Bikini Season (5 page)

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Authors: Sheila Roberts

BOOK: Bikini Season
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Erin left Kizzy's house with visions of bikinis dancing in her head. She could do this. She didn't have that much to lose. Getting into her wedding dress by June was doable.
She stopped off at the Safeway and loaded her shopping basket with lettuce, tomatoes, celery, low-fat salad dressing, and chicken breasts. And she hurried past the snacks aisle, trying not to think about chips and salsa and margaritas. The express checkout lane was closed and there was no sign of Dan Rockwell anywhere. Good. At least she wouldn't have to put up with a running commentary from him. She went to an empty checkstand manned by a woman.
But then, just after she'd unloaded her groceries onto the conveyor belt, there was a changing of the guards, and the current checker left to be replaced by … not him again.
“Hey, there,” he said cheerily as he reached for the head of lettuce. “Belated New Year's resolution?”
“No.” She sounded defensive and snotty. Okay, no reason for that. He was only making conversation in his usual clueless manner. She tried for a lighter tone. “Just trying to eat right. You know I don't always sit around eating chips,” she couldn't help adding. What business was it of his if she did? Why had she felt the need to say that?
“Sometimes you're just in the mood for chips. Nothing wrong with that.”
“There's not,” she agreed. “And there's nothing wrong with eating salad to balance out the chips.”
He looked at her seriously. “You're not fat, you know.”
How embarrassing that he'd remembered their last conversation. He couldn't remember her fiancé's nickname, but he could remember talking about her fat.
Cut him some slack, he's trying to be nice,
whispered her inner mother.
Well, he could go be nice somewhere else. There were other people around, and she didn't need him talking about her weight with the entire store listening.
“Do you mind?” she said between clenched teeth.
“Having you come through my checkout? Nope.”
“Well, I'm not going to if you don't stop talking about my weight every time.”
“Sorry. Just thought you'd like to know. I mean, you were so pissed last time.”
“I was not pissed, I was …” She stopped. “Okay, yes I was pissed. It really had nothing to do with you.” Other than him being a dork, which he couldn't help.
“I figured that out,” he said as she swiped her debit card. “Next time you come through you should buy some chips,” he added. “Good for the soul.”
“They may be good for the soul but they're not good for the hips,” Erin informed him as he gave her the receipt.
“Yeah, that's the problem with a lot of women these days. All they think about is their hips.” He handed over the bag. “Yours are fine, believe me.”
What was this, some sort of grocery line shrink session? “Thanks, Dr. Dan. I'll remember that,” she said, and took the bag. As she left the store, she found herself trying to remember if Adam had actually ever said her hips were fine.
He hadn't, she was sure. But, so what? She'd never asked him. Anyway, he told her he loved her, and that was what counted. He loved her and she loved him and they were perfect for each other. And life was perfect. And by June, her hips would be perfect. And then her wedding would be perfect. Perfect.
M
egan was actually smiling when she drove back to her condo after cooking club (cooking club it was going to stay—no way was she going to think in terms of teeny bikinis!). She had a plan, she had support, and, for the first time in a very long time, she had hope.
And that was a big change from when she'd first arrived at Kizzy's house. She had come home after work and almost thrown out the stupid appetizer makings, almost thrown out everything in her refrigerator. Almost. But then she'd felt so depressed that she'd wound up eating half the refrigerator, which was even more depressing.
That was when she had her now-or-never moment. She could either continue feeling invisible at parties when men drifted past her to talk to the pencils, keep shoring up a shaky I'm-smarter-than-anyone façade in front of her shoddy self-esteem, or she could do something. To do something, of course, was the smart choice. And the first something that came to mind had been to quit the cooking club. Belonging to a club that centered on food was like being a diabetic and working at a candy factory.
She'd almost called and canceled, but the need to be with women who actually appreciated her had driven her to go one last time. Anyway, it was gutless to bow out over the phone. And when Kizzy had opened her door and smiled at Megan like she was a long-lost relative it had been salve to the smarting wound she'd received at work, the wound that had turned her into a ravening refrigerator beast.
Her day at the firm of Weisman, Waters, and Green (referred to by the younger members of the firm as Wise Ass and Greed) had started okay. She'd spent almost the whole morning in her windowless office on the forty-first floor—the firm occupied both the forty-first and forty-second floors—of the First Orca Trust Tower, putting together a brief in support of a motion for summary judgment that had at least a reasonable chance of success. By eleven she was feeling restless, so she'd slipped down to the little coffee shop on the lobby floor for a mocha and muffin. Back on the forty-first floor she'd gotten as far as the hallway, lined with bookcases of leather-bound legal journals, when she passed Pamela Thornton and Ashley Paine, two of the pencils. They looked sharp in their black business suits with their white blouses discreetly unbuttoned to show a hint of cleavage, and their slender little feet in heels, their long shiny hair, and perfect makeup. She, of course, was dressed for success, too, and her long hair was stylishly cut, but compared to the pencils she looked like SpongeBob Square-Pants in a suit. They smiled as they chatted, showing off professionally whitened teeth. They could have been models or actresses posing as lawyers—Julie on
Boston Legal.
Neither one of them was a Harvard Law School graduate like she was, and Megan knew neither one had graduated in the top percentile. Yet here they came, prancing down the hall like a couple of goddesses out slumming. Pamela Pencil carried a cup of black coffee. Of course, it wouldn't have anything fun or fattening in it. Goddesses didn't do fun or fattening. Goddesses didn't need food. They fed on their own conceit.
She'd barely gotten past them when Ashley said in a quasi-undervoice to Pamela, “The poor whale. She'll be here a million years and never make partner.”
Megan Wales, whale. Ha, ha.
Oh, I'll make partner someday, Megan thought as she kept walking. But I won't have to do it lying on my back.
She could have easily voiced her thought, but why sink to their level? Anyway, her barb would have been nothing more than a pinprick which they would brush off their golden selves much as they brushed rain off their expensive cashmere coats when they first came to work every morning. Megan, on the other hand, knew she would struggle with her wound all day long.
And a little voice whispered that Ashley was right. In a society that prized beauty, nobody wanted to save the whales. The world treated you differently when you were fat. It was the last socially acceptable discrimination.
But that was all B.C., before cooking club. Now Megan felt like she'd found new evidence or the key witness to turn a trial around. She was going to change, and so was her life. If Wise Ass and Greed wanted a hot
Boston Legal
babe to put in first chair on defense, they'd get one. Brains and looks. The pencils couldn't compete with that. “We'll see who's pretending to feel sorry for whom then,” she said, and the green eyes peering back at her from her rearview mirror narrowed in determination.
 
 
It had been forever since Erin had exercised. How pathetic, considering how much she used to get, she thought as she entered the Heart Lake Health Club Saturday morning. Cheerleading in high school, tennis in college. And then she'd gone to work and turned into a slug. Actually, she'd turned into more of a slug after meeting Adam. They hadn't played tennis since August. And since Adam wasn't all that into dancing, most of their clubbing consisted of drinking and playing trivia games at the Last Resort, their favorite
watering hole. Which was okay, but it didn't exactly get the heart pumping.
She climbed onto a stationary bike, set it for a medium difficulty workout level, and then began to pedal off toward the land of Thin.
She smiled and pedaled faster. She could do this.
We've got it, we've got it, we've got it, got it, got it, got it. Goooo, team!
She was just working up a sweat when she saw—oh, no!—Dan Rockwell striding toward her. And oh, no!—looking at him in his workout grubbies gave her a zing, the same kind of zing she got every time she went to a movie and Leonardo DiCaprio walked out onto the big screen. Dan sure wasn't dressed like Leo. No movie star would be caught dead in those Goodwill cast-off shorts and that faded T-shirt sporting a picture of Homer Simpson. But the body inside the clothes looked movie-star good—thick pecs, legs corded with muscle, beautifully sculpted biceps peeking out from under those tattered sleeves. It was a lot more of him than she saw when he was working the checkout stand.
Okay, so he looked good in a pair of shorts. Big deal. What did she care how he looked? She was a happily engaged woman. Maybe she could pretend she hadn't seen him. She slipped off the bike, ready to sneak to a far corner of the gym.
But too late, he'd spotted her. He got a goofy grin on his face and started her way. Great.
Be polite,
said her inner mother.
She smiled. Politely.
“I didn't know you came here,” he greeted her.
“I just joined.”
“Getting in shape for the big day, huh?”
The last thing she wanted to do was talk about her upcoming wedding with Dan Rockwell. In fact the last thing she wanted to do was talk with Dan Rockwell. Period. Just because he hung out with her family at Christmas and she'd come through his checkout line a few times, it didn't make them buddies. “Something like that.”
He nodded.
“I'm done here if you want to use the bike,” she said. Then she turned and hurried away.
But she couldn't escape him. As she made her way around the gym using the different pieces of equipment, it seemed she saw him everywhere. It felt like he was following her. Of course he wasn't, and it was only coincidence when he wound up running on a treadmill right next to her.
“You're in pretty good shape,” he observed as they jogged along.
Couldn't he see she was listening to her iPod? She kept running and pretended not to hear.
He kept on talking like she could. “All that running probably relieves the stress,” he commented.
She frowned at him. “What stress?”
He gave a half-grin like he'd known all along she was hearing him. “They say planning a wedding is way up there on the stress charts.”
“They who?”
“I don't know. I just heard that somewhere. Not surprising, though. It's a big commitment. What if you get it wrong? Then you've got all that grief, a messy divorce. If you've got kids …”
“I'm not getting it wrong,” Erin said. “Adam is perfect.” She'd had enough of this. She turned off the treadmill and hopped off.
Dan kept running. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, leaving the polite completely out of her voice. She grabbed her towel and started to mop the back of her neck.
“How come you never smile, then?”
“What?”
“If he's so perfect how come I never see you smiling?”
“You hardly see me enough to know whether I smile or not,” Erin snapped.
“When I do see you, you're not.”
“Maybe that's because when you do see me you're always saying something to tick me off.”
“If you were really happy, maybe I couldn't do that,” he said, looking straight ahead.
She marched around to the front of his treadmill. “You could make Mother Theresa mad. And you don't know anything about me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I watched you grow up.”
“That was a long time ago, and seeing me at Christmas when Brett's home or in the Safeway checkout doesn't exactly count for much. You don't know me now.”
He grinned. “Yeah. Kind of too bad, isn't it?”
“Not for me,” she said, and left him there, running nowhere.
Adam called her on her cell as she was walking out the door. “How are things at the hospital?” she asked.
“Busy. I just wanted to let you know I won't be able to do anything tonight. I really need to study.”
Her spirits fell. She'd been looking forward to having some time together. But becoming a doctor wasn't easy. Adam needed her support. “No problem,” she said.
“You sure? You're not out buying something fancy for dinner right now, are you? If you are, I could probably manage dinner.”
“Always time for a free meal?” she teased. “Well, too bad. I'm not shopping. I'm just leaving the gym,” she added, hunching her gym bag over her shoulder. “I was working out.”
“You didn't tell me you were going to join the gym.” His tone of voice sounded pleasantly accusing.
“You're not going to give me a bad time about that, are you? I so need to lose weight.”
“No, of course not,” he said. “I'm proud of you for wanting to get in shape.”
“Good,” she said with a smile. “Thanks for not giving me grief about spending the money.”
“Oh, come on. I'm not that bad,” he said, now sounding pleasantly irritated. “But I did think we were going to discuss any big-ticket items before spending any more,” he added.
Erin frowned. “I didn't think the gym counted as a big-ticket item.”
“That's because you're not good with money, babe.”
Her frown deepened. “I wasn't living on the street when you met me.” She opened her car door and tossed in her gym bag with more force than was necessary.
“And you don't want to be. Look. Everybody has stuff they're good at. Managing money isn't your thing. I don't think you get how much you're spending …”
Oh, boy. Here they went again, back to the wedding. “We can't do this for nothing, Adam. We really can't. Weddings cost money.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Had the call been dropped? “Adam?”
“I'm here.” Some of the pleasantness had fallen out of his voice.
She scowled and started her car. “Well, say something.”
“I'm trying to figure out what to say that won't make you mad.”
“That's easy,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “You say, ‘It's your day, baby. I want you to be happy.'”
“If I say that we'll end up with a fifty-thousand-dollar wedding bill. I'm just trying to keep a lid on things.”
Is that what he called it? “I'm not going to spend fifty thousand dollars, Adam. I plan events for a living. I know what I'm doing. Why can't you just trust me to do it?” Why was this the one thing they fought about?
He sighed. “I never said you didn't know what you're doing, but you're not planning this for some corporation that has unlimited funds. And if I'm part of this, too, why don't I get any say in it?”
“It seems to me you've had a lot of say in it, and mostly you've said no. I'm beginning to think that if it was up to you, we'd just go to the courthouse and get married in our jeans.”
“I'm not that bad,” he insisted. “But I don't think we need to try and compete with Paris Hilton. And you're wanting to keep spending money we don't have like it's water. Now you're going through
enough chips and salsa to stock a restaurant. I'm starting to worry that you're spinning out of control.”
Out of control? She was out of control? Out of whose control? “Adam, I just exercised my butt off so I could fit into my wedding gown and not rack up any more expenses. You know I'm not going to see the inside of a bag of chips for months. I am not spinning out of control.”

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