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Nic’s eyes sharpen.
“Not like that,” I hasten to explain. Finn comes back in, closing the door behind him quietly. Better that I won’t have to say this twice, then. Humiliating as it is, I want them to understand. It’s ugly and horrible and so embarrassing. I want to dig a hole and never come out, but I already clawed my way out of that mess, and I want Finn and Nic to know it.
“I was heavy even as a young teenager. College didn’t help. It wasn’t so bad for a while, you know? By the time I was working at Sizzle, I was too busy to pay much attention to my looks. Working behind the scenes, there’s not as much pressure to look a certain way. I wasn’t the biggest girl there, and frankly, I stopped paying attention to my body. It just wasn’t something I thought much about. Jeff… when I met him, he didn’t seem to care either. He told me I was pretty. And he went out of his way to give me attention in front of other people at work. He made me feel good.
“When he asked me out, saying yes felt inevitable.” My stomach churns. Finn comes closer, sitting on the couch, tugging me to sit down between Nic and him. It’s easier to say it now that I don’t have to look straight at them. “It was flattering, you know? I thought things were fine, and maybe for a while, they really were. Maybe he really was into me at the start. But then he started commenting about what I was eating. He stopped wanting to go out at all, claiming he didn’t have the energy for it. He’d ask me sometimes if I had anything more flattering to wear.”
Finn lays a hand on my knee, squeezing briefly. Nic is very still.
“It got worse toward the end,” I say. I’m not repeating the garbage he said then, not if I want a chance at scrubbing it from my brain forever. “Suffice it to say, he made it clear that he no longer found me attractive, that he couldn’t remember why he ever had.”
“So you kicked his ass to the curb,” finishes Finn.
“I wish I had.” I close my eyes. “One night after I asked him to take me out—it had been months of staying in by then, nothing but takeout dinners in my apartment—Jeff told me flat out that I was too fat to fuck, and he left.”
Finn makes a choked sound. Nic swears.
“That was it. He never came back. I put his things in a box. The next time I saw him at work, I couldn’t stand it. I walked straight to HR and put in my notice.”
Nic takes my hand. Finn follows suit on my other side.
“So no,” I say, opening my eyes finally and focusing on the wall so I don’t have to see their faces. Pathetic. “I don’t have any lingering feelings for him. I’m not upset he’s with someone else. They just surprised me, is all.”
The room is quiet for a long beat.
“I’ll kill him,” says Finn in a flat voice.
“I’ll represent you if you do.” I can feel the tension radiating off Nic.
I laugh. God, the release feels so, so good. I laugh harder, unable to stop. I finally catch my breath, wiping tears of mirth away, breaking their grip to do it.
“Anyway. Sorry for the drama. God, that feels better.”
“Don’t apologize,” says Nic, pushing a tissue into my hand. “You know he’s full of shit, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“That asshole was already checked out. Making cracks about your looks was his way of driving you off, trying to get you to end things.”
Huh. “My friend Moira said the same thing.”
“There you go. If Moira said it, you know I’m right.”
“You’ve met Moira?” Finn asks.
“She’s come up here to the office to meet Natalie a few times. The woman is terrifying.”
“She is not,” I dutifully protest. But he’s not wrong.
“She really is,” says Nic, shifting in his seat. “And that’s enough about that. Did you lock the door?” It takes me an extra beat to realize his last comment is directed at Finn.
“I did, and I stuck the ‘out of office’ sign out, too.”
“Phones?”
“Set to ring straight to voicemail.”
“What on earth are you up to?” I ask, looking between them.
