Page 9 of The Husband Diet
Freshly baked ciabatta with oregano, stuffed peppers, baked potatoes with rosemary, vealinvoltiniparcels simmered in whiteinzoliawine and my favorite, tiramisu. Takethatto the bank, Ira.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said as I hefted the bags and inhaled the marvelous fragrances, already envisaging a revenge feast.
Well, maybe a goodbye-to-food dinner, kind of like my own version of The Last Supper or something.
‘I can’t believe it. What am I saying? OfcourseI believe it. That little shit is capable of anything,’ Paul scoffed. ‘Too tired to make the effort.Blown to a size twenty. As if he was Aidan friggin’ Turner!’
Paul sooo got me. ‘I know, right?’
Every week, the same story – Paul telling me to dump my husband and me biding my time, waiting for a miracle to happen. Only now I knew it wasn’t just our hectic work life sapping the strength out of him that made him always cranky. It was my fat ass.
He no longer saw me as he used to and it was true – I’d gone a long way down from the young preppy, free-spirited and sexy girl I used to be. At least I had been before the kids. Ira couldn’t understand why I’d never lost the baby weight. Fact was, it wasn’t just the baby weight. It was the doughnut weight, the apple pie weight, the tiramisu. It had nothing to do with the baby fat.
Yes, I’d packed it back on after Warren and Maddy were born, but I was simply returning to my old (big) self who Ira hadn’t seen before because he’d met me during my two-year stint of slimness when I’d been a size fourteen. And even then he’d had something to say about it. He’d told me I was pretty but that I needed to lose just a tiny bit of weight. What a joke.
Ira didn’t understand me. I was born hungry and nothing could fill me. I liked to blame my mother for never loving me the way she loved Judy and Vince, my siblings. I liked to blame my love for cooking, or Le Tre Donne, my aunts’ Italian restaurant. Or even the desserts section at my local supermarket. But in truth, eating made me happy. It comforted me and made me feel like everything was alright. And up until then, I hadn’t given a damn about my weight. Inside, I was still me. And I still managed to dress nicely thanks to the plus-size sections in Macy’s department store.
But it was soon becoming obvious to me – once my La Vie En Rose designer shades had dropped off my nose – that the weight was really starting to weigh me down. I was a busy working mum who could never go fast enough, with never a moment to spare, always running late, always dropping things on the way to the car and wheezing when I bent to pick them up. Of course if I lost some weight, I could actually keep up with the kids and face anything they threw my way.
Who knows, maybe I was hoping I’d lose weight out of sheer force of concentration and become this irresistible woman whom Ira couldn’t help but make love to. Because dieting was hard. I was always too hungry and there was always amazing food around me. If I didn’t have time to bake it or go back to Little Italy, there was always the shop around the corner.
‘I’d say you’re at stage four,’ Paul diagnosed, which, according to his scale of one to five in troubled relationships, was just before divorce.
‘Nonsense! We’re just in a rut.’
‘And you’re in denial.’
‘Is it really just because I’m big?’ I asked.
There had to be more, even if, essentially, Ira had dwelled on my looks. He’d literally spelled it out to me, but it still hurt to believe.
He shot me a skeptical glance. ‘Sunshine, only a real man deserves a real woman. That’s my official version. My real opinion is Ira’s always been a shit.’
‘That’s not true,’ I countered. When we’d met, Ira was different. He was sexy, alluring, with so many goals in life. I huffed. ‘He doesn’t even want to go to Tuscany anymore.’
Paul had been helping me trawl for farmhouses through an Italian connection of his in Siena but so far, nothing was affordable. He’d suggested settling for a normal house in the country, but I’d put my foot down. No more settling for me. I wanted the real deal this time. I’d earned it.
‘Doesn’t want to go to Tuscany?’ Paul echoed. ‘The guy is beyond helpless. What are you waiting for to split the scene?’
I stopped to admire the doughnuts in the bakery window. Paul tugged on my arm.
‘Sunshine,no.’
I cast a longing look at him, my best friend, the one person with whom I could chew the breeze and be myself with, something we rarely did around anyone else.
‘Just one,’ I pleaded. It had been ages. Well, two days, really. Oh, the chocolate glaze! ‘What’s one measly doughnut? Besides, whose side are you on? Why can’t I be big and be loved all the same?Youlove me.’
‘Sunshine,’ Paul said. ‘I love you, but I’m never gonna have sex with you. You know I don’t do women.’
‘If you weren’t gay, would you? Do me?’
Paul chuckled. ‘And you need to ask? Of course I would.’
‘Even though I’m big?’ I insisted.
‘You’re not big. You’re beautiful. Like the Renaissance women – soft and squeezable. Who wouldn’t want you?’
‘Then don’t give me a hard time if I want a doughnut.’
