Page 23 of Beach Bodies

I prod her shoulder. ‘Here, sit up, time for a nice drink.’

‘Ooooh,’ she groans, but manages to prop herself up. She downs the whole thing in three gulps. ‘I feel so weird.’ She clutches her middle and turns wide eyes on me. ‘Oh, no.’

Here it comes. I pull her up and we barely make it to the bathroom before she pukes into the toilet.

‘Dear God,’ I breathe as my stomach clenches too. Two pukers in one night; just my luck. Time to switch to mouth-breathing, permanently.

‘Oh, it’s OK,’ she says as she heaves again, releasing the tiniest bit of liquid. ‘At least I’m getting thinner!’ Her laugh is ghoulish, interrupted as it is by a fresh round of stomach-emptying.

I can’t even pretend to laugh at her joke. Assuming it was a joke. Instead, I fill up the glass again, because she’s going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow.

‘Seriously,’ she says from the toilet, still slurring her words. ‘Ihatefat people. Don’t you? Like, swear to God, if I ever got fat? I might as well just—’

And just like that, I’m ready to bash her face in.

Thankfully, her next round of puking cuts off her sentence, or I might have done just that.

It’s not just the smell of her that’s toxic, it seems.

I wasn’t always like this. Growing up in Calumet Heights, I saw a lot of people with short fuses. It’s easy to get that way when you’re always on the brink of disaster. I learned the hard way that you don’t throw the punch right away. First, you think it through.

For five damn years I’ve been thinking it through here at the Riovan. This is not the year that I crash and burn.

I lean down to hold back her hair as her body convulses.

She’s half a head shorter than me. True, she works out, but she’s also drunk off her ass. If I plunged her face into the toilet, I’m pretty sure I could keep her down…

My body is producing adrenaline like it’s going out of style. And adrenaline makes you stronger, too… My grip on her hair tightens, but then a voice, soft and warning, says,This is not how we do this, Lily.

Serena seems to be done throwing up, for the moment. I release her hair and step back. She rolls to the side of the toilet, one arm draped on the seat.

‘Thank you,’ she slurs. ‘God.The only thing worse than barfing is when it comes out the other…’ She laughs suddenly. ‘The cleanse company… what’s it called… Clear… Clean…’

No idea what she’s talking about.

‘You sound like you’re doing better,’ I say mechanically, ‘so actually, I should probably get going—’

‘Wait. No. You’re… I need your opinion.’ She yanks a piece of toilet paper off the roll to wipe her mouth. ‘You’re… gorgeous. Obviously, or we wouldn’t have hired you!… What was I saying?’

‘How about we get you to bed?’

‘No, no, no, don’t go, Lily! You’re like my… big sister. You remind me of her…’

‘That’s nice, but I—’

‘It’s a laxative, but you’d never guess it from the—’ She hiccups. ‘Label. So good, right? You do this… cleanse! And you shit it all out. I’ll tell Linda to put it on everyone’s’–burp– ‘diet plan, and they’ll drop a size without even trying.’

Right. The co-branding opportunity she was discussing with Vic. Disgust starts to twist my face, but I fight my expression back to neutral.

‘That’s a terrible idea.’

‘Really?’ Her brow wrinkles. ‘But people… they’re paying thirty fucking thousand dollars to do the intensive, Lily! If they don’t drop fucking… alotof pounds, OK?… They won’t come back or’– hiccup– ‘tell their friends.’ She slumps deeper on the wall, her tube dress riding up– and down. ‘We need the fat people to keep coming, and we need to make them… not fat. Seriously. That’s a top-down company… directive. Because that’s our brand.’ Her hands lift in a magician’s flourish and she whispers, ‘That’s what… wedo.’

‘Stop!’ I slam my fist on to the vanity counter, breathing hard. Not smart, short fuse, but I’ve reached a bit of a limit. Then I crouch down and tap her cheek, just a sharplittle tap with my palm, even though I’m tempted to slap it. Hard. ‘Stop saying fat. Serena… fuck! You wrote the guidelines! Remember? We don’t say fat. Thin. Weight. Size. Get it together!’

Her eyes are wide, surprised. Shocked.

My first thought is,Now I’ve done it. She’s going to fire me.

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