Page 39 of For a Goode Time Call…
She sighed. “Yeah, and maybe I was an idiot.” She touched her own stomach. “This is the result of a lifetime of dedication and sacrifice. Hours and hours and hours of work, every day, to achieve and maintain this, because it’s what I had to be. How Ihadto look to be lead dancer. Visually, as well as in terms of ability. It was functionally necessary to be like this.” She frowned. “It’s not necessary anymore, and I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to look like this. For one thing, I can’t work out, and for two, I’ve been eating like shit. So you can say goodbye to this in the next few weeks.”
She hesitated, and then reached out once more, this time running her hands up my chest to my shoulders, letting her hands rest there.
“So…” she said, as she looked up at me, as if perhaps to gauge the effect of her hands on my shoulders. “Body image.”
“It wasn’t really image, for me. It was…just the absence of food. The lack. Being too poor to literally afford to stay alive, just because I was so fuckin’ giant. Made me feel like…like a burden.”
Her face crumpled in pain. “Aww, god, Ink. That’s awful.”
“It was a fact. I was a burden to them.” I felt my fists clench. “They’re not bad people, my parents. They did the best they could. Loved me, in a parental sort of way. But they never understood me. I was never…what they expected. What they wanted. I mean, I liked being outside, hunting, hiking, fishing. But I wasn’t…like them. They made ends meet all right, but when I started really skyrocketing in size around puberty, they couldn’t afford me. I was a burden on ’em, and I knew it. I was on my own by fifteen, for all intents and purposes. Slept at their house, but I was fending for myself.”
She sighed. “Wow, Ink. That’s rough.”
“But that’s just background. That ain’t a secret.” I focused on her face rather than the feel of her hands—if I thought about that, I’d take her in my hands and this conversation would be over. “Only shit that’s left to tell is the really heavy stuff.”
“Same.”
I closed my eyes. “Elizabeth Grace was from my neighborhood, my school. My family is…really traditional. Holding on to the old ways as much as possible. Hers was…not. She looked like me, but acted like them. And it was an us and them mentality, where I grew up. But she was pretty, and seemed to like me. We would hang out after school. Walk home together. Have lunch together. Do our homework in the library. Get a burger on the weekends. Wasn’t much beyond that—we were just kids, fifteen, sixteen. Young. I just liked her. Liked that she talked to me, didn’t seem to be scared of me.” Glanced down at her. “You scared of me, Cass?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. I was a little intimidated by how big you are, at first, but not anymore.”
“Right. Well back then, kids acted like I was an ogre or something. Like I’d eat ’em if they looked at me wrong. I already had tattoos then, you know. Not as many obviously, but I’d been marking myself my whole life, and I was working with Thomas by then and had some pieces I’d done on myself, and that he’d done on me. So there was that, too. Elizabeth Grace didn’t seem to mind.”
“You say her whole name all the time?”
I nodded. “Yep. That’s how she introduced herself. Elizabeth Grace. Anyway.” I fought the memories. “One time she invited me over. I wore a shirt to cover my ink. Tried to seem…smaller. Used my best manners. But her parents…”
“Didn’t accept you.”
I shook my head. “Nope. And she went along with it. She was only fifteen, so I got it then and I get it now. But she stopped talking to me entirely. Switched her classes so we didn’t have any together. Somehow—don’t know if it was her or someone else—but a rumor got started that I’d tried to force her.” I swallowed hard. “My team knew I wouldn’t do that, but the rest of the school believed it, and treated me like I was…I don’t know. Like I was evil. Like I’d done it. The whole community believed it. Parents included. People whispered about me.” I forced myself to release my fists. “We never even held hands. I was too chicken to try. Too scared that my giant fuckin’ hands would like accidentally crush hers or something. I was a fuckin’ virgin being accused of trying to force a girl to be with me. People whispered about it, the R-word. Can’t even say it. Said I did that to her, and I’d never even had the courage to hold her damn hand.”
“Jesus.” Her eyes were so soft, so understanding, so filled with pain for me. “Anyone who took six seconds to get to know you would know you could never do anything like that.”
“Yeah, well, I was six-five, two hundred and fifty pounds in tenth grade, with tattoos and facial hair. People were scared of me.” I kept her eyes. Held them, tried to be open, to let her see how much hurt there was in that story. “Your turn.”
“My dad is complicated. He lived with us, and he was around. He wasn’t a drinker. Didn’t hit us. None of that. From the outside, we would have seemed like an idyllic family. Mom, dad, five girls, nice house, plenty of everything. And in a lot of ways, it was. When we were young, Dad was great. Loved us. Took us out for things. Spent time with us. But as we got older, he just…changed. I still don’t know why. I’m not sure even Mom does, but I know it affected her, too. It affected all of us. So it’s hard for me to pinpoint what it was that left the psychological and emotional scars on me, but they’re there and they’re real. He stopped paying attention to us. To me. Was at work all the time. Didn’t really talk to us when he was home. Seemed like…like he’d given up on life. When I needed my dad the most was when he just sort of vanished from our lives, even though he was physically around. So I just…I don’t know. It put me into dance. Made me seek the approval and validation I craved in the audience. The judges. The coaches. The peers. If I could be the best dancer, they would love me. Getting into Julliard was me seeking that validation. Getting into the European dance troupe was validation. Making lead dancer was validation. Evening dating Rick was validation in a way because he was…he represented…” she paused, eyes dropping. “I don’t know. He was upper crust. Sophisticated. Aristocracy, basically, and I think on his dad’s side his family does actually go way back to real French aristocracy sort of lineage. I thought it would make me the person people wanted.”
I wanted to comfort her, to take away the pain. “You’ve put some thought into this, haven’t you?”
She nodded, laughing quietly, sliding a hand through her hair. “Yeah, I guess so. When you’re stuck in a hospital and then in PT, there’s not much to really think about or do, so I tried to figure out some things about myself.” She blinked up at me. “Your turn,” she whispered.
“This game is gettin’ awful deep, Cass.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
“What’re you after?” I asked. “What is it you really want to know about me?”
She shrugged, but her eyes told me the shrug was more of a delay than anI don’t know.She straightened, gazing up at me. “Are you attracted to me?”
I laughed. “What kinda question is that?” I reached up one hand, brushed the tip of just my middle finger across her temple, ever so gently, tucked her hair behind the delicate shell of her ear. “You know I am.”
She touched a tattoo just above my hipbone—a small piece showing a crow digging a worm out of the soil—and traced it, up my side. “No, I mean…I know you think I’m attractive. But…are youattractedto me, physically?”
I took a tendril of hair between my fingertips, wrapped it around my index finger. “Yeah.”
“Meaning, more than just thinking I’m pretty. You want to…do things. With me.”
I nodded. “Thought I’d made that clear.”
