Love.com (2 page)

“Are you listening to me at all, Em?”

Emily snapped out of it and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. It’s been a hectic day, Joan. As you were saying.”

Joan grinned and shook her head. “Forget it, just a bunch of BS
about John and the kids.”

“No, I need BS more than I need to think about how I’m going to fit back into my business suits
.” Emily glared down at her overweight shape. “Six months of taking care of a terminally ill person hasn’t been kind. I must have packed on thirty pounds!”

Joan eyed her up and down and said nothing
; wonderful friend that she was. It was more like fifty. Apply that to her five-foot six-inch frame and it screamed ‘moo’ to the whole barnyard. Emily never felt so dowdy or unattractive as she did at that moment. The emotional upheaval in her life seemed to only be soothed with chocolate chip cookie dough and pizza the last six months.

The calories added up
before she knew it. She realized she was in trouble when Eddie died. The one black dress she owned in the closet wouldn’t slide over her chest, forcing her to buy another for his funeral. Always a size four since college, jumping to a size ten this last year was a shocker, even to her. Now she had to go back to work, looking like a stuffed sausage roll.

“We go shopping tomorrow,” Joan said in a tone that brooked
absolutely no refusal. “We’re buying you some new clothes. You can owe me.”

Emily reached out and hugged Joan, wanting to cry again at how pitiful her life had become. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“You’re stuck with me,” her best friend said, patting her shoulder. “I won’t have you going back to work feeling miserable.”

“I am miserable,” Emily countered and shrugged
as she leaned back against the counter. “And it shows, doesn’t it? Evan is going to shit when he sees me. Trust me; his comments won’t be very nice. He has this fear of fat people; like it’s contagious or something.”

“Screw him!” Joan looked feral. “He says one mean thing about your weight; I’d
still consider suing his ass!”

“Evan is the least of my concern
s,” Emily admitted and looked dismayed. “The girls in the office are worse. They will run with this.”

“Hey, you’ve been through a lot, Em. It’s only weight. We’ll get you a gym membership
; put you on a diet,” her friend assured her with a sweet smile. “Besides, I need somebody to make me go. We can help each other.”

Emily felt her concerns melt away. Joan had a way of minimizing even the biggest problems until they didn’t seem like such a big deal. Friends since
the first grade, Emily always told Joan everything. Guilt brightened her gaze to know that this one time, she held back, denying Joan the right to commiserate with her.
No,
she thought with determination. This was no one’s business. No one needed to know the truth; to feel even sorrier for her. She refused the sympathy she knew she would drown in right now.

“I feel like a
big fat slob!” Emily set down her wine glass. She glared down at the bulky shape in the purple Hanes sweatshirt and matching sweatpants; her uniform these days. “I can’t believe I did this to myself!”

“Everybody grieves in different ways, Em,” Joan said with a sad smile. “After my dad died
; I started picking up guys in uniform once a week before I met John. Call it my tribute to Dad. Who knew I’d project like that? I’m lucky I didn’t get herpes.”

“I remember
that,” Em recalled with a fond giggle, remembering Joan’s dad was a cop before he retired. “Those UPS drivers saw you coming a mile away.”

“
Yeah, but to this day, I can look back and see that I wasn’t in total control of.” Joan eyed her in concern. “Are you sure you’re ok, Em? Don’t be afraid of getting help if you need it. Death affects us all differently.”

“Like
see a shrink?” Emily wrinkled her nose, resistant to sharing her private feelings with a stranger. “I’m not losing it, Joan. When I start chasing the mailman; you can worry!”

Joan chuckled
at that. “Grief has a way of pushing our buttons, Em. We say and do things…ah well, like you said; you’re ok.”

“I’m going to be fine,” Emily lied smoothly and picked up her wineglass, changing the subject. “I’m thinking about painting
the kitchen. What do you think?”

Joan nodded, looking about the drab eggshell white interior of her kitchen with an eye for improvement. Her fashionable friend lived in one of the best subdivisions in the city. To say Joan wasn’t relieved she was thinking of painting would minimize her flair for interior decorating. Joan had
the taste. John had the money. Combined, they had a sprawling four-bedroom castle in Belle Chase, one of the most desired places to live in Sacramento.

Joan quit working after her two daughters were born. John was a
successful psychiatrist and wanted her to be at home to rear his daughters, April and Allison. The girls were eighteen months apart. At six and eight, they were a precocious handful.

Joan was a better mother than she had
ever been a schoolteacher. She readily gave up her job to be a successful doctor’s wife. Joan had it all; it seemed to Emily, fighting the wave of envy once more.

At thirty-two,
Emily was still young enough to remarry and start a family, she realized with a burst of relief. She and Eddie put off having kids until he got his business off the ground. It never happened. Her husband never had the business savvy to run his own company. As a result, they put off having babies. She felt a knife-like pain in her middle to know the true reason Eddie put off having kids
. Stop it! Don’t think of it! Just push it away!

“We definitely need to paint,” Joan agreed and shook her head. “You would think
that being married to a carpenter you would at least have decent kitchen cabinets. These are in a definite need of re-facing. What the hell was Eddie doing all these years?”

Emily wisely stayed silent. To say her husband wasn’t the most motivated
carpenter was obvious in the rundown, shabby interior of their home. He put off plans to re-do the kitchen every year. He talked about building an addition onto their house too. But, it was all talk. Eddie liked to talk about doing things. He talked more and did less every year. Emily was dismayed to realize it was a flaw in her husband she never recognized while he was alive.

They met when she was a freshman in college
at UCLA. Emily had precisely two and a half lovers before she married him. One was an awkward, geeky guy in her dorm that ejaculated as soon as he pulled his penis out of his pants, named Leo. She broke it off when his failure to ejaculate anywhere else but on himself became an issue between them.

T
he other questionable boyfriend was a pothead in town named, John. He worked odd jobs, but dealing pot to college kids was his primary gig. She met him at a party, got stoned for the first time in her life, and allowed him to lure her away on occasion to smoke. Her attraction to John and marijuana fizzled when she caught him with another girl from school one night. The pair didn’t even recall she was standing in his bedroom, witnessing his cheating, before she ran out.

The
half of the two was a random drunk night after a party with some nameless, faceless guy she’d prefer to forget. She recalled only half the experience, dimmed with too much draft beer at a Frat party and her heartbreak over John. She ruled it didn’t count later, unable to recall whether they’d done the deed or not before they passed out.

Eddie Walker
was on the work crew that was renovating several classrooms on campus. She would have liked to say it was love at first sight, but she hardly noticed the handsome, dark-haired construction worker. He came up to her in the student center one day, his brown eyes filled with guarded hope as he introduced himself and sat down.

Emily wondered what the
dirty, scruffy construction worker wanted with her until he asked her out, feeling tongue-tied to respond. Saying no seemed to be one of the hardest things for her to ever do. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, she recalled. To say she looked forward to the date was a joke.

She dreaded it until the night he picked her up at her dorm, dressed in a pair of
khaki Dockers and a nice button-down shirt.  He took her to a movie that night. She couldn’t remember the name of the movie. What she did remember is the way he looked at her then, his intense brown gaze so rapt and filled with interest, she felt universally singled out for the first time in her twenty years of life.

When was the last time she saw that look
from Eddie? Emily couldn’t recall seeing his expression change over the years. It had; replaced with something that no longer resembled what it had before. Eddie was good to her, if not to say, he took much for granted. She could count on him to forget Valentine’s Day, their wedding anniversary, and even her birthday on occasion.

When did that adoring look di
e out? How had she failed to notice its passing? Always good at details, Emily was mortified to realize she missed much these last nine years. Her career seemed to take off when she went to work for Stone and Watterman. Eddie’s stayed stagnant.

Eddie
used to joke about his wife making more money than him to his cronies and the neighbor guys at barbeques. Emily never cared. They were in this together; she thought then, and still had, until the day he died peacefully in their home.

To know she’d been
in this
alone for some time was enough to make her seethe suddenly. Always frugal except when it came to buying quality underwear, Emily was appalled at how she skimped over the years. When had she ever done anything for herself?
Ouch!
It hurt to see how much of a fool she’d been. She burned all over to know the secrets Eddie kept from her.

“We have to go pick out color swatches
.” Joan interrupted her thoughts, pouring more wine. “We’ll get this place back into shape in no time.”

Emily stared at Joan, realizing she meant to help. “You have enough to do, Joanie. I think I can slap on
some paint. You’re really too good to me.”

“No, I’ve seen you paint
before, Em. This is definitely my area.”

Emily smiled, knowing Joan was right. She had no skills
at painting. While in high school, she painted her bedroom purple, and everything in it, before it was over. No, painting was not one of her talents. She was disgusted to question what her talents were suddenly.

Later on, after Joan left
, Emily drank another glass of white wine. She stewed over the day’s revelations in her think tank. The bath tub was the only place she ever felt at peace. It was a quirk of hers. Bubble baths seemed to be the quick-fix for everything. She would stay in the bathtub and solve all the world’s problems.

Usually a bubble bath helped ease her tension and anxiety. Not tonight. Tonight she was burning; ready to implode. Her life was a
total joke. The letter discovered hidden in a shoe box at the back of Eddie’s closet was the punch line.

~
~ ~

Emily ignored the obvious looks of surprise when she entered the
posh, elegant office. The muted, neutral tones of the interior offset the elegantly-dressed people she passed when she cleared the elevator.

On the fourth floor,
The Stone and Watterman Agency was one huge room filled with cubicles, surrounded by offices for the higher executives. Huge potted plants lined the entry-way. The buzz of phones and computers greeted her entrance.

The pasted, falsely-sincere smiles she met and acknowledged screamed
fat-ass
as she made her way to her office in the back of the room. She felt more confident in the elegant, navy blue suit that fit her. She realized her coworkers were quite aware of her obvious weight-gain and mocked her for it behind her back. Women could be so cruel to one another. Was it any surprise men treated them so badly at times? She thought not. She avoided their pitying looks.

Emily ignored them, opening the door to her
small office, glad to escape the whispers behind her back. It was seven forty-five; Monday morning. She was early, wanting to get her sea legs back before Evan stormed the building at eight-thirty sharp.

Emily closed the door and leaned against it, glad the blinds were shut. The embarrassment over her appearance aside
; she wasn’t ready for this. When had she ever learned to say no? Why did she give in to Evan? She began to panic then, grateful she sprang for a Starbuck’s coffee. She set down her purse and looked around.

Her office looked the same
. Small, cramped, and needing a new computer. She frowned at the withered cactus plant in the purple, chipped planter on the file cabinet behind her desk. It died in the six months since she’d last been at work.
When does a cactus ever die?
Tears blinded her to think she couldn’t even keep a cactus alive. She felt her breathing growing erratic, fearing a panic attack at any moment. Panic attacks were new; brought on by her husband’s illness. She Googled enough information on them to know they were brought on by stress.
Holy Crap!
Lights glimmered before her eyes, making her groan in dismay
. Not now!