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“Against what?”
“Against the truth. No, you can’t go sell yourself. You don’t have to. You can do so many other things. I can’t. This is all I have, all I’m good at.”
“Fucking spare me the sob story. That’s a cop out. It’s a sad little boy who wants everything to be done for him and when it gets hard, he just gives up and goes back to what’s easiest.”
“What’s wrong with easy?” He completely missed my point.
“Nothing is wrong with easy, but you keep acting like you have no choice. Like the life you live isn’t wholly and solely up to you and it is.”
“This is why I don’t date.”
“Really? You’re going to go there?” I shook my head. “Dancing is your job. Fucking is a choice.”
“That pays well. What does it matter if it’s Finn and not me?”
“Where shall I start? The part where you stick your dick in people you don’t know and then you want to fuck me without a condom?” Dear God, I had to get tested. I swallowed hard. “Or the part where you being with another woman hurts me. It doesn’t matter if it’s Finn or Kieran. It’s still you.”
“Give up Chubbalicious, then.”
“Why?”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s really not.”
“Because dancing and pleasure aren’t viable careers, right?” he snapped.
“That’s not what I said. I didn’t ask you to stop dancing. That’s not illegal. Whoring yourself is.”
“So now I’m a whore?”
“You said so yourself.” I wasn’t backing down from this, even though I knew what that meant. As soon as I’d gotten Kieran, I’d lost him, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. I wasn’t going to say I was done so he could go cry to himself about how horrible women were and about how no one understood him. I understood him better than he understood himself.
“I don’t want to fight with you and I’m not trying to hurt you. But that’s where I stand. Why don’t we both think about where we’re going and where we want to be and talk about it later?”
“I’ve got a call tonight and I’m taking it.”
My nose prickled like I’d been punched and I knew I was about to cry. “Be sure that’s what you want to do.”
I went to my room and closed the door. I had to fight not to slam it, but instead, I gently clicked the lock into place with shaking hands. I melted into my quilt without letting the tears fall.
13
I didn’t come out of my room for the rest of the day. I tried to work on Chubbalicious, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I got an email from Ryan, the photographer, with all of the images attached. Hollie and Rosa looked great. I didn’t even want to look at mine and I shouldn’t have.
Everyone said I looked so good at the shoot, that I was so hot, but all I could see was my double chin. Or my ass looked too wide, my thighs to fat, and the rolls around my middle were disgusting. I hated the sight of myself and I kind of wanted to gouge everyone’s eyes out who’d ever seen this picture or who ever would.
This was in Ryan’s portfolio. He was going to show that to people.
They wouldn’t hire you.
No, they wouldn’t hire me to sleep with anyone.
I slammed the lid on my laptop closed.
Kieran didn’t love me. He was with me because he thought my self-esteem was bad enough that I’d put up with whatever he wanted to do and I’d never leave him. I wasn’t a threat to his fear of abandonment because he didn’t think I could get anyone else.
This thing with Brant, he just wanted to prove I still belonged to him.
In that moment, for all that I loved Kieran, I kind of hated him, too.
I’d read all the self-help books about loving myself, about not allowing myself to feel inferior, that I had to give permission to let other people’s comments and actions elicit any reaction from me.
But I wasn’t ice or stone. I was just a fat girl trying to fake until she made it.
My phone rang and when I saw it was April, I swiped to reject the call. She called back and I rejected it again and turned my phone off. I just couldn’t deal with her shit. I had my own to worry about. I get that she was hurt by what happened with Kieran, but she knew what she was getting into.
I guess I should have too.
I didn’t know how long I lay there staring at the ceiling, waiting for the numbness to give way to something else. It never did.
Not even when another loud banging commenced on the door. I ignored it until a short time later, there was a tap on my window. Someone was really determined.
