last few weeks…
Almost against her will, she unlocked the drawer and took a notebook out of it.
Whatever was left of her romantic dreams was written in there. It was the same notebook in which she’d used to write all her desires, her hopes of experiencing an actual love story, her emotions when a loved person would smile at her and all her wildest and most romantic fantasies.
She let her finger slide across the paper to feel how uneven it was. She remembered the days when she’d used to write every single thought she had down in there, and at one point she had even thought of turning it into a book, her own story. She’d never really pursued the idea, though; as she had grown up, she had lost all her spontaneity, and never regained any interest in actually reorganising all of her past writings.
She would never write her own story – and even if she had, it wouldn’t have been anything special, anyway. The first half of her life had been so sad that nobody would ever feel inspired by it, and as for the second part? Well, that was just… anonymous. If she’d wanted to write a really gripping story, she would have had to start looking for something that she had stopped searching for a long time ago: happiness.
And you’re not looking for anything because you already have everything you need, she reminded herself, with conviction.
She took a deep breath and started leafing through the old pages, snorting every time she saw one of her mawkish drawings: there was always a very pretty blonde girl and a tall, charming prince with dark hair who were hugging and evidently deeply in love.
A piece of paper fell from the notebook, and Liberty recognized it immediately. It was a picture of the wedding dress she used to dream about in those years. It looked like one of those dresses described in every fairy tale: it had a very large skirt and a tight bustier, and the neckline was more than generous. She’d once thought that she would feel the sexiest woman on the planet in a dress like that. On the back of the picture she had also described, in rounded, orderly handwriting, smudged by tears, what she thought was the perfect wedding proposal.
The proposal she had dreamed of hadn’t sounded like a hurried phone call at all, and the idea of getting married wasn’t just casually mentioned among other things. She had dreamed of a fabulous location, maybe some park full of flowers, and of a man who would kneel down at her feet holding out a ring and waiting impatie
ntly for her to smile back at him and say “Yes”.
“God, what a load of stupid, naïve nonsense,” she snorted, slamming the notebook violently shut.
She was a grown-up woman now, and there was no room for sentimental dreams like that in her life.
Prince Charming didn’t exist, whatever people said. Well, she hadn’t found him, anyway, and she had moved on.
Love was pain, always. Every love story ended in tears eventually, and she had already cried enough for one lifetime.
Liberty threw the notebook back in the drawer angrily and then kicked it shut.
She didn’t have time to dwell on her past: the next six weeks would barely be enough for her to organize her future and new life. She needed to focus if she didn’t want to waste all the sacrifices she had made to achieve that result.
2
The loft was absolutely silent apart from the sound of someone typing furiously on a keyboard. Liberty liked to write early in the morning when almost everybody else in Brooklyn was still asleep and the light was still dim. The quiet, intimate atmosphere was ideal for letting her imagination run wild and for trying to put herself into the heads of her customers so that she could write their stories.
It was Saturday, and Justin was over at her house. The plan was to leave for Cape May right after breakfast, so she didn’t have much time left to get her ideas down: her inspiration would desert her the moment Justin started banging about in the kitchen and the smell of his breakfast started wafting through the whole house. That was why she was so committed to getting as much of the book as possible written before he woke up.
She was writing for Sandra Geller, a client she had met a couple of times and with whom she had had some very long chats. The woman wanted Liberty to write up the disastrous relationship she had just emerged from, but adding a different ending. That way she’d be able to see what she’d been through from a different perspective and possibly, she hoped, learn from her mistakes.
Sandra had really made an impression on Liberty. She was clearly very cut up over the way the relationship had ended, but despite her melancholic face, she was determined not to give up her romantic dreams. With the book she’d commissioned, she was hoping to rediscover the joy of her first love, that feeling of her heart beating too fast and of walking on air once again. She wanted to feel the immense joy that every little gesture of her loved one gave her and be as reckless as when she had first fallen in love. Liberty wasn’t completely sure that she could help her, because she hadn’t felt anything like that for a very long time.
She never turned down a job, though, and she was always totally committed to delivering high-quality stories, so she carried on working even though her head was aching more and more and the rest of her wasn’t feeling particularly great either. Over the last few hours she had been feeling increasingly unwell and extremely stressed – but feeling extremely stressed was the norm for her.
She was so immersed in her story that the sound of Justin’s steps on the spiral staircase startled her.
“Morning,” he said with a yawn. “How come you’re up so early?”
Liberty didn’t let the irritation that the question provoked in her show. “I’m writing,” she said to cut the conversation short. She hated being interrupted while she was working. “Let me finish this chapter, then we can think about breakfast.”
She went back to her story and tried to concentrate, but Justin was constantly banging about and the noise distracted her.
In fact, he had already starting cooking: he placed a ceramic bowl on the formica kitchen top, took a couple of eggs from the fridge, broke them into the bowl and beat them, then he fetched a pan from the cupboard and started frying some bacon and, in the meantime, he also put a couple of slices of bread into the toaster.
Liberty had to stop writing at every new noise, and when she smelled the aroma of the scrambled eggs she finally gave up working altogether.
She sighed in annoyance, removed her fingers from the keyboard and leaned back in her chair. “I only asked you to wait a couple of minutes before starting cooking.”
“Don’t worry, honey,” smiled Justin, failing to notice her irritation. “I can make it myself,”
“Of course you can,” she thought, then snorted, saved her document and closed her laptop.
Having to break off a job in the middle really got on her nerves, and now she also had to endure the disgusting smell of saturated fats being fried which made her feel nauseous.
No it doesn’t, said a voice inside her head.
She ignored the voice, stood up and put her laptop netbook in its case. Her stomach was reacting loudly to the aroma of Justin’s high calorie breakfast. Liberty resisted the temptation, though, and grabbed a soy yogurt from the fridge.
“I’ve made way too much bacon,” said Justin. “You want some?”
Trying to suffocate the voice inside her mind which was insisting she should take a bite of it – and maybe some eggs and a slice of toast too – Liberty shook her head.
“Come on, eating a slice of bacon every once in a while can’t be that dangerous for your health.”
No way! It had taken her years to lose weight and she was totally committed in maintaining her current figure. Her body was the result of hours spent training at the gym, every day of the week, and of the other restrictions she had imposed on herself, starting with the absolute ban on any fattening food. Her super strict diet had produced positive results immediately, and that had provided her with the strength to carry on with her plan.
She had lost four stone over fifteen years, and she had no intention of putting back on even half of it. There were times when she missed deep-fried food, soft drinks, sugary cakes, chocolate and all the rest, of course, but then all she had to do was open the only yearbook she had kept from her adolescence. It had been published the last year she had spent in Chicago. She hated the picture of her in there: the puffy face and the bulky body without a recognisable waistline. Taking a look at that and remembering how her classmates would bully her was enough to forget about her craving to eat junk food. And if circumstances forced her to eat any forbidden food, she just doubled her training time for a couple of days. Justin didn’t understand how difficult her relationship with food was. Although they had been together for a long time, she had never told him in detail about everything she had gone through as a teenager and how she had come to hate her body. Now she had the body of a model, although she could never have passed for a skinny woman because of her abundant bosom. She didn’t care if people thought her breasts were too big, anyway, she just wanted to have well defined muscles and be considered sufficiently attractive.
Sometimes Liberty was envious of Clover and Zoe for the much healthier relationship they both enjoyed with food and with their own bodies. They were both very beautiful girls, but neither of them were obsessed with their appearance. Clover was a small, slim woman with curves in all the right places and Zoe was very sexy and confident too. They would never deprive themselves of a piece of cake, a slice of pizza or a portion of fries, and when they were sad they would wolf down vast amounts of chocolate, but they never seemed to gain weight. They didn’t even exercise regularly, and only did some sport every now and then – just enough to keep their figures trim.
Was it possible that the reason they didn’t gain weight was that they were satisfied with their lives?
“Bullshit.”
It was genetics: every woman in Liberty’s family was larger than average and that’s why she could never eat like her friends. None of her relatives worried too much about their figures, to be fair, nor did their husbands complain about their wives’ curves. Her issues had always been prompted by strangers, and she would never forget the way people used to laugh at her for being fat.
“What time are we meeting your friends?” Justin asked her, bringing her crashing back to the here and now.
“At half past seven. It takes about three hours to get to Cade’s friend’s house, so
we need to leave pretty early. I told you yesterday, don’t you remember?”
“Yes, but I was so fixated on that fraud case I’m working on that it went in one ear and out of the other.”
“In other words, you weren’t listening to me,” Liberty grumbled.
“You know how much I have to concentrate when I work, babe. I can’t afford to let myself get distracted.”
“I know perfectly! I need to concentrate too when I write, although you seem to think it’s okay to mess about in the kitchen while I’m working. As if I couldn’t hear you…”
Justin looked slightly taken aback by the harshness of her tone. “I’m sorry – I tried not to make too much noise.”
She sighed and headed towards the mezzanine stairs. “Don’t worry about it, I’ve just not been feeling that great lately. I’ve had this nagging headache for days now, and it puts me in a really crappy mood.”
Justin replied with his kindest smile. “I’m sure you’ll feel better after a weekend at the seaside. You’ll probably even realize that buying a house there isn’t such a bad idea after all. Think of our future children and how happy they’re going to be to be able to play in the open air every once in a while.”
Liberty shivered at the word ‘children’, and could only retreat to the bedroom.
Knowing that she was about to get married was already bad enough, but the idea of also having to become a mother was just terrifying. She had always known that Justin wanted kids, they had even talked about it a few times, and she was well aware that this commitment of his was a good quality. Sure, he might not be the most outgoing or sweetest man on earth, but he was smart, had a good position and wasn’t the type to ever abandon his children or cheat on his wife.
Well, she couldn’t be sure about the last thing…
Don’t be such a cynic! Not all men are cheaters! the voice in her head scolded her while she got undressed.
Justin was nothing like her father, and that was obvious. He was a serious man, committed to his job and to his family. He was honest and intelligent, knew how to be funny enough not to be considered boring and he always treated her respectfully. He had his flaws too, of course; for example, he ate a lot of unhealthy food, had the bad habit of making plans for their future life together without consulting her and wasn’t really in the habit of showing her his affection. She wasn’t perfect either, but Justin liked her anyway. That was the real reason their relationship was so strong: they were similar, wanted the same things from life and didn’t need any great romantic gestures. They were both more interested in the substance than in the form.