Melt for You (Slow Burn #2)(83)

He speaks of stardust and miracles while I sigh,

Wondering how it’s so effortless to be together

With someone so different from me, yet the same,

Over laughter and food our friendship is dawning.

Yet strip away the smiling outer shells—what remains?

Two hearts in darkness, filled with unbearable longing.

Pink robes can mask pain as well as spare flesh

Can be used as somewhere to hide.

Each time we meet I’m moved afresh

By his eloquence, his beauty, his pride.

The man in the girly pink robe is like home

The safest and strongest and best that I’ve known.

“I must be getting my period,” I mutter, angrily wiping the tears from my eyes. “This is ridiculous.”

I stand, place my sonnet book back into the top drawer of my desk in my bedroom, and look out the window. It’s snowing. Flakes float sideways past the pane, gathering in white drifts like dustings of sugar on the corners of the sill.

It’s Saturday the twenty-third. The office holiday party starts in three hours.

I’m officially freaking out.

I didn’t sleep at all last night. Or the night before. Or the night before that. Dinner with Cam a few days ago left me raw in ways I didn’t expect and didn’t feel right away. It wasn’t until after he left that night that I got to thinking about what he’d said about having gratitude for my body instead of treating it like a one-night stand.

For some reason that really resonated.

The first time I went on a diet, I was twelve. I hadn’t even gotten my period yet. My mother, on the other hand, had recently turned forty and was inconsolable. Her grief at passing that milestone age was like a black shroud that hung over the house. Everyone spoke in muted tones and tiptoed around for almost a month as if someone had died.

One night at dinner when I reached for a roll from the bread basket in the middle of the table, my mother slapped my hand. “You’ve had enough,” she said tonelessly, looking at my waistline. My sister—beautiful even at nine—snickered.

That was all it took. I remember the moment clearly. It was the last time I put anything into my mouth without feeling guilt.

From then on, every billboard, every commercial, the pages of every glossy magazine declared to me in no uncertain terms that I didn’t look how I should. There were no images of voluptuous women back then, hardly any of women of color. Everyone was blonde, thin, perfect. Homogeneous. If you were a European supermodel, then you were allowed to be brunette, but you couldn’t look too “ethnic,” or forget it.

Making matters worse, I lived at the beach in Southern California. Blonde, thin, perfect women are manufactured in that area of the world like widgets. If you didn’t have straight teeth, you got braces. If you weren’t slender, you starved yourself. If you weren’t blonde, you bleached your hair. If you weren’t tan, you laid in a machine shaped like a coffin that blasted cancer-causing UV rays at your skin until it complied and turned an acceptable shade of golden brown.

Or burned and freckled, like mine did.

No one ever told me it was okay to be me. All my friends were on diets throughout our teenage years. All of us were drowning in self-loathing.

I wish I was as fat now as I thought I was back then. It makes me sad to think of how long and how hard I tried to be something I wasn’t.

The ghost of my reflection gazes back at me from the window. She’s pale, unsmiling, her hair a dark cloud around her head. She looks like she’s seen things she wishes she hadn’t.

Suddenly I’m filled with anger. “You know what? A wise woman once said, ‘Fuck this shit’ and lived happily ever after.”

Ghost me looks impressed. And a little frightened.

With renewed determination, I head into the bathroom to get ready for the party.




Two hours later, my determination has wilted, and I’m wringing my hands in panic inside the closed bedroom door.

“Any day now, lassie. We could be dead by the time you come out!”

Cam and Mrs. Dinwiddle have gathered in the living room for my big reveal. They must’ve made arrangements between themselves, because I never invited them, but here they are. I’m regretting giving Mrs. Dinwiddle that spare key.

I take one last deep breath, smooth my hands down my waist, and open the door. When I step into the living room, Mrs. Dinwiddle leaps to her feet with a theatrical gasp.

“Heavens, Ducky! You’re beautiful!”

I know I should be flattered, but she doesn’t have to sound so dang shocked. “How’s the hair?” I pat it nervously. “I used your hot oil treatment.”

Mrs. Dinwiddle floats over to me, little sounds of astonishment falling from her lips as she ogles me up and down. “Oh, my dear, it’s simply perfect. Perfect! How did you get it up like that? What a lovely, chic twist!”

“YouTube,” I admit sheepishly. “They have really good tutorials.”

Sitting on the sofa with a beer, Cam isn’t saying anything. He’s just looking at me. Really looking at me.

While Mrs. Dinwiddle hovers over me, plucking at nonexistent bits of lint on my dress and sighing in rapture like some hysterical fairy godmother, I let Cam stare until I can’t take it anymore. “Well?”

His voice low and husky, he says, “Let’s just say I’m glad I’m already sittin’ down.”