“I wouldn’t give this to Mom,” I say, sounding appalled. My mom has a very modern, minimalist approach to decorating. This cabinet wouldn’t fit in her world. “I meant for myself. I might keep it for me.”
“Oh,” she says, the word coming out in a two-note song.
“Besides,” I say. “Mom would just use it to stack the many diet books she buys to give me.”
Tessa makes a snorting noise. “She’s been giving them to me now, you know.”
I look up at her, knitting my brows. “She has? Why?”
Tessa has always been naturally skinny, and I’ve often hated her for it, feeling jealous that something like the retreat I went to wouldn’t even be on her radar. Food is just food to Tessa. I wish it were that simple for me.
“I’ve gained seven pounds sitting at a desk for my internship, don’t you know,” she says, with her hip popped out, her hand on her waist.
“I didn’t notice,” I say, looking her over. I motion toward her with my hand. “You look great.”
She relaxes her stance and looks down at herself. “I never thought to care, honestly. Mom’s the one who keeps bringing it up.”
“Mom,” I say, exasperated. “Don’t listen to her.”
She lifts her shoulders, briefly. “I don’t listen to her.” She looks at me, almost with a different set of eyes. Like she’s never seen me this way. “You shouldn’t listen to her either.”
I go back to sanding the corner of the cabinet, the sound barely discernible over the fairly loud hum of the air conditioner hanging in the only window of the garage.
“It’s different with me,” I say, after a few beats of silence.
“How so?”
“I actually need to lose weight,” I say.
“Says who?”
Says who? Says . . . plenty of people. I mean, up until recently I was getting daily emails from viewers about it. And just because I don’t get them anymore doesn’t mean they aren’t coming in. I get why it’s probably better for our psyches if we don’t read those emails, but it doesn’t get rid of the fact that they’re still there. Still coming in. Still judging.
“It’s mostly my job,” I say.
“That’s stupid,” she says, her voice indicating that she has no other response for that. She’s right, though—it is stupid.
The door opens and my mom walks in. “There you are, Tessa,” she says when she sees my sister. “Quinn,”—her eyes brighten when they land on me—“I’ve been meaning to call you.”
Should I do a countdown? Diet book coming in three . . . two . . .
“I saw you on the evening news,” she says, delight on her face. There’s an upturn to her chest, her shoulders pulled back. She looks . . . proud. I see this look so rarely, so little, I hardly recognize it.
“Yeah, I’m doing a feature with my boss,” I say, feeling an odd sense of pleasure at this. I also feel sort of bad that I’d so quickly thought she was about to give me another diet book. Although, in my defense, that’s usually the case. But this Mom right now, with her bright eyes and grin full of teeth, reminds me of a time before, when diets and things weren’t at the top of her list for me. When I was just her daughter and she was just my mom.
“It’s such a cute idea,” she says.
I lift my chin, feeling a surge of excitement pump through me at what I get to say next. “It was my idea, actually.”
“Really?” she says, placing her hands on her hips, her eyes even brighter. “Well, color me impressed.”
It’s not often lately that she tells me she’s impressed, and I grab on to her words like I’ve found the only flowers in a field full of weeds. I start to feel badly for what I said about her just before she came into the garage.
“Can we talk about that producer of yours,” my mom says, adding a whistle for emphasis. “That accent, and those eyes. Wow.” Her mouth forms a perfect circle when she says this, her eyes wide. “That’s a good-looking man. You need to find yourself a man like that.” She looks to me and then to Tessa.
A little tiny metaphorical knife makes an incision into my heart with those words. For a brief moment, that very man could have been mine. Not even one like him. Just . . . him.
I sigh. “Let me know if you see one wandering around out there, Mom. Maybe snatch him up for me.”
She eyes me. “You know, if you just lost those last pounds, men like that would be falling all over you.”
And just like a record scratching, all my hopeful and happy thoughts for her come to a screeching halt. There’s the mother I was expecting.
“Mom,” Tessa says, a roughness in her tone.
“I’m only trying to help,” my mom says, holding out both hands, palms toward Tessa.
“That’s not helping. Helping would be telling Quinn that she’s worthy of love, no matter what.”
I know Tessa coming to my defense is a good thing. In the past, I’m not so sure she would have, except that with her extra pounds she’s now gotten a taste of what I have to deal with. But her use of “no matter what” rubs me wrong. Why is there even a “what”? Shouldn’t it just be that I deserve love, period?
Our mom turns toward Tessa. “Of course she’s worthy of love,” she says, frustration in her tone. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying, then?” Tessa asks, folding her arms, her chin lifted.
We’re all silent for a moment, Tessa and me watching my mom, waiting for her response.
She swallows. Then she slowly turns toward me. “I’m only trying to help.”
I don’t say anything. I just turn away from both of them and go back to working on my cabinet.
I hear my mom take a few steps before saying, “Tessa, your father is looking for you.” Then I hear the door open and shut and only emptiness filling the space.
Chapter 19
Date number two is underway, and a familiar feeling washes over me as I peek in the window and watch Henry at the same table he was sitting at last week with Kristin with an i.
This time it’s Brenda. With her long, dark, perfectly curled hair and naturally tanned skin, she looks a lot like a goddess, and I want to hate her . . . a lot. Brenda has curves and she rocks them, and I feel infinitely jealous of her confidence. It oozes from her like a festering blister. I can’t even bring myself to give her a kinder simile.
I should have been more honest with Henry the other day in his office. This is weird. And uncomfortable. And I’d like to be anywhere else but here. Even in the garage listening to my mom’s latest diet idea would be better than this.
“Would you look at those two,” Moriarty says as she comes and stands next to me, peering in the window at Henry and Brenda. “They make a beautiful couple. This idea of mine is going to kill it with the ratings. It already is.”
“You mean idea of mine,” I say, pasting on my best fake smile.
“Well, if I hadn’t brought Henry in, this would have been a bust. What was your idea? Date our intern?” She laughs obnoxiously. “How boring would that have been?”