Bigger (The Nicky Beets series) (22 page)

I’m inside
, Laurie’s text read,
so I parked the car and hoisted the strap of my gym bag onto my shoulder. That
was another benefit to belonging to a gym – I could change in the actual
locker room rather than hop from foot to foot while changing my socks in a
cramped toilet stall at work.

I’d felt pretty good about myself that day. I was wearing a new pair of
black slacks that were more flattering than most pants I’d worn in the last
several years. My top was
 
a flowy
gray silk, empire-waisted and V-necked just enough to be slightly sexy but not
inappropriately so. My shoes were gray patent leather platform heels and I wore
a chunky flower necklace – a flea-market find – around my neck.

Walking toward the gym entrance, I felt confident and attractive. A
handsome man in jeans and a button up was striding out of the entrance to the
gym and let his gaze linger appreciatively on my bosom before smiling sexily at
me. I smiled sexily back and kept walking.

I got to the gym door, opened it, and stopped in my tracks. Chuck was
standing in the lobby, arms folded across his chest. Laurie was standing in
front of him, gesticulating wildly. I couldn’t hear what she was saying because
suddenly all of the blood in my body had rushed to my head and was making a
huge
woooosh
noise in my ears.

Both Laurie and Chuck looked over at me at the same time. Chuck and I
locked stares and stayed that way for a moment. Laurie was looking back and
forth between us crazily.

Chuck looked amazing. He seemed to belong to this gym, if the T-shirt,
shorts and tennis shoes were any indication. His muscled forearms told of
plenty of time spent lifting weights. I felt my heart quicken in spite of
myself.

“Excuse me,” someone pushed past me from outside, since I was standing in
the entrance, frozen, blocking the pathway.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, and stepped aside.

Chuck walked slowly toward me until he was about a foot away. “Hi, Nic.”

I didn’t answer. I was trying my hardest to remember why I was so pissed
off at him, all while gazing into the electric blue eyes that had charmed me
the first time we’d met. This was the man who’d left me
in a note
. A very ambiguous note. The man who’d been dating that
bitch Candace and had the nerve to take her to one of
our
restaurants.

I looked around nervously; Candace wasn’t here, was she? I didn’t see her
anywhere, and definitely didn’t want to chance running into her here, where
she’d doubtlessly be one of the be-thonged bimbos in spandex leggings.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

I looked at him, hurt confusion written all over my face. I looked at
Laurie. She was mouthing
Go, go
, and
waving her arms frantically at me.

I sighed deeply. “I guess.”

I looked back to Laurie. “You can start working out without me,” I told
her.

“Girl, I am
not
working out,”
she said. She was digging through her purse looking for her keys. “Call me
later.”

I squinted at her and understood, finally. I should have known Laurie
would never willingly step foot into a gym. She’d set this whole thing up. I
redirected my anger at her – how dare she? The last thing I wanted to do
was to talk to my ex-boyfriend, and now I was basically being forced into a
sit-down with him. She should consider herself lucky if I didn’t hunt Frank
down and arrange a surprise meeting between the two of
them
.

Laurie breezed past us on her way out the door with a small wave.

Chuck took me lightly by the arm and led me over to the juice bar area to
sit at a small table. We each sank into a chair and stared at the table for
probably a full minute.

Suddenly he said, “Nic?”

I looked up at him. He ran a hand anxiously through his thick hair.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said.

He watched me for a reaction.

“You left me,” I explained. “In a note. It was really fucked up.”

It
was
really fucked up, he
acknowledged.

We sat at the snack bar for an hour and I barely said a word while Chuck
spilled his guts.

After his dad died, he’d been angry with everyone, especially me. It was
illogical, he admitted. He’d incite arguments for no reason just because he was
so fucking pissed off. Chuck felt everyone should be walking on eggshells
around him and treating him gently, yet everyone seemed intent on doing the
exact opposite. Once his friends had decided enough time had passed, they no
longer understood his brooding, and they weren’t inclined to tolerate it.

Nor was I, which had also been frustrating for him. Problems in my life
seemed so trivial to him; me being on television and starting my diet. It
seemed like I expected him to bend to my whim, and he found that enraging.

And there were a bundle of other issues tied up in the whole thing. He
figured I’d lose the weight and just meet someone “better” anyway. He was
bitter that he was stuck in Berkeley, working at a job where his employment was
tentative at best. He could have been pursuing other jobs elsewhere, maybe even
back home in Texas. He’d come to blame me for that as well, even though we’d
never discussed it.

The barb that stung the most was when he mentioned how he’d wondered if
maybe the grass was greener on the other side, hence his tryst with Candace.
He’d been bored with the monotony in our relationship.

All of this was news to me, which just served to piss me off more.

“Where do you get off telling me all this now? Where was all this information
when it mattered?” I wanted to know.

Chuck just shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know. I wanted to talk –
remember? That night? Sorry about the door, by the way.”

“Um, yeah, you should be,” I said. “But that’s the only time you ever
mentioned wanting to talk. And it was, like, three in the morning. I rebuff
you, you punch the door, and then it’s all over? You never even made another
attempt to have a conversation.”

“Neither did you,” he countered.

“I shouldn’t have had to,” I asserted. “Once you start punching doors,
the ball’s in your court. I am automatically in the right.”

He chuckled a little, in spite of himself. “All right, I fucked up. I
admit it. But you have to admit you were in the wrong, too, at least a little
bit.”

“How so?”

“You shut me out. You left the house at least once, and I had no idea
where you went. And then you made no attempt to speak with me.”

I just stared at him. Why were we bothering to hash this out now? I
decided to end the conversation – we were getting nowhere and I was just
getting more irritated.

“Fine, yes. I shut you out. In any case, I don’t see how talking about it
is going to help anything now. What’s been done is done, and now we just have
to move on.”

I picked up my purse and started to stand.

“Wait!” Chuck stood with his hands outstretched to stop me from leaving.
“That’s not how I wanted this conversation to end. Meet me for coffee. Please.”

Why was this man hell bent on torturing me? Couldn’t he see I was trying
to get over him and move on with my life?

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Chuck,” I said.

He just stared at me.

“See you later,” I said. I left the building without another word. I
guessed I’d have to cancel my gym membership if Chuck was a regular here.
Thanks a lot, Laurie,
I grumbled to myself.

“What the hell was that?”

“What?” Laurie asked innocently. “How’d it go?”

“Well, thanks to you, I just spent one of the most awkward and miserable
hours of my life with my ex-boyfriend, who felt it necessary to list off his
grievances with our relationship,” I told her. “What purpose was that supposed
to serve? And why in the hell would you put me in that kind of situation?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she swore. “That was not supposed to be how it went
down.”

I sighed. I was mightily pissed off at Laurie.

“What are you even talking about?”

“Well … you know how sometimes Roxanne and Chuck run in the same circles?
Well she told me they’ve been talking and he sounded just miserable. He’s not
seeing Candace any more and he’s staying with a different friend now, one of
the guys. I guess Candace is a psychopath – no huge surprise there.”

This was certainly news. My heart had leapt hopefully when Laurie said
Chuck was no longer seeing Candace, but my brain knew we’d hurt each other
deeply and might not be able to move past it. And anyway, Laurie had no
business interfering in my love life.

“So you thought what?” I demanded. “Chuck’s single again, and I’m still
single and you figured you’d set it up so we would run into each other?”

“Um … yes?” She hesitantly admitted. “That was pretty much the plan.
Look, I know you’re not over him, and I’m certain he’s not over you, and I just
thought if you guys could see each other maybe it would all work out.”

“You were wrong,” I said. “And I don’t appreciate being manipulated. You
were wrong about this, and wrong about that douche, Junior. I suggest you focus
on your own broken marriage, Laurie. I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate me
interfering with that, and I hope you can understand why I’m pretty furious
with you right now.”

Rather than wait for her response, I hung up. This was a first. I’d hung
up on my mother a number of times, but never a friend. I was generally a people
pleaser, besides which I tended to really like my friends. That said, none of
them had done anything quite like this before.

Still, I immediately felt guilty for hanging up on her. I believed her
heart had been in the right place; she wanted to see me happy and thought
reuniting me with Chuck would do the trick. It was a terrible idea, but perhaps
I shouldn’t be so hard on her.

I picked the phone up and called her back. She answered on the first
ring.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s ok,” she answered. “I’m sorry, too.”

It would be impossible for me to focus on anything at all for the rest of
the evening. I managed to throw together a spicy Asian noodle soup – a
ridiculously simple but delicious dish that threw off fragrances of garlic and
ginger. I topped it with cilantro and red pepper sauce and photographed it from
a few angles. Unfortunately, after only a few bites of the stuff, I felt like
stopping. I just wasn’t hungry. I decided I’d go ahead and blog.

Spicy Day

This soup is surprising. It looks
quite a lot like chicken noodle soup, but one slurp and it’s apparent this
ain’t your momma’s cold-buster.

Today was a bit like this
surprising soup – it looked like any other, but it wasn’t. There was a
secret ingredient that really threw me off. I wish I could say I enjoyed the
flavor.

I generally disliked being cryptic in my blog posts, but at this point felt
I had no choice unless I was going to change this into a blog about my
dysfunctional relationship. I’d already gone there in previous posts and felt
pretty embarrassed about it. People who really understood what I was going
through might even be able to glean meaning from those three sentences and
figure out what had actually happened.

I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my conversation with Chuck,
such as it was. Mostly it seemed like he’d just been making excuses. He had
mentioned Candace, but hadn’t said that whatever had been going on between them
was over. I had to hear that from Laurie. This made my heart beat harder, in
spite of myself and the fact that I was still quite pissed off at him.

So what? He’s single. That doesn’t change how hurt I was by him leaving
me. Was I supposed to plead for him to come back to me now? These thoughts
played through my head as I watched the news on TV. Incidentally, the same
reporter who’d outed me as a fat person was on my television. Cherry what’s-her-face.
She still spoke unnaturally, using a much deeper voice than I suspected her
natural tone was. She was hot on the trail of a new story: A monkey that had
been kidnapped from the zoo.

And then my phone buzzed.

It was a text message from Chuck. My heart practically skipped a beat,
and I shook my head at my own reaction.

I’m sorry. I’m a jerk, and a moron.
Please meet me for coffee.

I stared at the text for a while, not knowing how to respond. I could
meet him, but why? So I could feel shitty again?

I’m not sure that’s a good idea
,
I decided was an appropriate response.

He responded immediately.
It is. I
swear it is. Please let me speak with you in a normal setting. Today’s ambush
wasn’t exactly helpful.

He had a point. I wasn’t the only one who’d been ambushed; he had been,
too, and I knew him well enough to know the surprise of it had probably
resulted in a bit of diarrhea-of-the-mouth on his end. He said too much, and I
just ended up pissed off again.

All right
, I decided
impulsively.
9 a.m. Saturday at Don’s
.
That was our favorite coffee house.

You got it
, he answered.

My stomach was tight with anxiety all day Friday. Part of me was excited
I’d be seeing Chuck the next day – I promptly chastised this part of me.
The other part of me was understandably nervous about what he might want to
discuss. What could be left to say? I hoped he wasn’t planning to tell me about
all of his sexual escapades during our time apart; I knew that at no time would
I be bringing up my romp with Junior.

Nervous energy propelled me into the office early. I’d pulled on some new
slacks, wedge heels, a soft, comforting sweater, and one of my now-trademark
colorful scarves, and had driven to work on a near-empty freeway; a highly
unusual occurrence even if it was a Friday. Now I sat at my desk, among a
number of empty cubicles, staring at my empty inbox and longing for a
distraction.