There’s no scar tissue there. It’s a fresh, new, terrifying pain.
I was reluctant to allow that photo for a few reasons. Because I wasn’t mentally ready for it. Because I’ve spent the last ten or so years defining myself as the person behind the camera except for carefully angled and curated social media pictures. Because I was nervous about publicly declaring myself in a poly relationship.
Never, ever, not once, had it occurred to me the picture would hurt Ben and Caleb. I never once considered the cost they would pay to love me and my body.
God. What have I done?
I’m about to close out of everything—a survival mechanism, really, not out of some admirable display of willpower—when my phone chimes again, an innocent little pling of a text message. Except it’s from Brian again. And it’s actually a voice message this time.
I know, on an instinctual level, that I shouldn’t play it. I know that nothing good can come of it, that there’s nothing helpful or insightful that he can say to me. But I’m too broken down not to crave that last strike, one last wound, and my hand is moving over the phone before I can stop myself. I hit play.
“You know”—Brian’s voice comes over the speaker, loud and brittle and mean—“if you wanted more than one dick, I could have paid a friend to fuck you. I would’ve had to pay him a lot, though.”
He’s drunk. I can tell by the wobble of his voice, a wobble I heard frequently enough, although never at—I check the clock above the stove—six thirty in the morning.
“I kept wondering,” he rambles on, “how the fuck dare you break up with me? Me, when I was being so fucking nice to you in the first place? And now I know why—it’s because you’re a whore. And I don’t know what you did to make those men pretend to like you, but I know for a fact they’re just pretending.” A hiccup. “And I’m going to prove it. I found your boyfriend’s little tavern, and I posted it on that bullshit article, and I’m going to tell everyone what a fucking pervert he is—him and his fucking farmer friend. We’ll see if they’re willing to be nice to you after you’ve ruined their lives.”
The message ends, and with it, the last, tiny thread of self-control I’d been clinging to. I shouldn’t be surprised at his hateful words, that he’s the one who outed Ben’s tavern on the article. And yet, I am. I’m exhausted by it, by the relentlessness of having a body that’s such an easy target, by the cultural certainty that anyone who loves me or my body is some kind of deviant freak. That anyone who cares for me deserves to be punished, and I do too, for not staying where we’re supposed to—in the neatly cruel categories the rest of the world decides.
I press my face into my hands, tears running out of my eyes like water dribbles from a tap—steadily and without effort. It barely even feels like I’m crying. It barely feels like anything, as if my body has put the act of crying on autopilot as my mind races through the implications of this.
I’ve been stupid.
I’ve been selfish.
I thought people like Lyle Parry were the exception. I thought the little cocoon of sex and domesticity we spun here at the farm could last forever. But I forgot the rules, forgot the lessons that all those cheesy romantic movies had taught me.
There is no forever for girls like me. There is no happily ever after for a curvy girl, and if I try to force it, I’ll only end up hurting Ben and Caleb more. I’ll only end up wrecking their lives. The town will scorn them, just like Lyle did. Ben’s tavern business will wither under the scorch of online mockery, and gentle, sweet Caleb will be torn up from the inside out with every cruel comment that comes our way.
No, this was doomed to fail from the start, and I’m so ashamed it took this long for me to figure it out. I feel greedy and grasping and worse—I feel naïve.
So fucking naïve.
With a swallowed sob, I slam the laptop shut.
I know what I have to do. It’s awful and scary and I already hate myself for it, but I’ll hate myself more if I stay, knowing what it will cost Ben and Caleb to love me.
I stand up, wipe the tears from my face, and turn to go upstairs.
And find both men standing in the doorway to the kitchen, watching me with clenched fists and heaving chests.
“Was that him?” Ben asks quietly. “Your ex?”
I don’t even know what to say or what to do, because the humiliation of them hearing Brian’s message blocks every neuron in my brain and every nerve ending in my body. I am living humiliation. I am shame and anger embodied.
I am shaking.
“I’ll kill him,” my normally sweet Caleb vows, his jaw tight under his beard, and something in my chest snaps in half. Gentle Caleb all murderous and Ben looking like a cold, clinical soldier instead of the complicated, sensitive man I know him actually to be—it’s too much. This is breaking them in every possible way. It’s breaking me too, and it has to stop.
“No one talks to you like that,” Caleb seethes, every cord in his neck and forearms standing out. “Fucking no one. We’re going to take care of it, peach, trust me.”
Ben’s gaze is astute, piercing, when it locks on my face. “Don’t believe a word of it,” he orders. “Not a single word of it. He’s bitter, and bitter people will do anything to make someone else feel as shitty as they do.”
“And he’s an asshole,” Caleb adds.
“And he’s an asshole,” Ben concedes, his eyes still pinned on me. “He can’t hurt us, and we won’t let him hurt you. Got it?”
But can’t they see that I’m already hurting? That they will be hurting too? All because we forgot the rules?
“I’m going,” I say. “I’m going back to Kansas City.”
Caleb’s eyes flare green with panic. “No, peach. Don’t say that.”
“I can’t do this!” The words are ripped out of me, right from the gut. I’m crying again. “I can’t do this with you two.”
They flinch at that, and I use their momentary surprise to push past them and go upstairs, throwing all my stuff into my bag once I get there. The toothbrush knocking cutely against theirs on the bathroom counter. The salon shampoo and conditioner perched on the shower ledge. All the lacy, sexy things I bought to please them…and all the lacy, sexy things they bought for me. All the clothes and half-read paperbacks and charging cords and other evidence that I’d been slowly moving in all this time.
It all gets packed up, and when I get downstairs, Caleb and Ben are sitting on the sofa by the front door—Caleb with his head in his hands and Ben in the deliberate pose of a hawk visually tracking prey.
I need to walk to the door now. I need to go. And yet I can’t make my feet move. Can’t force myself to admit this is the end.
“Don’t do this,” Ben says. The sharp cuts of his cheekbones are flooded with color, and in his utter and perfect stillness, the corners of his sensual mouth have gone white. “Don’t let him win.”
“It’s not just him,” I say. “It’s everyone. Everything.”
“But it’s not everyone,” Caleb whispers, looking up at me. “Because the three of us know the truth. That we’re in love and nothing will change that.”
Sweet Caleb. “It’s easy to say that now,” I tell them. “But it won’t be for long.”
“Ireland,” Ben says, and that’s all he needs to say. He packs every feeling, every question, and every plea into those three syllables. I promise myself I’ll hold on to the sound of him saying my name forever.
“It was beautiful, loving you,” I say to them both. “I wish it could have lasted.”
“No.” They say it at the same time, and I take a breath.
“I’m the one saying no now,” I tell them. “This is my limit. I finally found it.” I try bravely to crack a smile. “Goodbye. And please don’t follow me, I have to do this. For all of us.”
I finally make myself take those steps across the room, past two wonderful men who deserve better. And then I walk out the door and out of their lives.
Chapter Eighteen
&
nbsp; Ireland
Two Weeks Later
“Ireland, there’s someone here to see you.”
I look up from my desk to see Drew standing next to it, looking mildly uncomfortable. My heart seizes at the same time as my stomach clenches. “Is it Caleb?” I whisper, hoping for it to be and also dreading it at the same time. It’s been two weeks since I left the farm, two weeks of nonstop calls and texts and voicemails from my boys. Caleb’s resorted to trying to get a message to me through Drew.
And Ben…he’s mailed me letters. In his heart-wrenchingly precise print, he begs me to come home, tells me he loves me over and over again, will sleep the whole night through with me every night for the rest of our lives…
I’ve broken their hearts by leaving, but what could I have done? What could I have said? I have objective proof that I’ll ruin your lives if I let you love me? The world will never accept that you love me and my body….and I don’t know that I can accept it either?
They would have tried to talk me out of these conclusions, they would have fought for me to stay, and I wouldn’t have been able to bear it. I would have caved and stayed and then hated myself for my weakness as the months dragged on and their lives became worse and worse.
No, this was for their own good, and my own good as well. I needed a harsh dose of reality.
That doesn’t make it any easier, though. Drew has found me crying in the break room more than once, and I’ve fallen asleep at night only by drinking way too many vodka lemonades and sleeping on the couch.
It’s too hard to sleep alone in a bed now that I know what it feels like to sleep tangled and warm with two other people.
But I did the right thing. Of that, I’m certain.
So I push away my disappointment when Drew shakes his head. “No, it’s a woman. But Caleb did call again this morning. Are you sure you can’t—?”
“I’m sure,” I interrupt, the lie stinging my lips as it comes out. “As sure as sure can be.”
Typeset is a very typical kind of marketing office—it’s almost insufferably trendy, with exposed brick and an open workroom with rows of shared desks. Only the meeting rooms provide any modicum of privacy, and even then the privacy is fairly notional, given the walls and doors are made of glass.
This is where I meet my visitor, a young woman standing by the window looking out over the skyline. She’s wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt, so she’s not the typical Typeset client or the kind of young professional who haunts this part of the city. She turns to face me, and I realize two things at once.
First, she’s got the kind of body I long to have. Small breasts, model height, the majority of her weight around her hips and in her thighs. Pear-shaped, but the sexiest fucking pear in the world. Even though she probably weighs as much as me or more, she looks like she belongs in a catalog or on a runway, whereas I look like an extra bar wench on a medieval film set.
The second thing I realize is that she’s also staggeringly beautiful. No makeup. Simple clothes. She’s flawlessly skinned and glowing, gorgeous without all the things I use as a mask—the lipsticks and the bright colors. She’s effortless and easy and perfect. Damn her.
“Hello,” she says, picking a chair and sitting down, as if this is her meeting room and not mine. “You Ireland?”
“Um, yes,” I say. “I’m sorry, have we—?”
She waves a hand. “No, but why would we have? I’m Mackenna.”
“Okay…” I say hesitantly, feeling like I should be able to infer more from her name than I am.
“Caleb and Ben’s ex-girlfriend,” she supplies.
“Oh,” I say, surprised, and then, “Oh,” as I realize I have no idea why she’s here, but it can’t be good. “Look,” I say, trying to head off any ex drama at the pass, “we’re actually not together anymore—”
Another hand wave. She’s got the Deathly Hallows symbol tattooed on her wrist and an old-fashioned Mom tattoo splashing across her upper arm. She has gold-brown skin, coffee-colored eyes that gleam in the hot sunlight coming in through the window, and glossy, thick hair that looks so good I want to bite my knuckle in jealousy.
Impatient. That’s what Caleb had said about her, and as I look at her now, I can see it. In the way she shakes her silky hair out of her eyes and sucks the front of her teeth, in the tapping of her foot and the quick smooths over her clothes.
“Caleb said you’d left them when I called,” she explains. “You don’t have to walk me through the timeline.”
“Caleb said—wait, what? When you called?” Jealousy more bitter and distinct than body envy scratches at the inside of my chest. “Do you call Caleb a lot?”
Mackenna rolls her eyes. “It’s not like that, princess. I saw your article in the paper. I was already meaning to call after the storm—to check in and all that. See if my favorite tree was still there by the creek. Anyway,” she says loudly, as if bored by her own story, “after I saw the picture of you three, I really wanted to call and tell them, well, you know.” She stares at me as if the end of her explanation is obvious.
I feel silly. Abashed. Significantly less pretty and interesting than she is.
And still wildly jealous. “I actually don’t know,” I say. “Sorry.”
“You know, all that mushy, happy-for-you ex stuff.” She’s gesturing again, as if acting out a one-woman play. “When I broke up with them, I did genuinely want them to be happy. I just knew I was never going to be the woman to do it, and I definitely knew it when I met my two fiancés here in the city a year later. But even though I’m not in love with Caleb and Ben anymore, I still care about them, and I still want them to find a happy ending.” She pauses. “Not in the splooging sense, I mean. Like in the emotional sense. But I guess also in the splooging sense.”
I have no idea what to say to this, so I don’t say anything at all.
“Anyway,” she says, again in that bored, impatient-with-herself voice, “I called to say ‘I saw your new girl in the paper, I’m glad you’re happy, yadda yadda,’ and then instead of telling me how happy he is and how Robot Ben has become a human again because of you, he proceeds to wail about how you left them without a fucking word, and now you refuse to talk to them.”
My brain snags on a word. “Caleb wailed?”
Hand wave. “Sniffled, wailed, whatever. Caleb doesn’t cry, Ireland. Sniffles from him might as well be sackcloth and ashes.”
Ugh. The thought of happy, dimpled Caleb sniffling is enough to tear at my heart. I try not to think about it.
I made the right decision. That’s all there is to it.
Mackenna leans forward. “So I have to ask…why?”
“Why what?”
“Why, when you three had been happy for a month, did you just pack up and leave?”
I look at her, gorgeous and confident in her body, and immediately feel stupid. “Why do you care?” I deflect.
“Because I feel protective of them,” she answers bluntly. “Because I know under those big muscley chests beat two adorable hearts that want to spend the rest of their lives worshipping the woman they love. Because I saw how happy you looked in that picture, and why would anyone abandon people who could make them smile like that?”
Overwhelmed, I press my face into my hands. It’s like every feeling at once—every agonizing, earth-ripping emotion I’ve been burying over the last four days—is scrabbling to the surface.
“I thought it would be better that way,” I say into my palms. “For them.”
“But why?”
How can I even begin to explain it? The terror and shame of reading those comments? Of knowing that nothing, nothing—not my career, not Ben’s, not even the simple fact that we loved each other—was enough to stand against my size in the eyes of the world?
“Because I’m fat,” I say bitterly. As bitterly and meanly as I can, pouring every drop of pain and fury and shame into the word that I can. “I’m fat.”
“So?”
Mackenna says it blandly. Almos
t uninterestedly.
I look up from my hands, shocked. Actually shocked.
No one has ever said so? about my body before.
Not once.
People have protested when I’ve said the word—no, you’re not fat! Don’t say that about yourself!—or they’ve substituted euphemisms that amount to the same thing—you’re not fat, you’re curvy! Voluptuous! Plus-sized! There’s more to love!
And sometimes in Brian’s or my sister’s case, it was an excuse to be cruel, to point out if I just wanted it more, if I just tried harder, I could be thin like them. It was an excuse to tell me I was unhealthy, that I clearly didn’t love myself enough, to hint that my fatness actually meant I was a bad person. A weak or greedy person. A worse person.
But never, ever, ever has anyone just said “so?” Like instead of me declaring I was fat, I told her I love baseball or that I’ve never been to Idaho.
I blink.
“So what?” Mackenna repeats. “You’re fat. So am I. By the way, nice to meet you. Now what does having a fat body have to do with dumping Caleb and Ben?”
I feel like some kind of rug has been yanked out from under my feet. “I—” I don’t actually have words to follow that. I don’t have words at all. The only thing in my mind is a vague protest that she doesn’t really get it because she’s such a cute kind of fat girl, but maybe I’m wrong about that too. Maybe she gets it just as much as I do, because while I see her as having this magically-easier-than-mine body, the rest of the world may not. The rest of the world may see just another body that doesn’t fit.
Mackenna squints at me, tilting her head. The light catches again in her glossy, trendy hair, and a new kind of jealousy thrums through me. A softer kind of jealousy than being worried about her relationship with Caleb and Ben. I’m envious of her confidence. Of her utter and complete okayness with who she is. It makes her so fucking cool, so fucking magnetic.
Misadventures of a Curvy Girl Page 16