35. Chapter Thirty- Five
Chapter 35
Leslie
A week later my bruises had faded, but there was no doubt my mom’s insults left a mark. I began sneaking peeks in mirrors, skipping meals, and increasing the length of my dog walks with Pepper. After two weeks, I could tell the pace of my weight gain had slowed, and it was impossible to suppress the thrill that had fueled me for decades. Unable to help myself, I wandered into a local gym, past the receptionist, and straight to the locker room scale. Old me would have barfed in my mouth at the number, but I hadn’t gained nearly as much as expected from when the woman weighed me at the “wellness center.”
That precious secret I held close. No one in my life would understand how hard it was to know something was logically right, yet still reject it.
The moment I stepped on the scale at my next hospital check-in, the jig was up.
Tasha peered over my shoulder, then shot me a questioning glance. “How have you been since the ordeal with your mother?”
“Okay. Good.” I stared straight ahead, avoiding her face.
She wasn’t buying it.
“That’s got to be the shortest answer you’ve ever given.” Tasha stepped toward the doorway, and I knew to follow her into her office. She closed the door gently behind us and gestured to a seat.
Opening a drawer, she slipped out a blank sheet and a pen. “I noticed you stopped using the meal planner app, so why don’t you write down everything you ate yesterday and so far today?”
Shit. I totally forgot about the damn app. If I had my head right, I’d have logged fake meals. Without that buffer, my nonexistent weight gain was suspicious as hell. Especially since I’d gained at a steady clip until today. My hands fumbled in my lap.
“Go ahead,” she prodded.
I lifted the pen and wrote “coffee with cream and sugar” for yesterday’s breakfast. Risto dashed out in the morning without eating, saying he’d grab a bite at the restaurant. Full after the coffee, I didn’t eat anything until a small afternoon snack with Dot. I added “banana” and left the rest of the page blank. I’d planned to eat during my shift at Boricua, but Dot decided to go in instead, leaving me solo at what should have been a mealtime. Today, I’d had a miniature bowl of wheat flakes and a few blueberries, no milk. I slapped the pen down and crossed my arms.
“What has made you want to restrict again?” Tasha asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. The reality of the outside world? When I’m here with you and my aunt, everything is fine. Once I step back into my life, they’ll take a look at me and wonder what the hell happened. It’s already started.”
A nasty string of texts from Kaelen Reed flashed into my mind.
“And?” Tasha asked.
“Colleagues will sneer at me or laugh. It’s just… I saw my weight and panicked.”
How stupid of me to get triggered over a bathroom scale! A square of metal and springs had complete power over me, like a holy oracle.
“Since you’ve gone back to restricting, how do you feel?” she asked.
“Emotionally better, physically worse. Actually, that’s not true. I’m less afraid of outside criticism, but also more afraid of what would happen if my family found out. I’m not sleeping as well and I drag when trying to do any physical activity. It sounds awful when I say it out loud, but I haven’t had control over much lately and it thrilled me to own something.”
“So you own your disordered eating?”
“No. Yes. Well, no, I hadn’t quite thought of it that way,” I admitted.
Tasha and I talked things through, and I agreed to go back to using the meal planner app and promised to stay away from scales. Risto and I were heading out for a two-day trip to Manhattan for Risto’s restaurant expansion, and I was thrilled about the change of scenery. We’d scout a few restaurants and check out executive chefs he might want to poach. He’d also look at a few locations under consideration for his new venture.
Tasha loved the idea, and her positivity was the reset I needed to get my mind right. I committed to enjoying myself and embracing opportunities to savor the amazing food I’d be eating. Since we planned to stay at my apartment, I’d bring some groceries to stock the fridge and avoid weighing myself. To be safe, I texted Rebecca and asked her to sneak over to my place and remove the scale.
I hated myself for regressing. But Tasha said after my ordeal, she’d have been more surprised if I hadn’t slipped. As I headed home to pack, a lightness settled over me that I’d missed since that day after yoga.
Suitcase open on our bed, I was midway through folding one of the flouncy dresses I’d been wearing lately when my cell chimed. Viraj’s face filled the screen as I answered.
“How are you?” I said.
“We may have a problem with the network. They want a meeting. I hope you don’t mind. I mentioned you’d be in town. They’ve scheduled a face-to-face for tomorrow afternoon.”
My stomach dropped. While chronicling my journey on YouTube, the support had been overwhelming. But there was a growing percentage of nasty comments posted under my videos, accusing me of “letting myself go” and being “disgusting.” Kaelen Reed’s texts were especially cruel.
Until my recent setback, I had observed my body with amazement as it transformed. Gone were my gaunt cheeks and gray pallor, replaced by sparkling eyes and luxurious hair with an impossibly silky texture.
But my critics saw none of that in my videos, nor the energy I displayed, which enabled me to answer viewer comments live for over two hours without wilting.
Their sole focus was commenting on my weight, perpetuating the darkness that shadowed me for far so long.
I sighed. “Need I ask why they want to meet?”
“Les, I think they’re spooked with the fervor you’ve brought to this story. And how it’s changed your appearance.”
“They should be worried. This whole food-diet-industry thing is the most corrupt machine I’ve ever investigated. They wield massive power over our culture and lives at a scale that’s hard to comprehend. I have all the data at my fingertips and still marvel at the absurdity of it all. People must hear about it so they can make informed choices.”
Viraj pinched his brow with his free hand. “I get you. But look at it from their side. They think you’re mentally unwell—”
“I was. Before. They never cared when I was starving myself. Now that life is coursing through my veins and I’m recovering, they’ve decided to care about my health? This is bullshit.”
I paced to my underwear drawer, grabbed a handful, and stuffed the wad into my suitcase. I then slammed the hard-sided lid almost closed. Cradling the phone between my neck and shoulder, I wrestled with the zipper, straining to get the teeth to match up.
Then a horrible idea struck.
“Shit!”
“What?” Viraj looked worried.
“I have nothing to wear to meet them. My old clothes will be too small.”
“Buy something new. It’s New York.”
“Yeah. Right. I forgot.” I huffed relief. “Not much shopping out here.”
I took the meeting information down. The timing forced me to miss Risto’s restaurant site tour, but it couldn’t be helped. He wanted me there for moral support and to share his exciting moment. Meanwhile, I wished he could come with me. Walking into the network would be no picnic. While I was hiding out here healing, the rest of the world saw a woman in crisis. They looked at me and projected the same negative stereotypes that my mom spouted for decades.
Fat.
Lazy.
Undisciplined.
Soft.
Mentally weak.
Unprofessional.
What a fucking insult. The truth was 180 degrees opposite. I was smarter, stronger, and happier than I’d ever been. But they wanted the old me. Well, too fucking bad. She was gone, and I was fighting hard to ensure she never came back. And they’d better watch out because the new me was an even bigger force to be reckoned with.
After an amazing dinner at a restaurant in the Meatpacking District, Risto and I strolled the short walk to my apartment. Hand in hand, our footfalls echoed on the dark sidewalks and cobblestone streets.
I’d missed this.
The city sounds humming around us as we wordlessly melded with our surroundings.
Then Risto stopped short, tugging me into his arms. “I love you, you know.”
“I love you too.” I lifted onto my tiptoes to reach his mouth, the tang of after-dinner port dancing on his lips. “It’s great to see you so relaxed. There’s a lot riding on your shoulders.”
“And yours too.” His mood darkened, and we resumed walking.
“What did you think of the chef?” I asked. “You looked excited when the food arrived, but you didn’t eat much. Was he not as good as you thought?”
Risto startled. The glossy whites of his wide eyes shined like two beacons in the shadows.
“Um. No. Not at all. He was better than I’d hoped. I guess… my mind was wandering to restaurant planning, and I forgot to eat.”
Forgot to eat?
What the hell?
Warning bells blared in my head. Of all the lies I’d told to avoid meals, “I forgot to eat” was chief among them.
His profile silhouetted against the streetlight overhead. In recent weeks, it’d become more angular, and I noticed he’d taken to wearing a belt on his loosening pants. I didn’t want to start an argument, or manufacture food disorders everywhere, simply because I had one. But if he was doing this on purpose, we needed to talk about it.
“Sweetie, you seem to forget meals a lot lately. You stopped cooking breakfast before work, then skip eating at the restaurant. Jose keeps dropping off your uneaten dinner at the house. Take it from a pro: It’s not a good habit. Jose is worried. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
He pulled my hand to his smiling lips. “Of course not. I’m fine. Really. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
He held me close and devoured me with his mouth, spiking my desire sky high and evaporating any concern I had for him. We rushed the last few blocks home and were barely past the closed door when we each tore at the other’s clothes in search of skin.
Risto hiked me up, and I circled him with my legs as he bit at my bra strap with his teeth. We turned toward the staircase, and he set me down on the second step. I swallowed my surprise at not being tossed over his shoulder and carried upstairs, as he so often did at home. Now that I think of it, he hadn’t hauled me up in weeks. I forced a closemouthed smile and climbed up. Instead of the bedroom, I led him to my living room so we could make love beneath the darkened Manhattan skyline. A thousand twinkling buildings were our only sources of light.
Risto dropped to his knees on the carpet, tenderly kissing my tummy with his pillowy lips as I lay on the floor. I’d grown to appreciate my newfound curves, but he relished them, caressing my contours like I was a Grecian goddess. Squeezing my ass and using it to pull us closer together as his breath tickled the skin around my navel.
He inhaled deeply, hissing a reluctant release. “I dreamed of this scent for years. Now I have it every day. How did I get so lucky?”
I giggled, tangling my hands in his wavy brown hair, his broad shoulders highlighted by the ambient light. I never felt more safe and loved than when I was with Risto. He was like a cozy warm blanket after a night of sleep that I wanted to wrap around me.
And never let go.
Was that what love was? A hug that stayed with you long after the embrace ended? A safe place to nestle when the world got to be too much? Where it could be just the two of you because your lover understood you better than you understood yourself? When we were together making love, our connection exploded into something more. Our barest selves fused into a pulsing orb of light that was pure peace and love and sensation.
I needed that.
Now.
I shifted to sit on the coffee table and cupped his chin in my hands so I could devour his mouth. My legs wrapped around his torso and the rock hardness straining against his pants. He hit my sweet spot through my panties, making me arch into him.
“Oh, you like that, do you?”
“Mmmm,” was all I could manage.
He ground into me like the devil he was, sending me gasping into his arms. He laid me on the coffee table so he could peel off my panties. Between my legs, his warm, wet tongue went to work, sucking pleasure out of me as if he had a straw. My pulse quickened, tension cresting until my breath froze in eager anticipation.
I tangled my hands in my hair, seeking relief from his pleasure torment. "Risto, I can't take… Please…"
A kiss to my inner thigh was his only response, before intensifying his pleasuring, driving me wild, until…
“Oh my—!” Tingles rippled across my skin in a soundless song. Every pore was alive and fizzing with life. Transported, I floated on a blissful river of satisfaction, bobbing on waves without end. And just when I thought he was done, he filled me with a deep thrust.
“Holy fuck!” Ecstasy jolted through me, so intense I nearly passed out.
Risto pulled me upright into his hungry kiss.
“I feel pretty godly right now,” he moaned, holding me up while ramming into me with a ferocity I’d never experienced but would crave forevermore.
My arms draped around his shoulders as we fucked. That’s what this was. Raw and nasty, and I never wanted it to end.
Pleasure liquefied my bones, yet Risto held fast, driving into me with determination. His breaths grew shallow as his muscles stiffened until…
“Arghhhhh!” he yelled, throbbing the release I could no longer muster.
Meanwhile, I was a pile of mush in his arms.
His muscles flexed under my fingers, stiff, then softened as he recovered. Then Risto shifted us onto the carpet.
We lay there panting, a tangle of limbs, the dark room a blur through my droopy lids.
He planted a kiss on my forehead and drew me in.
“That should be illegal,” I exhaled in a breathy whisper.
“It probably is, somewhere.”
Immobile, our breathing gradually synchronized as sleep took hold. Dreamland approached, then receded as Risto jostled to standing. He offered me a hand.
“Let’s get to bed. We both have big days tomorrow.”
I rose, slapping my feet in protest as he steered me across the wooden floor to my bedroom. I wanted no part of tomorrow. Tomorrow meant going to the network. Tomorrow Risto would tour real estate. Tomorrow, everything would change.
We crawled between the sheets and assumed our snuggle position at the center. Despite our passion, his skin seemed oddly chilly. I tossed a blanket over us both and drifted back to dreamland, hoping tomorrow would never come.