Secrets of a Shoe Addict (9 page)

“I’ll take them to get pizza,” Abbey volunteered.

“Let’s
all
go,” Tiffany said. “I think we could all use a bite.”

They went, and they pooled all their remaining cash on pizza, salads, and Cokes before returning to the gate to wait for their plane to board.

Loreen seemed off, Tiffany noticed. She was edgy, pale, and she wasn’t making eye contact. It seemed like something was wrong, but Tiffany assumed it was a hangover. That is, until Loreen approached her.

“Can I talk to you a minute?” Loreen asked in an urgent whisper.

“Sure, what’s—?”

The look on Loreen’s face stopped Tiffany from questioning her further until they were alone, several feet away.

“I made a terrible mistake last night,” Loreen said, tears welling in her eyes. “I can’t keep it to myself anymore.”

So did I
, Tiffany thought, imagining that in a few minutes both their burdens would be lighter for the sharing. “What is it?” she asked sympathetically.

“It’s . . . the PTA credit card. Last night I thought it was mine. I have the same Visa, only my personal one has my middle initial on it, which is how I usually tell them apart. But last night, I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly. . . .” She swatted away her tears impatiently. “Tiffany, I used the PTA card last night.”

Oh, that was cute. Typical of honest Loreen, worrying herself half to death because she accidentally made a charge on the wrong card. Of course, there would be paperwork, and that would be a bit of a drag, but it wasn’t anything to get too upset over. “It’s okay, honey, what’s the damage? Forty?” She was being generous. “Fifty?”

“Five thousand,” Loreen said without missing a beat.

Which was more than could be said for Tiffany’s heart.
Five thousand!
“You’re kidding, right?” Only half a second passed before her nerves tightened like guitar strings. “Loreen, tell me you’re kidding.”

But Loreen only pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“How?”

“I got cash advances on the PTA card all night long until I finally hit the limit.” Loreen sniffed. “I thought they’d just increased my credit or something. It never even occurred to me that I was using the wrong card, because I hardly ever even take the PTA one out.”

“Oh, Loreen . . .” They were in big trouble.

“I know. I’m so sorry! I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. Obviously I’ll pay it back, somehow. . . .” She went pale. “I don’t know how. Five thousand . . . but I will. I
will
. Right away. I’ll just get cash advances on my other cards—”

“We’ll talk about it later.” Tiffany didn’t mean to be short with Loreen, but this, on top of her own debt, was just too much to think about before getting into a multiton Tylenol capsule that would somehow have to rise into the sky and take them home.

Desperate and broke, and feeling like her world was closing in around her, Tiffany did something she usually did only in an emergency.

She called the one person she knew who
always
had her shit together, and
always
seemed to know what to do.

She called her sister, Sandra.

Chapter
        
5
   

S
andra Vanderslice regarded the scale under the bathroom sink like it was a sleeping bear. She could continue to tiptoe past it and pretend it wasn’t there and couldn’t affect her, or she could just wake the damn thing and let it do its worst, thereby stripping it of its power over her.

Except that that wouldn’t strip it of its power, because there was always the horrible possibility that after working her ass off—literally—to lose twenty-six pounds last year, then falling off the chuck wagon, she might have gained back more than she’d lost in the first place.

That kind of news would be just too devastating to take. She wasn’t sure what she’d do. Probably eat a Twinkie, or four, and wallow in self-loathing. No, she didn’t eat a dozen eggs for breakfast or tuck into a shoulder of beef every night for dinner, the way fat people
were often portrayed, but emotional eating was a real problem for Sandra, and when she was upset—ironically, it was usually when she was upset about her appearance—she really could down half a dozen snack cakes or eat a pint of ice cream, in minutes flat, all the while feeling horrible about herself.

She hated that she was so wrapped up in her appearance that she couldn’t enjoy the real successes in her life—she was a founder of a very promising shoe-importing business, and, thanks to a clever purchase and renovation, she had almost seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of equity in her Washington, D.C., apartment in the trendy Adams Morgan neighborhood. She had so much to be proud of.

But she was thirty-four years old, and she’d never had a real boyfriend. The last guy she’d gone out with, Carl Abramson, had been as sweet as pie, but they’d had only four or five dates before his biotech company transferred him to Omaha.

Sandra wanted a boyfriend, she really did, but she wasn’t desperate enough to up and move to Nebraska to try to keep one.

So they’d said good-bye, and apart from the occasional e-mail that eventually petered out to nothing, they hadn’t spoken since he’d left, eight months ago.

Before that, there had been Mike Lemmington, a Greek god of a guy she’d gone to high school with (though in high school, he’d been more of a Michelin Man of a guy). They’d spent several happy months going out together before Sandra realized (1) they weren’t actually dating, because (2) Mike was gay. (3) Resoundingly so.

She may have been dating him, but he was only hanging out with her. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, totally different interpretations of Robin, the Boy Wonder.

Which, like everything else that had ever gone wrong in her life,
all led back to the scale. Sandra was good at denying the obvious. And even better at
avoiding
the truth.

This had to stop.

She was lonely.

It was hard even to think of it in such honest, simple terms, but it was true. Sandra spent virtually all her time alone. There were things she enjoyed throughout her days, of course—she liked her work, had a few TV shows she enjoyed, that sort of thing—but there was always the thought in the back of her mind that if she swallowed a forkful of boiled chicken wrong, she might choke and die alone and no one would know until the neighbors called the super about the smell.

And she wanted someone to bitch about Bill O’Reilly with; someone to drape her legs across on leisurely Sundays during the Redskins games. (She wasn’t all that into football, but she’d grown up with that being the sound of Sunday afternoons, and there was something comforting about it, and besides, when else could she wear her burgundy and gold Chuck Taylors?) She wanted somebody to remind her that the world wasn’t always fair at the end of a hard day but that things would get better; someone who would tell her that he loved her no matter what.

She wanted the kind of best friend you shared your whole life with. She had no illusions that he had to look like Brad Pitt—truth was, if he did, he’d probably be a jerk anyway. She didn’t actually care what the guy looked like anymore, as long as he didn’t scare small children.

She just wanted him to get her. And to love her for that.

So it wasn’t just pure vanity that made her want to lose some weight. It was realism. She knew that men looked at a girl’s face and
figure first, and even some really nice guys might initially dismiss a girl who was a little too heavy.

Or a lot too heavy, as the case may be.

So what was the choice? To keep indulging in Parmesan artichoke dip and Hamburger Hamlet’s Those Potatoes, and a host of other little things that, on the surface, didn’t seem that indulgent but which added up to trouble? Or to take the most reasonable—if not easiest—diet approach and limit absolutely everything she loved with the hopes of slimming down and . . . and what?

Not
attracting
her soul mate, because if he was really her soul mate, she wouldn’t need some sort of movie star or model figure in order to catch his eye.

But maybe it was reasonable to think that if she lost weight, she might at least stop
repelling
her potential soul mate. Because, honestly, no one was attracted to grossly overweight people. Right or wrong, it communicated a lack of self-care to other people.

She didn’t need to be
skinny
, but she needed to be
healthy
.

Sandra pulled the scale out and laid it flat on the cold tile floor, and took off her new white Sigerson Morrison peep-toe medium platforms. (They had cost $368.95 at
Zappos.com
and were worth every penny,
especially
after she got a French pedicure.) The shoes were fabulous, but she wasn’t going to add their weight to hers, though it occurred to her that, depending what the scale said, it might be better if she could blame the shoes for anywhere from one to six pounds.

Then again, if she put on towering heels, really great stilettos, like the Hollywould ones she’d just gotten, could she possibly justify offsetting her weight by adding inches?

It was tempting. And she was ready to vow to wear heels every day for the rest of her life, if that’s what it took.

Then again, maybe she needed chunky heels, like they always advised in the Style Network shows about how not to dress fat.
A chunky heel can de-emphasize a chunky ankle.

Right.

But she knew she had to be honest and face the whole ugly truth.

She stood over the scale for a good minute or two, considering the possibilities. As if one of them was to stay off the scale and thereby not gain an ounce since her last successful weigh-in, so many months ago.

Do it
, she told herself, like a kid trying to talk herself into diving into a cold pool on a hot July afternoon.
Just do it. Face the truth. Get it over with. You can always join Weight Watchers again. It worked once; it will work again.

She took a deep breath and stepped onto the scale. The spinner lurched and bounced, and she stepped back quickly.

No. No, no, no. She couldn’t do it.

She backed against the wall and slid down, then sat face-to-face with her enemy, the scale.

It was just plain unfair. There were a lot of people who never even had to think about what they ate; they were just naturally slim and gorgeous, no matter what they scarfed down.

Sandra’s sister, Tiffany, was one of those people. Where Sandra was short and mousy-haired, with nondescript hazel eyes, Tiffany was tall, blond, and slender, with eyes so insanely blue, they looked like they had to be contacts. In some ways—okay, a lot of ways—it had been absolute hell to grow up in Tiffany’s narrow shadow.

You’re Tiffany Vanderslice’s sister?

Come on, seriously?

Is one of you adopted?
Turned out one of them was, though Sandra
had only learned
that
last year. Tiffany was adopted and had known it for years, all the while feeling a little bit inadequate compared to Sandra, their parents’
biological
child. It was ironic, since Sandra had felt the same inadequacy in comparison to Tiffany, whom she perceived as “the golden child” to her “black sheep.”

Yet it didn’t make Sandra feel any differently about Tiffany, or about Sandra’s own big fat doughy comparison to her.

To be fair, Tiffany was
not
one of those people who went around proclaiming that they could not gain weight “no matter what I eat!” She was the very definition of
disciplined.
She was the sort of person who could eat
one
Christmas cookie.

She could even resist them altogether, if she feared her waistline was exceeding its twenty-nine-inch limit. (Or whatever, Sandra wasn’t actually
sure
what Tiffany’s measurements were, only that they were more flattering than her own.)

Tiffany had, all her life, opted for water over Coke, plain milk over chocolate, and she actually
preferred
her salads without any dressing whatsoever.

Sandra was always tempted to point out that it was actually
more
nutritious to eat those greens with a little bit of fat—she’d learned a few things from Weight Watchers—but she was afraid it would sound like sour grapes.