Page 54 of Misadventures of a Curvy Girl
I answer her, as surprised by the words as she isn’t. “And what if this was the first time they noticed I was fat? What if they hadn’t really noticed before, but then after they learned how everyone else sees me, they would realize they didn’t really love me after all?”
And then I clap a hand over my mouth. Where the hell did that fear come from?
Mackenna nods as if she were expecting this. “Well, you’re a dumbass if you think they hadn’t already memorized your body from head to toe long before this article. They know what your body looks like, Ireland, and they worship it. I promise. Also, look at me!” She gestures to herself. “Do you think I would have dated them—lived with them—for years if they were capable of that kind of behavior?”
Her eyebrows are arched in challenge, her mouth pursed in a knowing smirk. She looks like the kind of woman who wouldn’t stand for any hint of dickish behavior.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t have,” I say. A new thought occurs to me. A new fear. “Do—do they only date girls like us? Like a fetish or something?”
The thought makes me deeply unhappy. What if all the wonderful, sexy, ecstatic moments we shared were because they had an unhealthy fascination with my body—not because we were simply Ireland and Caleb and Ben?
“Okay, A of all, I don’t like the way you said the word fetish,” Mackenna responds, doing this thing where she aims her pointer and middle fingers at me and waggles them. “It’s very kink-shamey, in general, and I don’t stand for that. B of all, I don’t understand this need to pathologize people who find fat folks attractive. You wouldn’t be asking me if they only dated brunettes or Catholics, so why do we have to label normal desire as something twisted just because that desire isn’t for a thin body? And C of all, no.” She drops her fingers. “They don’t only date girls like us. I went to college with them, and I can tell you they’ve dated all kinds of girls—even dated a boy once.”
I let out a long breath.
“D of all,” she says, “I feel like you’re asking all the wrong questions.”
I’m chewing over all the things she’s said to me, so it’s in an absentminded voice that I ask, “What are the right questions, then?”
“Will your boss give you the afternoon off, and how fast can you get back to Holm?”
My chin quivers with the force of unshed tears. God, if only it were that easy. “You don’t understand. I’ll make their lives harder.”
Mackenna rolls her eyes again. “You won’t. But also, that’s not your choice to make. What if you did make their lives harder…and they still choose to be with you anyway? What if Ben would rather have zillions of one-star reviews and have you in his arms? What if Caleb wants you in his life no matter the cost? Give them a chance to choose you, because, spoiler alert: they will.”
I press my fingertips back into my eyelids again, but it’s too late, the tears are everywhere.
Mackenna’s voice softens. “You’re thinking right now that you don’t deserve it. That you don’t deserve to be chosen. And I’m not telling you to believe it or to feel like it.” I hear her stand up and walk over to me, putting a sisterly hand on my shoulder.
“I’m only telling you to act like it,” she says. “Fake it ’til you make it, gorgeous. Act like you deserve to be loved, and I promise, everything else will work itself out.”
And then she leaves.
I try to hiccup a goodbye or a thank-you, but I know it only comes out as incomprehensible syllables. All my choices are flickering through my mind like the world’s most depressing movie, fueling more and more tears.
Leaving the farm.
Dating a man who made me feel awful about myself. Letting my sister make me feel the same.
And possibly the most life-altering choice I made before I met Caleb and Ben: turning down the photography scholarship.
I’ve lied to so many people about why—I’ve said it was because I wanted to stay close to home, because I wanted a marketable major—but the real reason is because I went to visit the campus that spring, and everywhere on the grounds and in the halls were girls who looked like artists. They were slender and bohemian. They had long, coltish legs coming out of adorable, spaghetti-strapped rompers and hipbones that jutted above distressed jeans. I was the only fat girl in sight, and suddenly everything about me felt fraudulent. I didn’t look like I belonged there, and what if that meant I actually didn’t?
I wouldn’t have fit in—and I felt that on a literal level as well as a social level—and so I tearfu
lly turned down the scholarship and hid myself someplace safe. Someplace invisible. Someplace where I hoped my body wouldn’t matter.
I robbed myself of my own future because I was terrified of what people would think of me in the present.
It’s only now, after talking to Mackenna, that I realize I’m about to do the same thing. I’m giving up everything I ever wanted from love because I’m scared. Because I think I don’t deserve it.
But you don’t have to believe you deserve it. You only have to act like it.
I know I’ll have to try to find Mackenna online somewhere to give her a proper thank-you. Because her words…her words have freed me from somewhere I didn’t even know I was trapped. They’ve electrified someplace deep inside, and what I feel burning at my fingertips now is not a feeling or even a belief. It’s something much, much more powerful.
It’s a decision.
I push away from the table with tears still wetting my face and go find Drew.
