Lost In Me (Here and Now)

by Ryan, Lexi

  “Dirty?”

  I nod. “Really dirty.”

  “Oh, damn, girl.”

  “I know. Right?”

  She rubs her hands together. “Okay. I could talk to Nate, right? Feel him out?”

  “He’s hella pissed at me, Liz. I don’t think he’s any more likely to talk to you.”

  “What about Asher?” she asks, but my horror must be evident on my face because she says, “Okay, okay, bad idea. No one else needs to know until they need to know, right?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  “Your phone!” she exclaims. “We didn’t know who we were looking for yesterday! Look in your contacts first. Maybe you have his name programmed as something else.”

  I scroll through my contacts until I see find his name staring back at me. “He’s here. Programmed into my phone.”

  She makes a hurry-up gesture with her hand. “Well, click on the history.”

  I frown. I called him last Friday. That was the day of my accident. We had a three-minute conversation. About what? Judging from his reaction when he saw my ring, I obviously wasn’t telling him about my engagement.

  “Oh, hell, Liz. This doesn’t make any sense.”

  She snatches the phone from my hand and starts scrolling through the history under Nate’s contact info. “But you said there were texts from you on his phone?”

  “Yeah. A lot of them. I didn’t get very far back before he found me and took it back.”

  “But there’s nothing on your phone, which seems to indicate you deleted the evidence.”

  I cross my arms. “It looks like it.”

  “Where’s your laptop?”

  “In the kitchen. I need to—”

  I don’t get a chance to finish before she darts to the back of the kitchen and opens my laptop. “What’s your password?”

  I shrug. “That’s what I was trying to say. I haven’t been able to get on because I don’t know. Thank God my calendar is synched with my phone, but I brought it down today because I need to take it to the shop. I can’t access my files.”

  “What have you tried?”

  “All the usual passwords I’ve always used. Birthday, initials, HanHan, initials and birthday together.”

  “What about your anniversary with Max?”

  I lift my palms. “No go.”

  “What about Nate? Or Nate Crane?”

  “That’s not it.”

  “You sure?”

  I drop my gaze to the floor. “I tried this morning.”

  “Or…” She taps on the keyboard for a minute then presses ENTER. The computer beeps at her and gives her the “Wrong Password” warning message. “Hmm.” She taps again.

  “Let it go, Liz. I’ve tried.”

  She hits ENTER and the computer brightens as my desktop appears.

  “What was it?”

  “‘Lost In Me.’” She forces a smile. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s a seriously popular song.”

  Maybe it’s not incriminating evidence, but it doesn’t look good either. “Go to my email first.”

  She opens the email client and loads the “Sent” folder. A quick scroll through shows messages from me to several potential clients, vendors, future brides. When she pulls up my contact list, Nate’s name and email are listed, but a search for his email address gives us nothing from the history.

  “Why would I have him in my contacts if I’ve never actually contacted him?”

  “Let’s check the trash,” she says, moving the mouse to pull up the deleted messages. She looks at me. “Empty.”

  My stomach churns, bile crawling up my throat. “I’ve never been good about clearing that stuff. Why would I do it here?”

  “Because you were trying to hide something?”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I mutter.

  A search of my Facebook profile yields similar results. Nate is in my friends list, but we can’t find any evidence of correspondence between us. Of course, if we’d been having an affair, I can’t believe I’d be stupid enough to flaunt it on Facebook. Hanna is in a secret mostly-just-about-sex relationship with Nate Crane. I’m pretty sure they don’t have that option yet.

  I want to scream. “I wish I were the kind of girl who kept a diary.”

  “What are you ladies doing?”

  I jump at the question and turn to see Drew entering the kitchen from the back door. She’s gorgeous, a younger, more petite version of Cally’s dark hair and sultry curves. But she’s certainly not dressed to impress anyone in her torn-up old jeans and raggedy T-shirt.

  “Drew! Good morning!”

  “Eh. If you say so. Coffee?”

  “Up front,” I say just as the bell at the front rings to let us know a customer came in. “And can you get that customer while you’re at it?”

  “Sure. I’m great with the public,” she enthuses, with an eye roll thrown in for good measure.

  I ignore her sarcasm. “Thanks, Drew,” I say, and watch her push through the swinging door to the front of the shop.

  “Let’s think about this,” Lizzy says. “Maggie says you met Nate three months ago at a show in St. Louis. That’s also around the time you stopped trying to lose weight and started taking drastic measures to be sure you lost weight.”

  “Drastic measures?” Maybe the anorexia I was secretly seeing Dr. Perkins for wasn’t much of a secret at all.

  “You stopped eating, took your one-a-day workouts to two or three times a day. Drastic. That’s also when you started pulling away from me.”

  The truth is that my anorexia is more believable to me than the idea of pulling away from Liz. “You think I did that because of Nate?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just think something happened three months ago and you changed.” Her eyes light up and she’s back at the computer, pulling up the web browser and typing madly.

  “What?”

  “Gossip sites.” Lizzy’s eyes scan the screen as she scrolls down with her mouse. “They’re in love with Nate Crane for the obvious reasons, and I bet there’s at least one pic of him while he was in St. Louis.” She stops scrolling and her shoulders sag.

  “What?” I step behind her to see what she found. She minimizes the window, but not before I see the headline.

  The thing about being overweight, for me at least, is that I’ve spent most of my life strategically planning how I’m going to lose weight and change my body. Most fat girls don’t like their pictures taken because they truly believe that soon enough they will be smaller, fitter, more toned—more aesthetically pleasing. No matter that I’ve been overweight my whole life. I wasted so much time and energy thinking about how to get rid of the weight that I never accepted my size.

  Fitness people would probably say that’s good. They would probably talk about the dangers of complacency and “giving up,” blah blah blah. But they don’t understand that always hating your size, always planning to change, translates way too easily to self-loathing and depression. And every time someone takes a picture of a fat girl, revealing her true fat-girl form, it feels like an insult, an intentional jab.

  But one hundred times worse than the pictures is the commentary, as if we must be reminded of this completely unacceptable shortcoming. As if we don’t spend the majority of our waking moments thinking about it.

  My eyes sting as I blink at the screen where the picture was. Where the headline was.

  “They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Lizzy says. “They’re fucking shallow idiots.”

  “Pull it back up, Liz.”

  She shakes her head. “No. It’s stupid. Looking at it is only going to hurt you.”

  “Pull it back up.” My determination must be clear in my voice, because she sighs and clicks on the icon. The browser pops back up on the screen.

  The image shows Nate kissing a woman, his hand halfway up the black skirt that’s creeping up and exposing her thick thigh. My face is obscured, but there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m
the woman in the picture under the soul-scarring headline: Nate Crane’s Secret Fatty Fetish.

  I reach over Lizzy and scroll down to the text of the article—a bunch of nothing trying to make legitimate journalism out of spotting Nate making out with an overweight woman outside a St. Louis nightclub. There’s no mention of who the woman in the picture is—as if identity is irrelevant—and no mention of what Nate and the girl did before or after making out outside the nightclub. But Nate’s words echo in my head.

  “You begged. Right there outside the club, you begged me until I ripped your panties off and you were too busy biting my neck to talk anymore. Is that what you’re hoping to remember? How you wanted me so badly you let me finger you out in the open, against that building where anyone could have seen?”

  He wasn’t lying about that. The evidence is right in front of me.

  “Do you think I saw this?” I ask Liz.

  She chews on her lower lip and shrugs. “It would explain your drastic diet changes.”

  “It doesn’t answer any of my questions, though. Like why would I cheat on Max and how far did it go and…what the hell am I going to do?”

  “We’ll figure this out. Let me think. Three months ago seems to be when everything changed. That was our graduation, the night you met Nate, and—”

  “She started taking those out-of-town baking gigs three months ago.”

  Lizzy and I turn toward Drew in unison as she pushes back into the kitchen, coffee in one hand, chocolate croissant in the other.

  “That was even before this place was opened, but you were doing side gigs for people.”

  Lizzy’s eyes are wide, her fingertips to her mouth. “I didn’t even think of that. I found it weird at the time, but I was kind of pissed at you for dropping me. I didn’t really give it much thought beyond that it was yet another reason you were better than me.”

  “I’m not better than you. I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.”

  She waves away my apology.

  “Where was I going?” I ask Drew.

  “Different cities,” she says around a mouthful of croissant. “I bet you can find your flight information in your email.”

  Lizzy’s already tapping at the keyboard, pulling up my travel folder in my email client. “Bingo.”

  I scan the destinations from the subject line. “LA, Seattle, New Orleans.”

  Lizzy opens a new tab and searches Nate Crane tour schedule. She clicks through a link and pulls up the calendar on his website. “The dates and cities of your gigs all line up with Nate Crane performances.”

  I step back and press my head against the wall before sinking to the floor. “Liz. What have I done?”

  “OH, CRAP, Liz! I need to get a shower and get dressed. I have a cake consult in fifteen minutes.”

  Lizzy arches a brow. “I think Cally will forgive you if you aren’t looking your best.”

  “Not Cally,” I say, grabbing my keys. “A wedding cake consultation.”

  Lizzy grins. “With Cally and William.”

  My jaw drops and my eyes water. Will and Cally visited me in the hospital. Cally even gushed over my engagement ring, but I didn’t notice she was wearing a ring too. “That’s…wonderful.”

  The bell rings, and Drew calls from the front, “Hanna, my sister is here!”

  I rush through the swinging door without a word to Lizzy and practically tackle Cally into a hug. “Congratulations!” I screech.

  Cally gives me a squeeze before stepping back and frowning.

  “On your engagement,” Lizzy explains behind me. “She didn’t know.”

  “Oh!” Cally throws her hand over her mouth, and I see her sparkling ring. “Of course she didn’t!”

  “How did I miss that when you visited me at the hospital?” I take her hand and study the ring. “God, it’s gorgeous.”

  “I didn’t have it on that day. The jeweler needed it so he could design my wedding band.”

  “Wedding band.” I melt a little. William and Cally had to go through so much to get this far, and I can’t think of any two people who deserve happiness more. “I’m so happy for you.”

  “Well, I’d hope so. You’re in the wedding.”

  “Ooh!” My eyes fill with tears all over again.

  Behind me, Drew grunts, and I can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “This would be so sweet if you hadn’t already been through it all months ago. Seriously, it’s the Twilight Zone around here.”

  “Come on.” I wave Cally over to a table in the corner. “Let’s talk about your wedding cake.”

  December—Eight Months Before Accident

  Skinny chicks should be required to take a class in empathy. I’d call it Fat Girl 101 and I’d teach them all the secret rules fat girls live by:

  1) Never use the word fat. It makes the skinny folk uncomfortable.

  2) Pretend to be at peace with your body and size while simultaneously and continuously making your best efforts to reduce it to something more aesthetically pleasing.

  3) Pretend to be attracted to the guys you stand a chance with and hide your attraction to The Unattainables.

  I’ve spent most of my life following these simple rules, but tonight they’re not coming easily.

  I don’t want to be that girl. The one who can’t enjoy herself because she’s too busy looking at how much thinner, prettier, or more fashionable the women around her are. The one who can’t believe the man on her arm wants to be with her, so she spends all her energy feeding her jealousy toward the women he should want. But tonight, I’m all that and worse.

  The gallery’s winter opening is bustling, and William and Cally are glowing as people circulate through the new exhibit. Cally waves at me from across the room, her smile bright. Max and I are supposed to go out with them tonight after the opening, but Lizzy’s here in a red dress that shows off her long legs and skinny arms, and all I can think about is how inadequate I am.

  I’m about to smack myself.

  I beeline for the bar and hand a ten to the bartender. “Your biggest glass of your sweetest red, please.”

  The bartender’s eyes drop to my cleavage for a minute, and I actually smile. I forget how much men like tits. I forget that some men like tits enough to overlook everything else. And maybe I should be offended by this stranger’s not-so-subtle appreciation of mine, but politically correct or not, knowing that he’s looking seriously lifts my spirits.

  I take a long pull off the wine and lean on the bar as I scan the room for Max.

  “Waiting for your date?” the bartender asks. He’s cute. Probably a student at Sinclair like me. He’s got that disheveled surfer-boy look going on, even in his white button-up shirt and dress pants.

  I take another healthy swallow. Wine goes a long way to make me forget my insecurities, and if I don’t want to be that girl, I’m gonna need a vat of it tonight. “I am,” I say with a sigh. “But last time I saw him, he was checking out my twin.”

  The surfer boy coughs and pulls at the neck of his dress shirt. He’s so obviously uncomfortable in it, I almost feel bad for him. As if giving up, he unbuttons the top button. His eyes dip to my cleavage again, but he pulls them back up so fast it doesn’t feel smarmy, just flattering and adorable.

  “You have a twin?”

  I roll my eyes. Boys and their twin fantasies. Seriously. “Yes, but we’re not identical.” Not by a long shot.

  God, if Max had known I was behind him, he never would have checked out Lizzy like that. He’s not an asshole or anything. He’s just a normal guy. And like any normal guy, he wants to fuck my twin more than he’ll ever want to fuck me.

  Three dates and he hasn’t kissed me. Sure, he’s held my hand, hugged me, kissed my cheek. But in three dates, his lips haven’t touched mine. That wouldn’t be the case if he’d had those three dates with Liz.

  “Gah!” I growl. There may not be enough wine or cute-surfer-boy-tit-gawking to ever obliterate this mood.

  The surfer boy’s brows sho
ot up. “What?”

  “I’m instituting my own drinking game.” I prop both elbows on the counter and lean forward, grinning at my own clever idea. “Every time I feel sorry for myself because my date secretly has the hots for my sister, I’m taking a drink.”

  He shifts behind the counter and refills my wine without me asking. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Max appears on the other side of the room and pulls William into one of those male-certified one-armed hugs. They’re such a handsome duo—Will with his crazy blond curls, Max with his dark mop, both sporting bodies that belong in men’s fitness magazines. Max looks amazing tonight in his pressed slacks and dark blue oxford. Flipping gorgeous and way out of my league. Drink. “Ask away,” I say behind my wine glass.

  “If he’s into your sister, why are you with him? Why not be into a guy who’s into you?”

  Because guys aren't into me. Oh, shit. There I go again. Drink.

  “I mean, if I were your boyfriend, for example, I wouldn’t care what your sister looks like. Look at you.”

  I blink at him. Then it occurs to me that the wine is going to my brain. This guy is probably just trying to make me feel better. Drink. “I fell for Max when I was thirteen,” I confess. “He smiled at me and I…” I take another drink. Really, if I’m going to tell him the story, he should save us both the trouble and hand me the bottle.

  “Well, if you decide you want a date who’s only interested in you…” He walks around the bar and takes the phone from my fingers to tap on the screen.

  I have to smile at him. It’s been a long time since someone has gone this much out of his way to make me feel better. “You’re really sweet, you know that?”

  This time when his eyes drop to my breasts, they slide right down on past to my hips and then linger. “For those curves, I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”

  “Who’s this?”

  I jump at the sound of Max’s voice then back a step away from surfer boy, as if I’ve just been caught doing something wrong. “Oh, this is Max, my date,” I tell the bartender. I widen my eyes and hope he can see the desperate Please don't tell him what we were talking about message in my eyes. “Max, this is the bartender, um…”