by Candi Heart
His eyes swept over me, and his lips turned up in a wistful smile. Then, without another word, he took off down the walkway and vanished into the night, back to where he belonged, even if it was the last place in the world he wanted to be.
I didn’t want to eat my feelings, as I knew that was what had forced me out of my beloved cutoffs in the first place, but in that moment, I felt powerless to fight those cravings. I knew food couldn’t soothe my mood, but I still wanted to guzzle down a half-gallon of Ben & Jerry’s. Still, I didn’t want that emotional rush to tempt me into a sugar rush, to sabotage my weight-loss efforts. I knew I had to regain control fast before I sought comfort at the bottom of an ice cream carton. Or in that sinful box of chocolates.
Chapter 25
THAT NIGHT IN MANHATTAN was a turning point, a game-changer, a dangerous reminder of how far things could go and how far they’d gone already. It was a clear picture of what could happen if I let my guard down and focused only on being happy, a warning about boundaries and hard lines. We’d already come close to that point of no return, and that reminder shook us to the core.
A few of the girls talked me out of ruining my diet, and I managed to avoid the ice cream and chocolates and stay on track, but it was not easy. Then, over the next few weeks, Matt and I generally managed to stay away from each other. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, considering that we were neighbors, but we found a way to make it work. I was busy getting things ready in the new office space, spending my days painting, dusting, and battling light fixtures, and I assumed he was working on his next book.
I also found a new resolve. It was time to get rid of everything that weighed me down: fries, pizza, tacos, weight, stress, my business problems, and Matt. I decided that I had to find a way to conquer everything on my ass-kicking list and be the better woman I knew I could be, the woman I’d always wanted to be.
Of course, due to our close geographical proximity, just because we weren’t intentionally spending time together, that didn’t mean I didn’t see him around. Matt walked at odd hours, while Steph was asleep, roaming the darkened streets of the neighborhood like a hunter on the prowl, searching for his next idea and waiting for inspiration to strike. I often saw him strolling by with his hands in his pockets, his face tilted up to the moon.
Sometimes he paused as he passed by my house. He turned his body, as if he was considering walking up to the front door. When he did that, my heart quickened, even as I sat there, perched on the edge of my living room couch. Each time, though, the muscles in his face hardened. His jaw set, his shoulders slumped, and he walked on down the street, flipping up his collar as if bracing against a strong wind.
As if his own banishment wasn’t enough, even Sadie was banned from the house. Although Matt was the type of guy who enjoyed walking his own dog, he had started dropping her off at group functions and playdates in an attempt to socialize her with other dogs, but that was no longer the case. Now, he only took her to the park himself, and he was the only one who played with her, with no exceptions and no leniency, no matter how many times the sweet girl looked over at our house and whined for Dick.
Clearly, a barrier had been set in place, an invisible wall erected right down the center of the sidewalk. No one could see it but us, but we avoided it at all costs. While Matt dedicated himself to his side of that wall, I kept busy on mine.
In the depressive slump that followed our abrupt isolation, I made a solemn vow not to let myself tumble into depression. Instead, I threw myself full-force into preparing the storefront, while simultaneously rededicating myself to my online diet club.
Despite having started and quit a million weight-loss programs before, I threw myself into that one like it was the first time, following every instruction to the letter and counting every single calorie that crossed my lips, right down to the 1.9 in every Tic Tac. Of course I counted it as a full two, because I always rounded up to work in favor of my next weigh-in.
I wrote my own blogs and read the blogs of others religiously. At one point, with my sponsor’s permission, I even started a chatroom for people to talk each other off the ledges and away from the ice cream; yes, even ice cream became a thing of the past.
Things got so serious in that area that Nate showed up at my house late one night, determined to catch me in the act of forgery, but he was in for a rude awakening. Not only was my step-counter strapped firmly on my arm, but I was also glaring into the light of my computer monitor, with a tofu salad on my desk.
The results were undeniable, even though my former attempts had convinced me that such efforts were doomed to fail. Within a few months, I’d lost twelve pounds, and five more followed after that. I no longer fidgeted uncomfortably in front of the mirror as I readied myself for the day, turning this way and that to find a slimmer-looking angle. That extra bit of cushioning was quickly giving way the muscle below, shifting me proudly from plump to curvy.
Thrilled by my success and unwilling to plateau, I threw myself recklessly into the Land of Exercise, a terrifying place I’d sworn I would forever avoid.
That part of my personal overhaul was a bit more difficult. I was out of breath without much exertion at all, and it didn’t help that the first time I tried to do some cardio-boxing, assisted by a video tutorial, I tripped over Dick and shattered a lamp on the floor. I took things a little easier after that and built up my endurance bit by bit. Over the course of a few weeks, I shifted from a twenty-minute workout tape to a half-hour, then forty-five minutes. Before I knew it, I was looping the thirty-minute video to complete a full hour.
After a while, I stopped dreading exercise and actually started to look forward to it, not to the workout, per se, but to the endorphin rush that followed. I also enjoyed the litany of smug I’m-doing-better-than-you comments I felt justified to leave all over Nate’s profile page.
I had more stamina while dog-walking and more energy for things more exciting than Netflix when I came home. Not only that, but I also gleaned a newfound surge of confidence when I went out.
Truth be told, in my exercising fervor, I was tempted to pair my brutal videos with regular walking, albeit not the power-walking, calorie-burning kind of march with all those tracksuit-wearing women who thundered down our streets. I just wanted to enjoy leisurely, late-night strolls, the kind of midnight wandering where I might just so happen to run into an inspiration-starved writer somewhere in the shadows of the sleepy trees.
I had to really work hard to shove those thoughts quickly out of my mind. Both Matt and I had stuck to our unspoken exile to perfection, and I wasn’t about to put that at risk, any more than I was going to cave and gobble a pint of Rocky Road. He had a life to live, and I was busy living mine. I accepted that it was a miracle that our lives had crossed in the first place, a miracle stopped just in time, before it became something of a virus that would destroy us both.
Our good fortune could last only so long though. While the Big Apple really was an enormous place, our neighborhood was just a tiny speck within it, and an eventual, fateful collision was inevitable. As it so happened, that impromptu rendezvous happened on Hump Day, a Wednesday, smack dab in the middle of an otherwise peaceful week.
For me, grocery-shopping was an activity that used to be riddled in guilt. I used to first dart into the snack food aisles to load my cart up with chips and beer, then hurry through the produce and organic sections like they were minefields, fearful that something green and healthy might actually catch me but hoping to use apples and salad to cover up the horribly fattening things in my basket before I bumped into anyone who would see it and judge it. It was an entirely different experience now.
Now, I wandered thoughtfully down the aisles, looking only for things on my recommended list. I had officially graduated to the point where I could stop ordering the cardboard-packaged gruel they made us eat in the beginning, and I was capable of preparing my own actual meals, but I did so very carefully. I read every ingredient on the nutrition labels before placing
anything in my cart. That particular Wednesday, perhaps I should have avoided that, because if I would have rushed along the way I used to, we never would have met. To add insult to injury, as if fate had some horrible sense of humor, we literally ran into each other, coming out of adjacent aisles at the same time and ramming our carts into each other.
“Shit!” Matt cursed, jerking back. There was a hard set in his face that I had never seen before, and he didn’t even bother to look up before he reached down to pry apart the metal siding of the collided carts. “Sorry. My fault. I guess I wasn’t looking and...” He trailed off as his eyes lifted to mine. “Alana?” He took a step back, his lovely eyes widening with surprise. “What are you...” He then stopped, realizing that asking someone what she was doing in a grocery store wasn’t the most intelligent inquiry he could make. He blushed to high heaven as he stared quickly down at the carts again, trying to gather a little composure.
For my part, I was completely unable to help. The little run-in had thrown me just as much as it had thrown him, and despite all my weeks of confidence-building and determination, I found myself speechless and helpless, as frozen as the tilapia filets in my cart.
Ever the gentlemen, Matt made another valiant attempt to keep a civil conversation going. “I haven’t seen you in a while.” He phrased it as if it was somehow coincidental rather than a deliberate strategy we’d both silently agreed upon. “How are things going?”
Well, if you had asked me two minutes ago, I woulda told you that on the surface, things are actually going really well, but now...
Polite as his question was, I decided it was best to focus on something other than my personal emotional state. “Well, my storefront’s almost ready,” I said hastily, speed-talking in a voice much higher than my own. “I’m throwing a huge open house next week to raise the funds I need.”
He nodded quickly, raking a hand through his hair and taking great care to look anywhere but directly into my eyes. “That’s awesome. I should come check it out, bring Sadie.”
I nodded, even though we both knew he would do no such thing. I backed away quickly, yanking my cart out of the grasp of his. “Cool. Well, I’d better get back to it. I’ve got an impatient Dick waiting for me back at the house, and...”
An impatient Dick? Will this nightmare never stop?
My eyes snapped shut as I made plans to kill myself right there in the breakfast aisle but not before I saw a look of utter astonishment pass over Matt’s face. That astonishment quickly morphed into amusement, then tender affection, all in the blink of an eye.
“Is that right?” he questioned, unable to resist. He was a naturally playful person, and the opportunity was too good to pass up. “Anyone I know?”
“Very funny,” I snapped, casting him a sarcastic grin. “But seriously, you know how he gets. If I’m not there to turn on Jeopardy, he’ll bury one of my shoes.”
Matt snorted in laughter, bowing his head as a radiant smile lit up his face, the kind of smile that I sensed hadn’t been there in a very long time. “You should get him a pen pal,” he suggested lightly, “or set him up an account on Yelp, anything to help the guy vent those frustrations.”
This time, it was my turn to laugh, and I did so without restraint, all the nervous energy rushing right out of me as I imagined it.
Suddenly, Matt looked at me again, and it was as if he couldn’t tear his eyes away. They swept over me curiously before coming to rest on my face. “You look... different somehow,” he murmured. “I can’t place it.”
“I’ve fully embraced this tyrannical diet,” I said with a hint of pride, gesturing down to the items in my cart, almost all of them something someone would find in a garden or at a farmer’s market. “I’ve also taken up kick-boxing, you know, to help destroy my superfluous light fixtures.”
“Or that Preaker if he shows up again?” he suggested with a grin.
I laughed at that thought too. “Yeah, maybe.”
He smiled again but glanced into the cart with a hint of confusion. “Kick-boxing’s awesome, but why the hell are you on a diet?” he asked without an ounce of deception in his voice. He didn’t say it the way most people did, like some sort of altruistic reassurance to coddle me. Rather, it was an honest question, and that honesty warmed my heart.
A little blush spread up the sides of my face, and I brushed back my hair, a nervous tic I’d stolen from Matt himself. “I’m a masochist. There are certain standards to uphold.”
“I’m serious,” he said with a mischievous twinkle flashed through his eyes. “I hope it isn’t to appease a certain impatient Dick I keep hearing about.”
Okay, that pill, the one for the blushing? What the heck is taking so long, Pfizer?
“Because if it is... Well, regardless of what those stupid fashion magazines and runway shows tell you, you oughta know that most guys aren’t into that emaciated thing,” he continued. “Trust me. It’s better to have a little more to, uh...”
“A little cushion for the pushin’?” I mocked, crossing my arms and tapping my foot on the ugly checkerboard linoleum of the grocery store floor, pretending to be offended.
Now he was the one in need of Pfizer’s new formula, and I couldn’t blame him. I bit down on my lip in surprise, both at myself and at him. We both tend to speak our minds, but still!
Not to mention, Matt was dating the queen of emaciation herself. Steph was all skin and bones, so much so that I often worried her designer handbag that probably cost more than my car might weigh her down and knock her over. Apparently, she wasn’t his cup of tea.
“Okay,” he said, laughing nervously and sweeping his hair back again, “on that note, I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you around, Alana.”
I nodded hastily, still trying to suppress a grin. “Later.”
There was an awkward moment of determining who was going to go in which direction, and we finally took off down opposite aisles, neither of us daring to look back.
It was a close call, one I thought I handled well. What I didn’t know was that “later” would turn out to be a lot sooner than either of us thought.
Chapter 26
THE VERY NEXT DAY, I finished my morning kick-boxing, put Dick on his leash, and headed down to the local pet store. As it turned out, I hadn’t gotten home from my errands in time to turn on his favorite television show, and in an act of rebellion, the dog ripped a hole in the bottom of his food bag, then dragged it through the entire house, leaving a trail of kibble like some sort of canine Hansel and Gretel. Truly, I wanted to throw him into the oven for it, but I couldn’t really blame him and didn’t want to be a witch to my hairy roommate.
Of course I swept it up, but Dick’s culinary standards were too high, and there was no possible way he was going to eat even one nugget of food that a dirty old broom had dared to touch, so now I was off to the store to buy a fresh bag. As fate would have it, my snobbish spaniel knew exactly the one he wanted and indicated it with a bark and a wag of his tail.
“Are you crazy?” I watched as he pranced back and forth in front of specific bag, staring longingly at the cartoon fish on the packaging. “That stuff’s ten times more expensive than your usual. We’re supposed to be saving money, remember? Does a down-payment ring any bells?”
As usual, my words had little to no effect. Dick simply glared at me, frustrated that he would be forced to defend his choice, then collapsed in a lifeless pile on the ground.
“Nice,” I said, folding my arms across my chest, refusing to give in. “Really mature.”
As if to taunt me, he parted his teeth and let his pink tongue flop out of his mouth in what had to be the best dog equivalent of a “go jump in the lake” that I’d ever seen.
“Come on!” I tried tugging him backward, to no avail. “What are you always telling me about the benefits of frugality? You brought me the freaking Post-Its!”
He pawed once at the bag before playing dead once more, and then let out a gut-wrenching howl to complete the effect.
“So darn theatrical.” I sank to my knees and tried lifting him. “You know, if you’d spend half as much time learning to be a real dog as you do watching television, we probably wouldn’t even be in this mess, and—”
Just then, thanks to some unseen signal, Dick suddenly came alive. His ears perked up, his snout whipped around, and he leapt to his feet in a blur of scrambling legs. In the next second, he was off to the other side of the store, pulling me right along with him.
My leash arm was almost tugged right out of its socket as I bolted after my wayward pet, gasping in surprise. Present circumstances aside, Dick was one of the best-behaved dogs on this side of the Mississippi, so I had no idea what the heck had gotten into him or how to make him stop.
“Richard Masterson Woodrow, III!” I cried, digging my feet into the floor in a failed attempt to slow our momentum. “If you don’t come back here this instant, I’m gonna turn you into a...”
Then, suddenly, we came to a screeching halt.
“...stew.”
Matt and I stared at each other in wonder. Between us, straining at the ends of their respective leashes, Sadie and Dick leapt upon each other in utter joy. The two of us had thrown a major wrench into their budding friendship, but all those troubles were placed squarely behind them as they jumped, nuzzled, and wrestled to their heart’s content, effectively turning both their leashes into one giant ball.
“Did you miss the memo?” Matt’s look of surprise had faded into a little grin. “Our dogs got married.”
I recovered with a breathless laugh. “Yeah, it sure looks like it. They must have eloped without us knowing.”
The two of us stood there for a full minute, looking at the dogs and the floor tiles, keeping our eyes on anything but each other. Then, just like the day before in the grocery store, we made a valiant effort to move past it.
“Hey, how’s the book coming along?”