Bigger (The Nicky Beets series) (19 page)

I reached the front door and stopped short. Sitting at a table for two
near the front store window was Chuck, resting his chin on his hand and gazing
at his dining companion. I jerked my eyes away from him to inspect the person
sitting across from him and my stomach lurched nauseatingly.

It was Candace – there was no mistaking her. Her straight, shiny
hair reached almost to her waist and I could just glimpse her olive-skinned
profile. She was talking animatedly, waving her hands around, and then she
suddenly reached toward Chuck and gently caressed his forearm, brushing his
silky arm hair with her fingernails the way I used to when we were just sitting
around, watching TV.

I’d been unconsciously walking slowly backward, away from the restaurant,
my eyes glued to the scene before me. Chuck shifted in his seat and pulled his
arm away with one of his sexy side-cocked smiles. Suddenly he looked up and
straight into my eyes.

I turned and sprinted away.

What was I doing? For godssakes, I had every right to be walking around
Berkeley, or picking up Thai food, for that matter. All I knew at that moment
was I couldn’t face him. My heart would shatter into a million more pieces and
I’d probably end up sobbing hysterically – certainly not something I was
willing to give Candace the satisfaction of witnessing.

I ran all the way to my car about three blocks away, never looking back.
As I shakily managed to unlock the door and climb in, I was starting to sob and
tears began to slide down my cheeks. No matter, I still had to get out of there
as quickly as possible. I started the engine and peeled out of my spot and into
traffic.

“God damn it!” I yelled. “Motherfucker! Shit!”

I punched the aging dashboard with every iota of anger I had, and drew my
hand back in surprise, wincing in pain. I’d split open my middle knuckle and
blood was pouring out.

“Fuck! God damn it!”

My face and chest felt hot, so I rolled down my window, letting the cool
night air wash over me. Tears were still pouring out of my eyes and the air was
turning them into cold rivers that collected under my chin and continued their
journey down my neck.

“Son of a bitch,” I hiccupped. “What the fuck.”

My cursing had no logical course; it just had to come out. I was nearing
my neighborhood, turning the wheel haphazardly and wiping my nose with the back
of my hand.

Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the shopping bag with my loot
from the bakery. My stomach lurched again.

“What is wrong with me?!” I yelled out the window at the night, at no
one, at myself.

I pulled the bag of cinnamon bread from the sack and lobbed it violently
out the window. It landed on someone’s lawn and split open, slices of delicious
cinnamon bread suddenly exposed to the world, lying on the grass, where no
hungry fat girls would get to them.

The sight made me laugh hysterically, which made me cry harder, which
made me pull over to the side of the road. I was a few blocks from home so I
climbed out of the car, making sure to grab the bottle of red – I
contemplated smashing it on the sidewalk, but decided it would be a shame
– and hoofed it the rest of the way to the townhouse, crying and snotting
all over myself the whole way.

I finally stumbled into the house, dropping my purse on the floor and
angrily kicking my heels off my feet so that they struck the wall, leaving scuff
marks I knew I’d obsessively clean off later. I headed straight to the kitchen
for the wine bottle opener and, hugging the bottle to myself, I sank into the couch
and pulled a throw blanket over myself. I guzzled deeply, straight from the
bottle.

“Good wine,” I said to no one, which seemed pathetic.

“I’m pathetic,” I added.

My cell phone began to ring in my purse in the entryway.

“SHUT UP!!” I yelled.

It kept ringing, as phones will do.

“I said SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I yelled again.

Eventually the phone shut the fuck up, and it was just me and the wine
bottle again.

It used to be that wine and me were good friends. Any alcohol, really. I
could always rely on it to be a cheer-inducing social lubricant. I’d always
been a happy drunk. But what I was finding recently – ever since Chuck
left – was that almost every time I drank, I slipped into a deep, weepy
depression. Even alcohol had abandoned me.

But that didn’t mean I wanted to be conscious. I replayed what I’d seen
in my head, over and over. Candace reaches out, strokes Chuck’s arm. Chuck
smiles.

They’re probably fucking right now
,
I thought bitterly.
Candace and her
perfect, tiny body, her perfect fucking face and hair
.

Someone may as well have been stabbing me repeatedly. Anguish burned in
my chest. Chuck should have been there with
me
,
holding
me
, kissing
me
.

I chugged the wine as quickly as I could, drinking myself to exhaustion
so I could finally fall asleep, which I did.

I woke a few hours later, eyes swollen, head throbbing, stomach bubbling.
It was just after two in the morning, and I was going to be ill. I raced to the
bathroom in my bare feet, making it to the toilet just in time. I retched over
and over, expelling the wine and burning stomach acids. Tears streamed down my
face. I was sick, exhausted, and worst of all – alone. I leaned limply on
the toilet seat, spitting foul matter into the water below, realizing this was
an all-time low. I might have lost weight. I might be attractive to some men.
The only one who mattered in my heart had disappeared and wanted nothing to do
with me. I wasn’t sure how or why I should even try to carry on like a normal
person whose heart hadn’t been burned out of her chest.

Still feeling terrible, I decided that rather than sleep – which
would likely be a fruitless effort – I’d blog. I’d only posted
intermittently in the last couple weeks, and since I had a bottle of wine
handy, I figured I had blog material available. I snapped a photo of it with my
phone and uploaded it to my site.

Fuckall

It’s a terrible, terrible idea to
blog when you’re drunk, my friends. Especially when you’re drunk and you’ve
only hours earlier accidentally stumbled upon your former lover in another’s
embrace. And probably what you should never do is blog after you’ve had a
bottle of wine, barfed it all up, seen your former lover, and attempted to
embark on a food binge, only to then find yourself dramatically flinging entire
loaves of cinnamon bread onto your neighbor’s lawn.

All of those things happened
tonight, not necessarily in that order.

Oh, and I ate two candy bars in a
bathroom stall today. I’m not proud of it.

It’s fair to say I’m in a rather
dark place. There isn’t enough wine, chocolate, or even enough sexually
skilled, tanned, dumb young gentlemen in the world to make me feel any better
about the fact that the person I loved – who I can’t help but still love
– doesn’t love me back.

This bottle of wine served its
purpose, momentarily. It was fruity, but chocolaty. I chugged it shortly after
the cinnamon bread episode, and then it reappeared not too long ago. I’m sorry
to say I did not sip it slowly, since I needed it for emergency purposes. One
day I hope to try to actually enjoy this vintage, considering it cost me thirty
dollars and comes highly recommended by a strange man who rates wine for my
local liquor store.
 

In truth, I don’t know shit about
wine, other than I like to drink it, and it would seem I know fuckall about
love, and possibly men as a race of people. This was surely a terrible idea,
this late-night post, and I shall surely regret it in my more sober moments,
but what’s another poor decision at this point?

I hit “publish” and stumbled to my bedroom, where I laid down carefully
and tried to make the room stop spinning.

Thankfully, I could take the weekend to recover.

In a fit of spite the next day, I called a locksmith to come change the
locks on the front door. Chuck still had a few things left at the house that I
thought he would probably want back, but he wasn’t going to sneak in and get
them while I wasn’t home. Oh, hell no.

While I was at it, I took the opportunity to pack up his remaining few
belongings. There wasn’t that much – a few items of clothing, a couple
photo albums, some aftershave. Most of his worldly possessions were still in
his childhood bedroom back home in Texas. I angrily considered shipping these
last few things to his mom, but then thought better of it. It was probably not
her fault her son was a girlfriend-dumping slimebag. I’d keep the boxes in a
closet until Chuck had the guts to call me and come get his shit himself.

When I was done with his boxes, I pulled out all of my cleaning supplies
and scrubbed the house from top to bottom. It had been a while since I’d had
enough rage and time to tackle the ceiling fans and the closet door tracks. I
cleaned what little dust was on my baseboards and, of course, scrubbed the
scuff marks from my shoes off the wall, all the while swearing at myself for
being overly dramatic. I exacted my revenge on every square inch of grout, breaking
out bleach and a tough scrub brush, and scoured the kitchen tile floor on my
hands and knees, using scalding hot soapy water and a sponge.

I threw every linen and item of clothing that wasn’t hung up or put away
into the washing machine. I sprayed down the outsides of the toilets so that
they gleamed and I emptied the bathroom cabinets just so I could wipe down the
insides and fill the cabinets back up, nice and orderly. I stood on a chair to
clean the tops of the dusty doorframes. I emptied the refrigerator, threw out
any rotting food, and scrubbed the whole thing down before repacking it. When
all was said and done a few hours later, I was shaking from fatigue and I was
starving.

I took a quick shower and then decided to walk down to a local deli,
which was about a fifteen-minute jaunt. I stared at the menu board
thoughtfully, and chose a curried chicken sandwich on sliced wheat bread. It
came with a small side of chips and a sliced pickle, all of which I ate
contentedly while sitting at a small table outside. Afterward, I sat and
watched people walk by with their tote bags full of farmer’s market goods and
dogs on leashes. There is no better people watching than that in Berkeley;
hippies abound, some with dreadlocks, many with funky jewels and long hair.
They are a stringy-muscled bunch – something I imagined comes from eating
vegan and attending yoga.

Suddenly I realized, with a dropping feeling in my stomach, that I’d just
completely unconsciously eaten an entire sandwich and a side of potato chips
– items that were not on my diet, and which I hadn’t eaten in months.
They were delicious, but I couldn’t maintain my current weight and still eat
this kind of stuff.

Right?

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my stomach to think
about this. Some people eat good food, and yet they’re thin. Like Roxanne. The
difference between her and me? Well, for starters, there were the portions she
was always going on about. And she didn’t eat crazy-fattening food as a rule,
just as an occasional treat. Lastly, she exercised all the time.

Well, as a much thinner person than I’d been in quite some time, the
portions I was eating weren’t nearly as large as they used to be. It might be
conceivable that I’d be able to practice portion control.

And these days, I too exercised a lot. That surely had to count for
something.

It struck me that this was how normal people – well, people who
don’t suffer weight problems – probably live. Eat until you’ve had
enough, not too much. Then move around. Was the equation too simple?

Well, what was the alternative? Eating salads and chicken for the rest of
my life? The thought made me sad. Was a life without good food even worth
living? I thought probably not, especially if I couldn’t have love.

Did this mean Roxanne was right?

If you want chocolate, just eat a
little chocolate
, I could hear her saying. My problem before was I was
afraid I couldn’t eat
a little bit
of
anything; that I would have to have it all. But in hindsight, she was right, of
course.

So, as much as the thought terrified me, I decided right then that the
radical low-carb diet was over. I’d eat food I liked. I’d try to eat healthy,
but if there was a day that I decided I wanted a cheeseburger, I was going to
get a cheeseburger. And I would eat until I’d had enough, which might mean
putting the cheeseburger down before I’d finished the whole thing. And I would,
of course, need to continue exercising.

Just as I’d made this decision and was still sitting at the café table,
my cell phone rang. I dug it out of my purse and saw that it was none other
than Roxanne calling me. She’d tried calling a couple times the night before
– she was the caller I was swearing at so lustily.

“Hey!” I answered.

“Are you all right?” she immediately asked.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Why?”

She released a sigh and paused for a moment. “Chuck called me last night.
He said he saw you outside Pad Sunshine. He said you ran away when you saw him?
He wanted me to make sure you were OK.”

I was shaking my head. The nerve of him.

“If he’s so concerned about whether I’m OK, why didn’t he just call me
himself?” I asked, perturbed.

“I dunno, Nic. He’s a dude. Dudes are stupid. He was probably embarrassed
because you saw him there with …”

“Candace,” I finished her sentence for her. “Yes, he was at one of
our
restaurants with fucking Candace.”

“Well you were going there, too,” she said. “Which, by the way, I guess
you were feeling better after ditching yoga last night.”