by Cassie Rocca
“What are you talking about?”
Liberty looked at Clover. “When I was a teenager, I used to be overweight – huge, in fact. I ate constantly, especially sweets, and burgers, fries, pizza, ice cream… I used to just eat anything, especially when I was particularly depressed. I don’t know how I managed it, I feel nauseous just thinking about all the stuff I ate. “ She looked around her, saw a box that still contained a few chocolate cookies and groaned, bringing a hand to her stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Zoe grimaced and moved her chair back a little, then went back to looking at Liberty’s contorted face. “Did you come here at dawn to get rid of the food?”
“I slept here,” she replied, doing the quotation marks with her fingers, then she leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Why?” Clover asked, sitting down on her heels. She reached for Liberty’s face and brushed a lock of blonde hair from her eyes. “Problems at home?”
“There’s nobody at home – Justin is in Washington.”
“So because you felt lonely and depressed, you came here and… you ordered a pizza, emptied out a McDonald’s and robbed a pastry shop?” Zoe said. “Couldn’t you just have called us instead? We would have taken you to a bar and gotten you drunk! It would have been easier and more fun, and less… well, less greasy!”
Liberty opened her eyes, staring at an empty box of donuts. “It’s all his fault,” she hissed.
Clover frowned. “Justin? I knew it… He’s not the man for you, Liberty… Look, whatever he’s done to you… I don’t know what’s happened but I already hate him… If you give me ten minutes with him, I’ll reduce him to a bloody pulp!”
“Justin has nothing to do with it – it’s Zack’s fault.”
Staring in astonishment at Liberty, the two girls were silent for a moment. Zoe moved her chair closer again.
“This is starting to get interesting,” she murmured.
“What does Zack have to do with your mood?” asked Clover, intrigued.
Liberty gripped her head in her hands. “He is… lethal… Yes, lethal! Like a dose of sugar to a diabetic! He looks good and you think a little bite won’t do you any harm, but you’re wrong.”
“What, did you eat him?” Zoe joked, looking around. “Where are the bones?”
At the word ‘eat’ Liberty blushed violently. Clover noticed and put a hand to her mouth. “Something tells me that they ate each other,” she said, holding back a smile.
Zoe looked from Clover to Liberty in shock, then her face seemed to light up. “Spit it out, Allen!”
“I knew it. I knew I should have stayed away from him, but he’s so insistent, him and those damn cakes of his. He was like that when he was a kid – he used to drag me into the house and force me to try everything he prepared. I needed to lose weight, I was ugly and awkward, and all his friends made fun of me… But I couldn’t say no. Zack was like a drug for me,” Liberty groaned, blowing her nose. “He didn’t want me, not the way I wanted him. And how could I blame him? I was horrible and insignificant, and I was constantly eating! It was my way of filling up that part of me that felt empty after my father had abandoned us… But the more I ate, the uglier I got!, I would never have been good enough for him. So I left.” Liberty paused, wiping away a tear with the back of her hand. “I missed him so much, at first… For the first time there was something I wanted more than food. So I exploited that suffering and I stopped eating and I lost weight, and when I finally managed to look in the mirror without seeing a whale, my first thought was about him. ‘If you could see me now, maybe you would actually look at me with interest,’ I told myself. But straight after, I was horrified, I couldn’t base my life around someone who barely remembered my existence. And so I forced myself not to think about him anymore.” She sighed. “I thought I was relatively safe after fifteen years but instead it only took seeing him for five minutes to turn everything upside down!”
“How much trouble are you actually in?” asked Clover, cautiously.
“Let’s say to the point of having sex with him on his kitchen counter?”
“Wow!” exclaimed Zoe, clapping her hands. “That is a bombshell!”
“No, it is not!” snapped Liberty. “Damn, I’m getting married next week! How can I look Justin in the face after having an orgy of sex and cakes with another man?”
“Sex and cakes? Sounds great – give me more details!”
Barely managing to contain her laughter, Clover nudged Zoe then patted Liberty, who was still clutching a tissue. “Lib, honey… hasn’t it occurred to you that if you let something like this happen, it might be because you’re not really in love with Justin?”
“Love wasn’t part of the plan in my relationship – love sucks! Look at the state I’m in, dear God!” she cried, hiding her face in her hands. “This is already the second time I have stuffed myself with junk food because of him. He walks into my life, upsets me, gets my head in a spin… and I’m the one who puts on the extra pounds!”
“And what does Zack think? Is he in love with you?”
Liberty stared at Clover as if she were crazy. “What the hell are you talking about?! Just because I’m beautiful enough to attract him now doesn’t mean that he actually desires me any more than he did back then… He just wants to win his own personal battle to gorge me with food and hear me telling him how great it is just to boost his ego! He only got excited after he’d put those damned evil cakes of his in my mouth!”
Zoe coughed in an attempt to disguise her laughter, but Clover ignored her. “And what happened after you two had made love?”
“He asked me to take a shower…” Liberty stammered. “The cream from the cakes was… well…”
Zoe nodded vigorously. “You’re really giving me a lot of satisfaction, Allen – keep going.”
Liberty glared at her, then looked back down at the floor. “I was embarrassed and told him to go first and to leave me alone for a moment.
As soon as he entered the bathroom, I ran away and came here.”
“Ah!” snorted Zoe, almost choking. “I should have known it.”
Clover sighed. “You have to talk to him, try and understand what he feels… And, of course, cancel the wedding.”
“No!” Liberty shook her head and stood up with difficulty. “I can’t cancel the wedding! Not now that everything is ready, I can’t do that to Justin!”
“Well, it would be worse to marry him when you have another man in your heart,” said Zoe, with a sympathetic smile.
Liberty shook her head again. “It makes absolutely no sense to throw everything away just for… just for a bit of sex! If I leave Justin I’ll be running the risk of finding myself alone and miserable, and I’ll end up going back to being a slave to food to compensate for the loneliness.”
“But it doesn’t have to be that way! Zack might want you as much as you want him! Why don’t you give him a chance?” protested Clover. “And if you don’t want to do it for him, do it for yourself. You can’t marry a man you don’t love just to keep your emotions at bay!”
“Yes I can.” Liberty wiped her eyes and straightened her shoulders. “It’s too late. It was a youthful dream, but I’m not a little girl any more. I chose a long time ago how to shape my life, and I did it precisely to avoid pathetic scenes like this.” She looked around her and, noticing the open food boxes, her eyes filled up again. But she kept her cool and picked up her bag. “I’m going home to get myself sorted out, and then I’m going to the gym and I’ll be back in the afternoon… You… can you take care of the shop?”
“Sure but…”
Zoe clasped Clover’s arm. “We’ll take care of it,” she said to Liberty. “But think hard about what you really want to do.”
“I knew damn well what I wanted before I saw that man again, and I’ll know it again as soon as I shake off the memory of what happened,” said Liberty as she walked out.
Clover and Zoe sat there in silence for a l
ong time.
“Do you think she’ll change her mind?” murmured Clover, letting herself fall into a chair.
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never really understood what’s behind all this. Maybe the real Liberty is the one that just came out, but she’s too used to suffocating what she really feels. I’ve never seen her looking so vulnerable, and I don’t know if she will allow herself to be like that any more.”
“It’s not fair – she could have what she really wants if she would just stop being so stubborn.”
Zoe nodded. “Do you think he will come looking for her?”
“If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot,” snapped Clover, as she started tidying up the office.
*
“Apparently he’s not an idiot then,” Zoe said in a low voice five hours later when the shop door was thrown open.
Clover didn’t even look up, intent as she was on sorting out the orders received that day. “What?”
“Zack is here,” Zoe whispered, smiling at the new arrival. “Good afternoon, Zack, what a pleasure to see you again.”
“Is Liberty here?” he asked, looking tense.
Zoe hesitated. “Actually, no.”
“But she should be here any minute,” said Clover, with a decisive look in her eyes. She stared at Zack and tried to read his emotions from the look on his face. He looked like someone who hadn’t spent a calm night and this was enough to make her well disposed towards him, but her loyalty to Liberty didn’t take long to come out. “I don’t know if she wants to see you.”
“Well, she will have to try all the same,” he said. “I am not leaving here until we have had a talk.”
“Excellent response,” both girls thought, nodding their heads. They exchanged a knowing look, then Zoe smiled at him.
“She told us she was coming back in the early afternoon. If you want, we’ll call you as soon as she arrives.”
“I’d rather wait for her.”
Clover pointed to the floor above. “Go upstairs to her office, then – it’s the one at the end of the corridor.”
Zack headed upstairs without adding anything else.
Once alone, Zoe and Clover looked at each other. “What do we do now?” Zoe asked. “Do you think we should warn her?”
Clover bit her lower lip. “If we do, she won’t come.”
Eric emerged from his office and immediately became suspicious at the sight of their guilty faces. “What have you been up to?”
“My love, you who are so wise and intelligent, answer this question for us,” cooed Zoe, going over to him and straightening the collar of his shirt. “In your opinion, when two people like each other and feel something for each other, is it right for their friends to help them get together?”
Eric gave them a perplexed stare. “That depends – what do you mean ‘to help’?”
“Just make them to talk to each other,” said Clover with a shrug.
Confused, Eric watched them. “I think so, but I don’t trust you two – who are we talking about, exactly?”
“Liberty,” sighed Zoe.
Eric remained impassive. “Is she having problems with Justin?”
“Actually no, she is still thinking of marrying him, but we know that she’s in love with Zack and so…” Clover briefly explained the incident, but Eric didn’t react the way she hoped he would.
Alarmed, he shook his head. “Are you two crazy? We’re talking about Liberty, the virago that pays us our salaries! If she wants to get married, let her get married – and above all, if she doesn’t want to see Zack, don’t let him make himself comfortable in her office!”
Clover looked at Zoe ironically, folding her arms. “And this is supposed to be the brave hero who would have saved us from a mad criminal?”
Zoe dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand. “He didn’t even want Cade to give you that surprise on Christmas Day, come to think of it. While me and Liberty were trying to work out a plan to get you home so Cade could talk to you, Eric kept saying it was better to tell you everything, that he wasn’t an actor and was afraid he would disappoint you and that you would then go back to California again.” She glanced at her boyfriend and smiled sweetly. “He has an analytical mind. Before he rushes into things, he mulls them over and tries to find flaws – and if there are any risks involved, he prefers not to do anything. It’s no accident that it took him ten years to tell me he was crazy about me, isn’t that so?”
Eric sighed. “Thank you for the psychological profiling, honey, but we’re talking about Liberty here – she’s getting married! Maybe she’s just confused and seeing her first love again has made her lose sight of her priorities, but if she said she wants to continue with the preparations for the wedding and that Zack makes her feel sick, then you shouldn’t get involved.”
“We were right about Cade, though,” Zoe insisted.
“Zack is a friend,” added Clover. “Cade respects him a lot and he’s a lovely family man. I think he’s a man who deserves to be trusted, and if he manages to shake Liberty out of the comatose state she tries to live her life in, then I’m rooting for him!”
Eric rolled his eyes. “All right, let’s tempt fate, then – after all, what’s the worst that can happen? At most we’ll have to find another job.”
Zoe snorted. “Lib would never fire us for something like that… Would she?”
“Right,” Clover agreed. But when Liberty arrived, a little later, anxiety assailed both of them again, and not because they were scared of being given the sack: they had never seen their friend cry before and they weren’t sure they wanted to see her do it again. And if Zack had such an effect on her…
“Lib, you’re here!” said Zoe quickly, coming out from behind the counter.
Clover joined her. “Listen, can we talk to you for a moment?”
“I don’t want to talk,” Liberty snapped. “I just want to go to my office and catch up with my work.”
Liberty was once again in full control. Her appearance was back to what it usually was, impeccable and serious, but not even her make up was able to completely cover her swollen eyes.
Zoe ran after her. “Yeah, that’s just it, about your office…”
Liberty stopped with her foot on the first step. “Tell me you tidied it up, please.”
“Yes, of course I did, but…”
Liberty ignored Clover and started climbing the stairs again. “Thank you. It will never happen again, obviously – you’re not my slaves.”
“We were quite happy to do it, really,” sighed Zoe. “We’re your friends.”
“Your dear, dear friends – don’t forget that!” added Clover, as soon as Liberty set foot on the landing.
Liberty stopped to turn round and give them a strained smile. “I know you two have good intentions and maybe I… upset you a little this morning. But it won’t happen again. It was just a passing moment of confusion. I am calm and back in control now.”
Clover and Zoe watched her walk away down the corridor, then sighed.
“Are we going to try and listen at the door?” asked Zoe.
Clover shook her head. “Better not – if things go wrong, I’d rather find myself at a safe distance.”
Zoe gave her an ironic smile as she went down the stairs. “And then you say that Eric’s the coward…”
*
He was angry with her. And he had every right to be, since the moment she had seduced him by driving him crazy with pleasure and then running away like a thief in the night, leaving him standing there alone like a fool.
When he thought back to the pain he had felt when he’d returned to the empty kitchen, desperate to spend more time in her company after a quick shower, he gritted his teeth hard. The only evidence of what had happened in that room were the partially spoilt cakes left on the counter. There had been no trace of Liberty.
On the one hand, he could understand her. She was about to get married, it couldn’t be easy to find yourself changing your plans from one d
ay to the next and having to deal with feelings of guilt. But he had given her the chance to choose, damn it – he was ready to let her go before he completely compromised the situation.
And Liberty had decided to go all the way.
Her running away disappointed him and her refusal to answer the phone irritated him. For the whole morning he had hoped for a sign from her without receiving one, so he waited until he could leave Candice with Jessie and rushed to Giftland so that he could talk to her.
I don’t know if she wants to see you, Clover had said regretfully. And that had made him feel even more annoyed.
The stressful wait had amalgamated all those emotions and the result was a menacing frown and a jaw that ached from being clenched. But when she appeared at the door, much of his anger vanished, making way for tenderness.
Liberty froze when she saw him standing casually by her desk with his arms folded. She turned and looked around, perhaps seeking a way to escape, then straightened up and stepped forward, closing the door.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, not looking at him.
“Would you have come to see me by the end of the day?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
Liberty placed her bag on a chair. “There would have been no point.”
“And running away like that?”
She lifted her chin up, a serious look on her face. If he hadn’t known her, if he hadn’t been used to reading the emotions in her eyes, he would have found her indifferent and as cold as ice. But so many emotions chased each other around in those green eyes that it made him confused.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen, Zack, it was a mistake.”
“I don’t agree.”
“I’m getting married!” she sighed, holding her arms wide in resignation. “And I can’t just throw caution to the wind just a few days before the wedding for something…”
Zack stepped forward. “Pointless? Wrong? Meaningless?” he prompted. “That was not what you seemed to think yesterday.”
Liberty rubbed her forehead uncomfortably. “What’s going on, do you need to have your skills as a lover rated the same way you do your culinary skills?”