He remembered Lia going through a skinny phase in high school, but he’d been busy with his other friends and life at the time, so he hadn’t paid a ton of attention. As for excess body fat, she’d never had any as far as he could tell. Not that it mattered. Eating disorders were about perception more than reality if his memories of high school health class were serving him well. “I don’t need the short version. I think my attention span can handle a long story if that’s the one you want to share.”
She exhaled slowly. “I had anorexia. If you ever read about it, you’ll find out quick enough that anorexia is about control more than it is about weight. People whose lives are in chaos find something they can control, which often ends up being the food they eat. That’s the easy explanation, I guess.”
“So what was out of control in your life? What started it?”
“Remember Sally Simmons?”
“Yeah. She was your best friend in junior high, right?”
Lia nodded. “She moved away right as we started freshman year, and that made school really hard. Kind of lonely, too. Then my grandma died. It was all small stuff, and it’s not like I thought, ‘Oh, these bad things transpired, so now I’m going to control what I eat.’ It just sort of happened.”
The weight of Lia’s words settled on Maverick’s shoulders. She was trusting him with something immense. “I’m sorry I didn’t know.”
She gave him a half-smile. “You couldn’t have. I hid it pretty well.”
“How’d you get through it?”
She reached for the blue sweeteners. “My folks made me see a Christian counselor. I was ticked, but it’s the best thing they could have done for me. He helped me to understand the things going on inside of me, things I wouldn’t have ever figured out on my own. He reminded me, too, that the way God sees me is what really matters. Not just physically, but the whole picture. Sally moving away, Grandma dying, all of it. I felt like everything needed to be just so. I poured all my perfectionist tendencies into the one area of my life where I had control – what I ate. The thing is, God never asked me to be perfect, and He didn’t ask me not to grieve Grandma or Sally. My feelings were okay with Him.” She put the blue packets back. “I’m doing a really bad job of explaining.”
Maverick reached out and rested his hand on Lia’s. Her fidgety fingers stilled under his touch. “You’re doing fine.”
She turned her hand over and gave his a squeeze. “Anorexia is about body image, sure. But at the same time, it has nothing to do with body image. It’s different for everybody. I used to count every single calorie, so I pay attention to those things. I knew if I ever started counting calories again, that I was in trouble.”
“Have you been counting calories?”
“No, that’s the problem. If I’d started doing that again, the red flag would have gone up, and I’d have realized I was in trouble. Only I wasn’t, so it didn’t, and I managed to fool myself into thinking everything was fine.”
Talk about feeling out of control. Maverick might as well have been thrown into the ocean without a life preserver. “You switched to salads after Plus-Size Jerk.”
She reached for the yellow packets. “Not exactly. I switched before then. You just didn’t notice until him. I was fine at first, but when the dates kept going so wrong, I… I guess I kind of forgot some of the stuff I’d worked so hard to learn back in high school.”
He nodded toward her plate. “So what changed? What made you realize you were getting back into dangerous territory?”
“You.”
“Me?” She couldn’t have knocked the wind out of him any better if she’d gut-punched him. “What did I do?”
She tucked the sugar packets back into their black rectangular container and pushed it to the side. “You offered to use brass knuckles on a guy who made a comment about my weight.”
“I wouldn’t have actually…”
Lia cut him off. “Well, duh. But still… Even without the brass knuckles, you knocked some sense into me. You forced me to take a look at myself and realize how weird I’d gotten about my food again and how critical I was being of my own body. I mean, I was wounded whenever another person judged me based on appearance, but I was doing the same thing to myself. How crazy is that?”
“Are you going back to counseling?” He hurt for her, but they were way outside his comfort zone. What if he said the wrong thing?
She knotted her fingers together. “I have an appointment for next week. It’s mostly for accountability, though. I have all the tools to deal with this, but it helps if I know someone else is watching me, too.”
Maverick wanted nothing more than to pull her into a tight hug and never let go. “The sandwich is a nice change.”
She offered him a wry grin. “I was so sick of lettuce. You have no idea.”
Chapter 11
Lia hadn’t felt this light in a long time. Not in body, but in spirit. The whole weight thing had snuck up on her. If Maverick hadn’t gone and made such a stink about what she ate, she never would have realized she’d slipped back into old ways. He always managed to poke at the soft spots on her soul without meaning to.
She was always a better person for it, too. Not that she’d ever tell him so.
Maverick was good for her. Good to her, too. Some woman would be very blessed to capture his heart and call him husband.
“So tell me about your dates this week. Fun, funny, or disastrous?”
He looked like he wanted to say more about her revelation, but the waitress picked that exact moment to deliver their food.
She set Lia’s plate down with a gentler-than-usual thunk.“Whenever I order the hot turkey sandwich, I always have them put bacon on it, too. Something about that combination…” Their normally taciturn waitress never talked that much.
Maverick lifted an eyebrow, and Lia nodded. He slid the extra bacon from his plate over to hers as the waitress retreated. Then he bowed his head. “Lord, thank you for the food, for our server, and for the cooks in the back. Thank you for our day of rest, for the blue sky outside, and for Lia. Continue to strengthen her in mind, body, and spirit, Lord, and help her see herself as You see her. Amen.”
Warmth pooled in her middle as Lia echoed his amen. God had really done something special when He’d given her Maverick for a friend. She reached for her knife and fork, ready to tackle the challenge in front of her. “Come on. You’re not getting out of it that easy. Your dating life?”
He took a huge bite of his burger before setting it back down. He held up two fingers as he swallowed. “Two dates this week. Shondra and Leann.”
“And?”
“Shondra was nice. We caught a matinee and had lunch. We might go out again. I’m not sure either of us is feeling it, but we didn’t have a terrible time together.”
“Ha. So that’s the criteria for getting a second date with you? Not to give you a terrible first date?” Lia chuckled. “Way to set the bar high. So what about Leann?”
“You know how I chose not to have my picture show?”
She nodded.
“I wanted people to get to know me for who I am.” He gave a half-shrug. “Besides, let’s face it. I’m a computer geek. It’s not like I’m ripped or anything.”
“So what happened?”
Maverick rolled his eyes. “I thought when women hid their picture, it would be for the same reasons. They want to be judged for who they are and not what they look like. You know, avoid the whole objectification thing.”
“Eh.” Lia gave him points for trying. “Some women might do it for that reason. Others hide theirs for different reasons.”
“Yeah. I kind of figured that part out.”
Lia took another bite of her sandwich. “You’re killing me here. What did Leann look like?”
“White.”
“White? You mean Caucasian? Because if so, aren’t you white too?”
Maverick shook his head. “No. I mean white. W. H. I. T.E.”
“I’m not followin
g.”
“Leann’s a mime. She showed up in white face paint and didn’t speak during the entire meal. She pantomimed everything. I think at one point she may have told me I reminded her of a rusty boat shaped like a baby elephant, but I can’t be certain. Apparently, I’m not up-to-date on mimery.”
Lia swallowed the last bite of her sandwich and reached for her fruit bowl. “Is that even a word?”
“Hey, if you’d been on that date, then you’d have earned the privilege of making up whatever words you wanted. You weren’t there, though. I was. So the word-making-up privileges are all mine.”
“Fair enough.” She popped a grape into her mouth. “Did Leann meet the standard to earn a second date, or is that bar too high for her?”
Maverick leaned his head back. “You think I’m being unreasonable?”
“Oh no. Definitely not.” Lia slid her fork into a piece of cantaloupe. “Communication is vital to any relationship. You have to speak the same language, or it’s going to be tough. Either you need to learn mimery, or she needs to use flashcards. Otherwise the relationship’s doomed.”
“Ha. See? Mimery.”
Lia picked up another grape.
“So what about you? Any hot dates this week?” His left eyebrow lifted with the question.
She felt the heat climb her cheeks. “Well, there was the whole thing with Watts trying to set me up with not one, but two of her fellow paratroopers. One of which watched Watts like a lovesick puppy every time she crossed his path.”
“And the other?”
“Decent enough guy, but I don’t think I’m cut out to be a military wife. Not right now, anyway. I suppose if God wanted me to marry someone in the military, I would, and I’d trust Him to change my heart about it. But for now? Nah. I don’t see that in my future.”
The corner of Maverick’s mouth tipped up, which made no sense. She hadn’t said anything funny.
“Aside from that, I did go out yesterday afternoon with a guy from Holy Hearts.”
The corner of his mouth dipped back down. “Name?”
“Baldric.”
“That’s a weird name.”
“He’s Australian. Great accent.”
“Is that where you set your bar for a second date? You have to like the guy’s speaking voice?”
Lia chuckled. “Nah. I have to like his voice and his hairstyle.”
“What about Baldric’s hair?”
“Didn’t have any.”
Maverick’s eyes widened. “Oh no. Please don’t tell me he listed his name as Bald Rick and you misread it for Baldric.”
Lia couldn’t have stopped the laughter if she’d wanted to. “You’re never going to let me live down that whole Network Elf thing, are you?”
He shook his head. “Not anytime soon.”
She swallowed the last bite of honeydew and set her fork down. “His name is actually Baldric, and yes, he’s bald, but it’s not related to his name.”
“If you say so.”
“He’s still not getting a second date.”
“Why not?”
“Mm… He was a little too touchy-feely. Kind of gave me the creeps.”
“He doesn’t know where you live, does he?”
Lia shook her head. “Online Dating 101, remember? Never tell them where you live or work.”
“Or attend church.”
She nodded. “That too.”
A comfortable silence settled between them before Maverick spoke up. “So he pretty much did his talking with his hands, too, huh?”
Lia wadded up her napkin and threw it at him.
Lia got to the restaurant early and took a seat. She pulled out her phone and opened the Holy Hearts app. It couldn’t hurt to see if she had any HeartGrams waiting for her.
Rod would arrive soon. She still hadn’t figured out what he did for a living in the computer industry, but he’d come across as kind each time he’d messaged.
A quick look at her Holy Hearts dashboard told her the other two men she’d contacted back when she first reached out to Rod had never gotten back to her. Community Support Specialist Michael never replied and Firefighter Zeke, the one she’d been most interested in, had disappeared. His profile was no longer active on Holy Hearts. Maybe he’d found someone and was working on his happily ever after.
She slipped her phone back into her purse as someone approached her table.
“You’re Lia, right?”
She nodded to him. “Rod?”
He slid into the seat across from her and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
They shook hands, and Lia put on her welcoming smile. “So how has your day been so far?”
“Fair to middling, but it’s looking up now.”
Be still her heart, his eyes actually twinkled when he smiled. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“I work at a small computer company. We address the networking and security needs of small businesses. It’s usually mundane, but today one of our clients had a network malfunction.”
Lia winced. “Let me guess. The client didn’t call to ask for your help. He called to blame you for the problem?”
Rod waggled his hand. “He started the day irate, but ended the day with an apology, so we’ll call that one a win.”
“I have a friend who works in IT at a local hospital. He tells some of the funniest stories about the people who end up with computer problems. He says some of the staff should be permanently barred from ever being in the same room with a computer terminal.”
“I feel his pain. The worst is when there’s a tiny little problem — something not even related to the network — but then they try to fix that tiny little problem and cause the whole network to crash. Then you’re getting chewed out for something they did.”
Lia chuckled. “Tell me about your most ridiculous call, the one you tell all the newbies to warn them and make them laugh at the same time.”
Rod sat back in his chair and thought for a minute. “We’d worked with this one company from the time they were ten employees strong on up until they had over five hundred employees. We knew the CEO well, although as the company grew, we no longer heard from him when they needed help. The calls started coming from a receptionist or a Vice President of Such-and-Such. Until one day, I got a call at two in the morning on my personal cell phone from Mr. CEO. He was livid. The network was down, and it was the day they were supposed to be taking the company public. He threatened to sue me for millions.”
“Ouch.”
“Needless to say, I dragged my entire team out of their beds and rushed down to his offices.”
He paused, and Lia leaned forward. “And?”
Rod shook his head. “Someone had installed an update to the operating system, and as a result, the color scheme for his desktop had changed. The CEO didn’t like the new colors, but instead of calling their tech guy to change the color scheme back, he went into the Control Panel settings, and in the process of poking around, he disconnected his computer from the network.”
Lia shook her head. “My friend Maverick would love this story. He deals with doctors, and no matter how smart they might be in their chosen field, when it comes to computers, some of them are beyond clueless. So what happened with the CEO?”
“He was all bluster that day. I understood. The whole IPO thing was huge for him and his family. A couple days later, though, after the craziness had died down, he called me up — at a reasonable hour —and asked if he could contract with our company to provide someone on-site to maintain the network.”
“Why didn’t he just hire his own network guy?”
Rod shrugged one shoulder. “I think the contract offer was his apology. Men don’t always come out and say the words.”
Lia reached for the water glass the waitress had placed in front of her. “So what’d you do? Take the contract or say ‘Good riddance’?”
“We agreed to a two-year contract with the caveat that if he chose not to renew in two years, he would p
ay us to find the right person for his company and to get them up to speed.”
“Hopefully he made it well worth your while?”
“It was an advantageous move for us, and having our name linked to his company has brought us a lot of business.”
After another similar story, Lia glanced at the clock on her phone. “Wow. Has it really been two hours? I hate to bring this to an end, but I should get going.”
Rod nodded to her, and the smile in his eyes said it had been an enjoyable evening.
Whew. She’d needed a dating win.
He helped her on with her coat. “I’d like to see you again if that’s okay with you.”
“I’d like that, too.” He bit his lip, and the dating win began to slip from Lia’s grasp. “What’s on your mind?”
Rod held the restaurant’s front door open for her. When they were out on the sidewalk, he met her gaze. “I’m going to be out of town for a couple of weeks on a business trip, but I’ll send you a HeartGram when I return.”
“Okay…?” She let the question hang between them and waited for him to add the “but” she could sense coming.
“Can I be blunt?”
And now the dating win began circling the drain. “I suppose.”
“You told almost as many stories about your friend Maverick tonight as you did yourself. It makes me wonder if there’s more to your relationship than you’re saying. I enjoyed the evening, and I’d like to do it again, but there’s no point if you’re already involved with someone else.”
“We’re just friends.” Lia would have shaken her head to emphasize the point, but somehow she didn’t think it would help. Why was Rod so preoccupied with her and Maverick’s friendship?
“Then maybe there’s more to it than you’re telling yourself. Either way, give it some thought. I’ll let you know when I’m back in town. If you’ve decided by then that your affection belongs elsewhere, I’ll understand. Just tell me straight.” He leaned in then and brushed his lips against her cheek. “I really did have a wonderful time, and I hope you did, too.”
Love at First Laugh: Eight Romantic Novellas Filled with Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever After Page 24