Page 25 of Desperate Pucker
I make a face.
She looks at me. “What?”
“Diet Coke is gross.”
“It’s fine.”
“It tastes like shit. Regular Coke is way, way better.”
Her gaze falls to the bartop, and her cheeks flush again. “I’ve never had regular Coke before.”
I gawk at her. “Are you serious?”
She nods. I tug a hand through my hair.
Her brow wrinkles. “You seem really bothered by this,” she says.
“Because it’s a fucking war crime that for your whole life you’ve been drinking Diet Coke instead of regular Coke.”
“I don’t drink it that often.”
“All the more reason to drink regular Coke. If you’re only ever going to drink soda sometimes, then it should be good.”
“It’s a force of habit,” she says. “I had to be really careful about my weight when I was a figure skater.”
I think back to my ex, Alina, who was a figure skater. She had to be careful about what she ate, too, but even she let herself drink regular soda sometimes.
I look at Maddy. She’s really fit. She can let herself have a whiskey and Coke.
I signal the bartender. “Could you add a Coke to my order, please?”
He says no problem. Maddy looks at me, confused.
“You’re trying a sip of Coke.”
She rolls her eyes.
“One sip,” I say. “If you don’t like it, you can tell me to fuck off. But you have to try it.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, but I spot the amusement in her eyes. “Fine.”
“You’re not competing as a figure skater anymore, right? You don’t need to be so strict with yourself.”
She’s quiet for a second. “Like I said, it’s a hard habit to break. Especially when everyone around me was reminding me how much bigger I was than all the other figure skaters.”
I scoff. “If you’re big, then I’m fucking Goliath.”
She laughs. A burst of pride zooms through me at getting her to do that.
“I was Goliath standing next to some of those tiny figure skaters. Some of them were barely five feet tall.”
I tilt my head at her. “Everyone would be considered a giant standing next to someone that small.”
She shakes her head, but she’s smiling.
“Who the hell was telling you that you were big?” I honestly want to know. Maddy is tall for a figure skater, but no one in their right mind would ever call her big.
“A few of my coaches. My ex.”
