Nothing More Beautiful (2 page)

“You knew I’d be supportive,” I said, a bit
defensively.

“Just like you should’ve known that I’d be
supportive now,” she threw back.

“Fine. You’re right. I should’ve told you
sooner.” My hands had a mind of their own, gesticulating as I
talked. “I’ll explain it all now, if you want.”

“Well, we’re pretty snowed in, so lay it on
me.”

“Here?”

“You feel like going out?” she asked. “I’m
not driving in this.”

“We could walk somewhere,” I suggested.

“Mocha Momma’s?”

“I was thinking more like U-Brew,” I said.
“I could use a drink—or two.”

“Sure,” she said with approval written in
her smile. “I think that’s manageable. We’ll need layers.” We dug
through drawers and scoured the coat closet for the warmest clothes
we had, then trudged off into the calf-deep snow, heading for the
pub a few blocks from our duplex. As we plodded down the sidewalk,
I prepared myself to unleash the vexation that had been eating at
me for over a month.

THE ALARM BELLED IN
my ears
the next morning. I had set it for seven, not wanting to oversleep.
I must have pressed the snooze a few times because the projector
displayed 8:23 on the ceiling in a red glow. I hated that number,
23, and I’d swear I saw it everywhere. It followed me. Haunted me.
I couldn’t go a day without seeing it somewhere, and believe me I
tried. Rolling over, I slapped the “off” button, staring at the
date: 2/9/14.

It had snowed again last night, as it had
all that afternoon and evening, making the journey back home from
the pub a stumbling nightmare. I hadn’t left out a single detail in
my tale. Danielle—the trooper she proved to be time and again
throughout the years—listened and interrogated me with interest,
even though I was a bitchy mess. I harangued myself for my poor
choices and blind faults. We dissected my seven-month relationship
with Ryan and all the signs that pointed to what would eventually
occur. The examination took several hours and multiple porters, but
after our discussion ran its course, my chest felt better, and my
body lighter.

I slid from under the toasty down comforter
into the frosty air. The heater hadn’t worked properly in two
months, but the owners shirked their obligation to repair or
replace it, regardless of the bombardment of desperate calls from
me. Drawing the curtains open, I gazed out on a land of snow. Short
icicles draped along the eaves. The snowstorm had practically shut
down Portland, as far as I could tell from the news and the empty
streets. There were a lot more people walking, though: kids
carrying the lids to plastic storage containers, and utilizing them
as sleds in the absence of actual saucers and toboggans. Any hill,
no matter how minor it was, attracted crowds of families. Parents
even blocked off both ends of the street with big trucks so that
their children didn’t have to contend with cars charging through
the snow as if it were dry pavement.

I dressed in my thickest sweatshirt and yoga
pants over a pair of fleece-lined leggings, and then shuffled into
the sole bathroom of the apartment. The mirror greeted me with its
usual morning grace, reflecting pillow creases on the left side of
my face and the wild strands of my deep chestnut hair running in
all directions. Bed head was never flattering. I studied my
eyebrows for strays and plucked the ones deforming the line.
Patches of peach fuzz peppered my upper lip, none of it noticeable
until a couple of inches away, but still, it gave me enough concern
for me to pluck, too.

I held up my B-cups and wished they were
more like Danielle’s triple Ds. I mean, I was comfortable with them
and everything, but men just looked at her differently, in ways I
sometimes desired. Although her looks came with a downside, like
the assholes in our college dorm who used to call her “FLBP,” which
no one cared about until later when we Googled it and found out it
stood for “Future lower back problems.”

Todd, my high school sweetheart who took my
v-card at eighteen, once said mine were more like B+s. That was
always nice to think about when I glanced at them, even though he
ended up being a total douche.

At 25, my slim figure still turned heads,
but most of the time I was hidden behind the counter at work, and
very few bothered to sneak any peeks, so far as I could tell
anyway. People who did notice always complimented my smooth skin
and high cheekbones.

In many ways my roommate and I were complete
opposites in appearance. She had brown Indian skin where I had
olive white. She had curves where I was as straight as a pencil.
She was tall and I was short—or more like average? She wore
straight hair with bangs and I styled my hair in curls with my
bangs tucked behind my right ear.

I disregarded the mirror and the comparisons
between Danielle and me, retrieving my toothbrush to combat the
foul stench emanating from my mouth. I hadn’t brushed the night
before and the alcohol wasn’t doing me any favors.

After I finished, I ambled into the kitchen,
passing the living room where Danielle was sitting in the recliner
next to the fireplace. She was reading a mystery novel while she
sipped her tea.

I boiled some water for the French press and
let the coffee brew. “Are you going to work today?” I asked her,
resting against the narrow frame between the kitchen and living
room. Small marks along the left side suggested that hinges once
clung to the wall and supported a door, but for whatever reason, it
was gone now.

“No, I called in and I have a bunch of stuff
I can do from home,” Danielle replied, setting her book down on a
thigh. “Are you going in?”

“Bridgett said she could handle the bakery
this morning,” I said, “but I’d like to get up there. Inventory was
supposed to be done on Friday.”

“If you want, I can take you this
afternoon.” Her deep brown eyes stared back at me. “The Crosstrek
has all-wheel drive, and the snow is starting to turn to slush on
the roads.”

“Great.” I disappeared into the kitchen and
grabbed my “Keep Portland Weird” mug, pouring until just below the
brim. I had a habit of doing that—rushing. I slurped down a
fingernail’s breadth so it wouldn’t slosh and flopped down on the
couch, opening up my old laptop from college. The pastime of social
networking had taken up a large chunk of my life since 2006, yet
now I mostly did business-related research and advertising instead
of chatting.

Colby-Jack, my cat (named after the cheese
that matched his color scheme) leapt onto the open cushion next to
me and rubbed my forearm, climbing into my lap. I scratched his
belly before he jumped onto the couch’s arm and lay down, his feet
dangling off its sides. Danielle liked to call him “Tubbers”
because of his size, but after a year a dieting, he hadn’t lost any
weight and was irritable all the time, so now he ate what he wanted
when he wanted, thanks to a feeder that never stopped filling his
bowl. He was a fat, happy cat, who loved to be near me more than
cuddle. But I didn’t mind.

“Oh,” Danielle spat out half an hour later,
interrupting my web browsing. “Becky texted me this morning. She
has two spots to fill on her Hood to Coast team and was hoping we’d
join.”

“Hood to Coast is so long,” I said, “and I
haven’t run in, well,
years
. Not since working at that first
bakery in Eugene.”

“You’re still a runner at heart, aren’t you?
Isn’t that why you have that hanging up?” She pointed to a
black-and-white poster of Steve Prefontaine crossing a finish line
with the quote, “To give anything less than your best, is to
sacrifice the gift,” printed in the corner. The poster hung off to
the side of the fireplace, sandwiched between two decorative
sconces.

“Yeah, I guess,” I replied, glancing at the
quote. “I’m just so out of shape.”

“No more than I am,” she said. “And I wasn’t
twelfth at state like you were.”

“High school cross country was a long time
ago,” I reminded her.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” she urged. “We can
join that gym that just opened up by the bakery on Hawthorne.”

“Ripped City Fitness?
Really
?”

“Sure, what the hell? It’s close to work,
and I saw that the join-up fee is only ten bucks since it’s new,
and fifteen a month. That’s better than any of the other gyms.”

“But it sounds like it’s for bodybuilders,”
I argued. “I don’t need some guy ogling me the whole time I work
out.”

“Guys are going to do that at every gym,”
she insisted.

I refilled my mug. “That’s a good reason
not
to join one.” The truth was that I had no interest in
paying for a membership I was likely to use for a few weeks before
losing the motivation to keep going.

She picked up her book and blocked her face
from me. “Well, I’m going to do it, with or without you.”

“Fine. Fine. I’ll do it.” I Googled “Ripped
City Fitness.” “The gym is open today, if you want to join when you
take me up to the bakery.”

She got up. “Sounds like a plan, Jan. I’ll
get to work so we can head over there early.”

“You’re so lame,” I said.

“And I make a lot of money,” she teased. It
was true, as some kind of a senior manager at Powell’s, she made at
least triple what the bakery brought in for my wages. She swept
down the hall to her bedroom and left me to my web browsing.

“COME ON,” DANIELLE YELLED
,
wrapping herself in her warmest coat. “You always take so long to
get ready.”

“I can’t just throw something on,” I said,
changing out of the white spaghetti strap tank top, and tossing it
on the growing pile near my dresser. “We’re going to the bakery
afterward, remember?”

She stood in my doorway, throwing her head
back, irritated. “Then bring a change. You won’t find something for
both.” She picked out an outfit for work as I swapped into a
tighter pair of yoga pants. Rummaging through the pile, she held up
a high-performance shirt designed to wick away sweat. “Put this
on.”

“But it covers everything.”

“So?”

“So, maybe I want to meet someone,” I said.
“You’re the one pushing me to move on.”

“I wasn’t thinking today,” she laughed. “And
besides, your sports bra hides your girls. Just put this on so we
can go.”

I yanked the shirt from her, scowling, even
though she had a point. Yet they showed a little, enough to attract
an eye or two. Her bra, on the other hand, completely concealed her
twins: it was one of those Enell bras that boasted ten hooks in the
front to secure her exceptional size, nearly eliminating the
bounce. She hurried me along as I double-knotted my shoes. We swept
down the stairs to the single-car garage that made up the basement
of our long, narrow duplex. The room only ran half of the
apartment. Why the designers hadn’t constructed the basement the
entire length and included another room was as big a mystery as the
missing kitchen door.

Every other week we switched parking in the
garage to keep it fair. Danielle’s new silver Crosstrek sat in the
cold, damp room. Only one flickering light hung in the middle of
the garage, leaving most of it in shadows. I had never been fond of
spiders, and the thought of spending too much time in the dark,
underground, vulnerable to the swarms of fangs that skittered
around on eight legs, always forced me into the car as fast as
humanly possible.

Danielle laughed at me, climbing in slowly,
and drawing out the scene of my discomfort. The car door closed and
she pressed the clicker under the center console that opened the
garage door. “You know, if you didn’t make such a big deal out of
it, I wouldn’t even bother,” she said, looking over her shoulder as
she backed out into the cement driveway of the two duplexes.

The car spun out and I stomped my foot as if
slamming on an imaginary brake pedal.

“Relax,” she said, driving over the buried
sidewalk and past the eight-foot hedges, onto Yukon Street. It was
a modest climb up to Seventeenth Avenue. Danielle broke too hard
and the tires skidded, heading into the intersection. Luckily,
there were no souls around.

“Maybe this was a bad idea.” I held onto my
seatbelt for dear life, remembering Danielle wasn’t the most
cautious of drivers. It wasn’t normally a big deal, but I’d never
ridden with her behind the wheel in the snow, and it was starting
to freak me out.

“Don’t be a baby,” she said, continuing onto
Milwaukie Avenue. “I’m a good driver. It’s just been a while,
that’s all.”

“I don’t remember snow like this since 2008
when my mom slid into that ditch,” I remarked. “Remember that? It
was lucky that I was there to help dig her out.”

She pulled up to the stop sign. A big
full-ton pickup was barreling down the road, slush flying toward
the sidewalk and us. Dirty, wet snow splattered our windshield.
Wipers slapped it off, streaking the glass. I regarded Danielle,
worried that her road rage might kick in. Her eyes blazed with
fury.

“Fucking asshole,” she screamed. “Come
on!”

“Don’t do it, Danielle. Don’t even think
about it.”

She stepped on the gas and followed the
truck.

“This isn’t going to accomplish anything,
you know that, right? You’re just heading for trouble. I’ve seen
that look before. I know what you’re thinking.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not doing
anything.”

“Yes you are,” I said. “You’re going to
follow him until he parks then chew him out, just like you did to
that guy last month.” My hands were braced against the armrest and
the small console that divided the seats.

She gave no reply. Disaster was on the
horizon. She drove within inches of the pickup’s bumper.

“Let it go, Danielle,” I pleaded, but her
ears were closed. “Really? You’re going to do this in a
snowstorm?”