Losing to Win (8 page)

She shrugged. “I'm not yours and it was just a kiss.”

“You liked it,” I accused.

“Are you seriously jealous right now?”

“I am. Do you not recall that you almost slept with me yesterday?”

“Malachi!” She pointed. “One: Cameras! Two: That is NOT what happened. Three: Are you kidding me with this right now?” She was beyond pissed off and speeding toward furious.

I waved a hand. “I'll get them to edit it out. Stop me when I'm lying. If we hadn't been interrupted, I would have had you yesterday.”

“Had me? Like some sort of ownership? Please.
If
I slept with you it would've just been to scratch an itch, nothing more. Besides, you don't know what I would have done. I might have said no.”

I gave her a confident look. “When have you ever turned me down?”

“Are you trying to be an asshole about this? Because you're doing a great job of it.”

“I'm just—Carissa, I didn't like him kissing you.” I didn't like the thought of her with anyone but me. It had always been me. I'd been her first and, before things went off the rails, I was going to be her last. I couldn't stand the thought of anyone else having that intimate knowledge of her.

“I'm no longer required to worry about what you like and what you don't.”

“I don't want to argue.”

“Then don't.”

“Was something going on between you and that guy?”

“His name is Jordan.”

“Carissa.”

“What, Malachi? It was a dare. You're the one who was determined to win this thing. We're winning. We'll lose the weight, you'll finish getting in shape, you'll be back in the NFL, and you'll be gone. You should be happy. You have exactly what you wanted. And by the way, in case you forgot: you lost the fricking right to worry about who I kiss years ago.”

Marcy and Bliss walked in the room. “Are you ready to answer some questions?”

“I think we've answered enough,” Carissa said with enough heat that Bliss didn't challenge her. She took a step back as Carissa swept past her.

Ren walked in the door Carissa had just stormed out of and slammed shut behind her. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Ha!” I laughed humorlessly. “This may be many things, but paradise is not one of them.”

“You won today,” Bliss reiterated with the camera rolling.

“Did I?” Where I was sitting, it definitely felt like I had lost something. Something important and irreplaceable.

“Well, you won the challenge. Is the competition what you expected it to be?”

“No. Not at all.” I stood up and pushed past the crew. “Y'all have a good night.” I strode down the hallway and upstairs to the suite of rooms Carissa and I were sharing. Walking through the tiny suite of two bedrooms, cubicle-sized living area, and a bathroom, I realized she was not there. For a moment I had the chilling thought that she was with Jordan. That she'd already chosen to be with him and shut me out. That thought terrified me. The idea that someone else could take her away before I even got the chance to figure out if I wanted her back and could win her back. Then I looked out the window and saw her sitting outside in the courtyard beside the fountain. I wanted to go to her, I wanted to talk, I wanted to hold her. More than anything else, I wanted to turn back the clock and have us be us again. Was this just because I was spending time with her again after avoiding her for so long? Was this just because a part of me thought she and I were meant to be together? Was it just an itch that needed to be scratched so that we could move on? Was this just me being selfish? The truth? I had no idea what would happen if and when I decided to put back together what I'd broken with Carissa or if it could even be done. With a sigh, I went to my room and shut the door behind me. It had been a long damn day and there was a line of long damn days yet ahead.

 

 

“D
ear God, I hate working out,” I puffed as I attempted to hold the side plank pose for another thirty seconds. In a show of pure sexism, the female contestants were sent to a yoga class while the guys went to run sports-related drills in the gym. I would much rather shoot baskets than contort myself into a jiggly pretzel.

“What was that, Carissa? Did you have a question?” Darcy asked.

“Nope. Not at all.” I tried not to groan as I released the pose and rolled into downward facing dog.

“Oh, this is totally not natural to be doing with clothes on,” Niecy said.

“Girl, don't even remind me,” I muttered.

“Would you two shut up so we can get out of here?” Suzette bitched. Aggravated bitching was par for the course for Suzette. Where Niecy and I grumbled with as much good nature as we could muster, Suzette indulged in recurring bitch sessions where clearly the world had conspired to make her miserable. If not the world, me. She was convinced that I spent copious amounts of time thinking up ways to make her life miserable. I didn't have to; she did fine all on her own. We were used to it by now. Constant bitch and moan from that one.

My only source of entertainment today was watching Suzette struggle even harder than I was to contort her fleshy extremities into these positions.

We huffed and strained through another forty minutes of yoga torture before collapsing onto the mats.

“Hydrate, ladies!” Paul called out from the front of the room.

I reached for the water bottle and drank deeply. Okay, so maybe I was pretending it was flavored vodka. A girl could dream.

“Ladies, we're going to have you meet with the therapist now. Suzette isn't feeling well, so she'll do her session later. Niecy and Carissa, you can meet Dr. Julie in the common room.” Suzette fled the room without a look back.

“Dr. Julie?” I asked sardonically. “Are they serious with this?”

“It's very Hollywood,” Niecy agreed. “Is it me or does it seem that our dear Suzette is always under the weather when there's an all-girl activity to do?”

“Under the weather?” we both repeated with air quotes.

“Is that what we're calling it? And no, it's not you.”

“I mean, damn—she truly cannot stand you.”

“The feeling is mutual. We competed for everything back in the day and I came out on top more often than not.” Truly I felt Suzette should be over it by now, but it seemed like wounded negativity was all she had to get her through these days.

“I wonder why she even agreed to do the show if she hates being around you that much?”

“Probably the same reason we're stuck on this thing: more dollars than sense.”

“Amen,” Niecy said as we climbed awkwardly off the floor and gathered our things to head for the common room.

“Not that I'm not giddy to have you, but besides our brief catch-up convo, you never gave me the details on why you decided to do this show. What got you here?” I asked out of curiosity.

“You know I went through that breakup with Finn. . . .”

“I refer to him as Freakin' Finn, but yes.” Niecy had been dating Finn Wilson for close to five years. Finn was a guy who had to be dragged into grown-up-ness kicking and screaming. Easy to look at, hard to live with. He always had some reason why the relationship could not be taken to the next level. Every step forward in their relationship had been the result of Niecy prodding and pushing and pleading. Personally, I didn't think it was supposed to be that hard. Eventually, she agreed with me and broke it off. Then again, what did I know? I sat around with Malachi's ring on my finger for about the same length of time without getting a Mrs. in front of my name. I was in no position to judge.

“Anyway, I ran into him back in April and he said some things that got me thinking.”

“What kinds of things?” We arrived in the common room.

A whisper-thin blonde with a severely short haircut stood to greet us. She was dressed all in black and her lips were coated in a blood red lipstick. We both paused. It was a little much for a middle-of-the-day look in sleepy Belle Haven, Louisiana.

“Hi, Carissa. Hi, Deniece.” She extended a hand to both of us. “I'm Dr. Julie. I'm here to talk through the psychological side of your weight gain.”

Niecy and I exchanged glances and shook her hand. This would be yet another ride on the fun train. It seemed to never end around here.

“When you walked in, you were talking about Deniece's ex-boyfriend. Do you want to continue that conversation?”

Were they bugging the hallways, the water bottles, the T-shirts we wore? We looked at each other with resignation. We could talk about it with her in a controlled environment or we could try to talk privately and have things we said taken out of context.

We sat down on the sofa in front of Dr. Julie.

“So anyway . . .” Niecy drawled with an exaggerated eye roll. “Finn said that one of the reasons he wouldn't commit to me was because I was ‘overconfident' about my appearance.” She used the air quotes on overconfident.

I was appalled. “What was he trying to say?”

“He was trying to say that my ass was big and he wanted a skinny bitch.”

“Oh, Niecy, come on. You've been the same size for as long I've know you and you've always looked fabulous. You were the same size when you met him, so all of a sudden he didn't like what he was hugged up on for months on end? That boy damn near begged to get with you.”

She waggled her shoulders. “Who knows? Anyway, it occurred to me that I'm not getting any younger.”

“True dat,” I agreed.

“And would it kill me to, one: lose some weight; two: spend the summer with you; and three: get out of Finn's reach for a few months?”

“Good points all.” I nodded.

“And so here I am in the middle of hot-ass Louisiana, sweating out my curls on nationwide TV.”

“But we're having so much fun, though?” I giggled.

“Oodles.” She winked at me.

Dr. Julie interjected, “Deniece, have you always been full figured?”

“Nice wording.” She flashed a grin at the doctor to let her know it was okay. “Pretty much my entire life, but I've always been disgustingly healthy so it wasn't a problem.”

“But now that you've been rejected by a man, you consider your weight to be a problem?” Dr. Julie queried.

We both frowned because that wasn't even close to what Niecy had said. “I think it's more a case of ‘if I'm going to do this, why not now' more than anything else,” Niecy answered diplomatically.

Dr. Julie turned to me. “Why do you think you've had such a drastic weight gain, Carissa?”

I expelled a breath. “You know, one thing you guys on this show could work on is a little tact and sensitivity. Most people who are overweight know that they are overweight. Those of us who used to be teensy and aren't anymore? It's especially painful. It's like fat is the last thing that people feel okay being rude and insensitive about.”

“I wasn't trying to be insensitive.”

“You referred to my weight gain as drastic. Which, of course, it is. But surely I don't need you to emphasize it,” I explained with as much Southern hospitality as I could muster.

She nodded in acknowledgment. “Point taken. No one has ever told us this before.”

“I can't imagine why not. Fat people do not want to be told we are fat. Even if we're just slightly overweight, we'd prefer not to be slapped around with it. Let us deal with our body issues as we see fit. No pun intended.”

She sat back in surprise. “No offense, but you do not come across as sensitive about your weight.”

“Okay, like what you did there: By saying I wasn't sensitive about my weight, you imply that my weight is a problem. As if I'm not living a full life, in spite of not being a perfect size 6. Happy comes in all sizes. The things that have gone wrong in my life aren't directly related to my weight. The opposite, in fact,” I informed Dr. Julie.

“What do you mean?”

“Self-esteem and self-confidence are often issues of plus-sized folks. You just stumbled across me and Niecy, who don't really have problems in that area. We get that cute comes in all sizes, colors, and creeds.”

“Okay.” She took some notes on her iPad.

“Anyway, let me answer your question. My case is fairly classic. There were things missing in my life that I replaced with food. Unfortunately, the more things I lost, the more food I replaced them with, which coincided with me becoming less and less active. So more food, less movement, and here we are.”

“Can you identify the things that you were missing so that it doesn't happen again?”

“I was missing me,” I answered directly. “I placed the needs of others before mine and somewhere inside I knew it. Then I lost one of the people whom I had considered integral to my continued happiness. Over the past few years, I kind of found myself again, but I decided the weight wasn't that big of a thing.”

“Do you think you will keep it off after this?” Dr. Julie asked.

“I guess that depends.”

“On what?”

“On how much I lose and whether I'm healthy and what's important to me along the way. I'm not losing weight for a man or for some bright shiny life that only skinny people achieve. I'm losing weight because it's time and I'd be more comfortable in my own skin.”

Dr. Julie scribbled furiously. “You two have a very healthy outlook. I'm optimistic that you are prepared to handle the psychological ramifications of rapid weight loss.”

Niecy blinked. “What might those be?”

“Well, a lot of times, you get more attention, you start obsessing over your looks, things like that. Your appearance becomes more important; other areas less so.”

Niecy guffawed. “Did you miss the part where we talked about our cute? We've always spent more time worrying about how we look than we should. We're vain, at any size. Welcome to the South. Yeah, I don't think you really need to worry too much about us down the road.”

“Carissa, would you like to talk specifically about Malachi and his impact on your mental well-being?” Dr. Julie asked out of the blue.

“No. I absolutely do not.” I had to draw the line in the sand.

“But you do know that he impacted and probably continues to impact how you feel about yourself?”

“Malachi Knight impacts a lot of things, but what he can no longer do is change the way I feel about me. No, that's not an option. If I learned nothing else from our split, I learned I needed to be okay with me, no matter what. And that's not going to change whether I'm wearing an 8 or an 18.” Niecy high-fived me.

“You're very passionate about this,” Dr. Julie observed.

“About me?” I smiled. “Why, yes. Yes, I am. As a matter of fact, I love me some me.”

“Girl, you're a hot mess,” Niecy said with an amused shake of her head.

“If I don't love me some me, who will?” I raised my arms to ask.

Dr. Julie scribbled some more and then looked up. “I think we're at a good stopping point. I'll check back in with you from time to time. Feel free to give me a call if you have anything you want to talk about.”

“Thank you, Dr. Julie,” we intoned at the same time.

She gestured to the door. “You can head on over to lunch.”

“Yummy. Carrot sticks and naked chicken,” I murmured to Niecy.

“You know it.” We locked arms and walked in slow resignation.