7. Emmy
The problem with only having two living relatives is that you don’t feel you can afford to lose them, no matter how badly they treat you. That’s why my mother can treat me like crap as I drive her to the pre-surgical checkup and mostly get away with it. Why she can complain about my driving and what I’m wearing and tell me Jeff’s car is so much nicer than mine without me pulling over to the side of the road and telling her to walk. Because she’s all I’ve got.
“I’m not sure who you thought you were showing off to, renting a BMW,” she adds, though I imagine she already knows the answer: I wanted to impress her.
It’s fucking pathetic that I hoped for it in the first place. She was never going to be impressed. I could save the earth from an approaching asteroid, cure cancer, and win the Nobel prize, and she would not be impressed. She’d still manage to tell me how Jeff could have done it better.
Just give up, Emmy.I hear it over and over in my head. But what do I have left in the entire world if I do? And what does it say about me if I can’t convince the two remaining family members I’ve got to simply like me? Even if half the stuff my mother says is batshit crazy, I can’t seem to shake off this sense—one I’ve had since childhood—that she’s wiser than me, that her hatred of me must have some merit.
And Liam seemed to confirm it yesterday. Good to know my initial assessment of you wasn’t overly harsh. I don’t know where he gets off acting like I’m the villain here. He knows he seduced Julie into making an idiotic decision. But it left me feeling, just as my mother does, that there’s something awful inside me, something that can’t be cured.
After I drop my mother off, I drive back to Elliott Springs and park in front of the town’s dismal administrative offices. My steps slow as I near the diner, a place that holds more bad memories than good. This is where Bradley Grimm once held court. On the rare nights when my mom would send me here to pick up dinner, laughter would explode from the back of the room. “How many burgers do you think she eats at once?” Bradley would ask her posse. “God, if I were that fat, I’d have my mouth sewn shut.”
I push the memory out of my head as I force myself toward the booth where the mayor eats lunch every single day with his cronies.
“Mayor Latham,” I say with a wide smile as I walk up. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just saw you sitting here and wanted to say hi.”
“Emerson!” he cries, with what appears to be genuine pleasure. “Just the person we were discussing. Fellas, this is Emerson Hughes. She’s with the company that’s putting in the new storefronts and has some plans for Lucas Hall as well.”
He introduces me to his two dining companions, members of the town council who are significantly older than me, thank God—they don’t know or care about who I once was. “Nice to meet you both,” I reply. “I assume I’ll be seeing you all at the Lucas Hall hearing?”
“Indeed you will,” the mayor says. “Are you going to give us a little hint about what you’re coming forward with?”
I bite down on a smile and let my lashes flutter closed, as if I’ve got a secret I can hardly stand not to share. “I’m dying to give you a hint, but you’ve got to let me wow you. The architectural renderings are nearly done and all I can say is…I think you’re going to love it.”
I pick up the check waiting on their table. “Let me get this. You gentlemen have a lovely day.”
I already know this was a success—the mayor is eating out of my hand. But when I turn to find Paul Bellamy behind the register, my confidence deserts me. Paul is one of many guys who made my life a living hell in high school, and the sight of him turns me into teenage Emmy all over again—cowering, hoping to escape notice.
Are you fucking kidding me, Em? Are you seriously still scared of this asshole a decade later?
That voice in my head spurs me forward, reminds me that I’m no longer someone who gets stepped on. Ever.
Paul’s not so high-and-mighty anymore, standing there with a ketchup-stained apron around his waist, but I’m not one to leave punishment up to karma. If there’s something more to take away from him, I will find it and smash it until it can’t be put back together.
“Hello, Paul,” I say coolly, slapping the check on the counter. “Long time, no see. I’m paying the mayor’s bill.”
He looks at me with a furrowed brow and no sign of recognition. “Have we met?”
“We went to school together. Emerson Hughes.”
“Emmy the—?” He narrowly stops himself, but a mean little grin flashes across his face, which means he doesn’t mind that he started saying it. Of course he doesn’t. The kind of guy who thinks your weight is a hysterically funny joke as a teenager never stops thinking it, and in my experience, that’s most guys. Most people. The pro-size movement hasn’t changed the fact that overweight women earn less, are less likely to get a promotion, and are characterized as undisciplined and less competent based on photos alone.
When I was heavy, I spent my life apologizing for existing, for taking up space, and I was expected to be even sorrier than I was. Teachers would suggest I not have the cupcake every other kid was having; the lunch lady would suggest I not get fries. I saw judgment on a waiter’s face if I ordered anything but a salad, if I wanted a soda instead of water. Disdain for my weight breathed its way into every waking minute of my day, and a decade after I lost every excess pound, people are still laughing about the fact that I had to do it in the first place—like this asshole here.
“No fucking shit,” Paul says. “What’d you do, Atkins or something?”
“Clearly, I did a lot more than you did,” I reply with a smile, tapping my phone against the payment terminal. “Isn’t this the same job you had in high school?”
His amusement dies a quick death, and while it’s not quite the psychological beat-down he deserved, that’s okay.
I’ve got more coming.