The Fastest Way to Fall
Denise Williams
Author’s Note
Dear reader,
I am excited to share this story, and I hope you enjoy reading The Fastest Way to Fall. Wes is pretty hard not to love, and I enjoyed every minute of living inside the couple’s chemistry. You’ll follow two people as they grow, fall in love, and find happily ever after with each other and within themselves. That said, I’d like to take this note to tell you more about the heroine, Britta.
When we are inundated with messages about an obesity epidemic alongside those about body positivity, when bullying and fat-shaming exist in tandem with celebrity role models embracing their bodies, why write about a fat character doing anything but living their best life with no mind to their size? I love those stories where confident, self-affirmed fat people find love and take the world by storm—they’re inspirational, and even aspirational, but that’s not the story I know how to tell. I know how to tell the story of someone taking the world by storm, finding love, and doing so while navigating the sometimes choppy waters of being a fat woman.
I’ve been fat my entire life, and I spent so much of my time giving others power to dictate what they thought my relationship with my body should be. When the idea for this book came to me, it was the book I needed to read. I started writing this story for myself at twenty-four, when, brokenhearted and freshly dumped, I feared no one would find me attractive again. I wrote it for me on my wedding day, when I was at my biggest and had never felt or looked better. I wrote it for the me of twenty-seven, who fell in love with the gym and became enamored with what her body was capable of, and the me of today, who keeps meaning to get back on the treadmill. I wrote it for the me of tomorrow, who might need a reminder she’s strong and beautiful.
I wanted to tell a story about one real woman falling in love with someone who helped her feel strong and made her want to be stronger. You’ll read about Britta’s journey to defining what strength means for her, and that includes the shoulders-back, boobs-forward, winning-at-life days and the shoulders-slumped days when a win seems impossible. Love has a funny way of boosting the former and making the latter more manageable.
I spoke with so many people about their experiences, and I hope I have done service to their perspectives. This is not a story about weight loss or changing to find love, but if you find stories that include discussions of body image, exercise, fitness, or nutrition triggering, please take care when reading. While our own experiences with fat phobia, bullying, and body awareness differ, the dangers of disordered eating, crash dieting, and unsafe exercise practices are clear. For resources on these, see the list at the back of the book. I hope you’ll stick with Britta and Wes’s love story.
Best,
Denise
Please note, this story contains reference to drug and alcohol abuse by a side character and brief reference to off-page disordered eating and exercise.
For Bethany, who is strong and beautiful.
1
I HUSTLED DOWN the hall, late and waterlogged. It would rain today of all days.
With a graceless slip on the slick tile of the conference room, I hit the floor with a surprised cry, and my umbrella sprayed water into the air. My skirt rode up my thighs as the box of donuts I’d carried skidded across the polished wood floor, coming to rest by my boss’s Louboutins. Around me, conversation stopped, and I lingered in a cocoon of awkward silence.
Normally, the box was empty and stuffed in the trash before our boss arrived, already full from her kale smoothie or whatever Paleo-adjacent, keto-friendly, sugar-free organic breakfast food was trending. Everyone would enjoy the treat, and I’d maintain my status as popular and much-adored coworker, but the rain had other plans for my reputation and dignity that morning. Maricela’s manicured fingers slipped under the table to pick up the pink box.
“Britta, you made it.” Claire Morales’s voice broke the silence, and a chuckle went around the conference table. She sat back in smug satisfaction.
That’s what I told myself, anyway. From my spot on the floor next to my dripping umbrella, I couldn’t see anything except her impossibly high heels. For a fleeting moment, I wondered how good their traction was and if she might have her own run-in with the slippery floor.
“I like to make an entrance,” I mumbled, trying to stand without flashing anyone. Helen, the instructor for the over-sixty hip-hop dance class I’d accidentally joined at the local gym, would say, “If you got it, flaunt it,” which I tended to agree with. However, I doubted I needed to flaunt my cute underwear for the entire staff of Best Life, the millennial-focused lifestyle magazine where I’d worked as an editorial assistant for four years.
“Britta, are you okay?” Maricela Dominguez-Van Eiken looked the part of someone who ran a lifestyle empire. Straight posture, dark hair curled and cascading, a perfectly organized planner settled perpendicular to the newest iPhone and a rose gold water bottle. She’d built Best Life from the ground and turned it into a lucrative, trendsetting company designed to help people live well. Kale smoothies aside, she had impeccable taste and just seemed to have her life together. What’s that like?
I rubbed my knee and rotated the wrist I’d landed on, catching Claire’s smirk from across the room. “I’m okay.” Just a little mortified. “Sorry I’m late.”