Lori swallowed the lump in her throat and shook her head. "Nothing that exciting. But who knows, maybe a little vacation. I haven't thought that far yet."
"Well, whatever you do, ring it in with style."
"Thanks, Naomi. I'll send you an email next week."
"Okay, girl. Be good."
Lori stopped at a convenience store and bought a six-pack of Stu's favorite beer and headed for his house. She'd only spoken to him briefly in the days since the camping trip, and she'd noted his hurt tone the evening before when she said she had an appointment and couldn't meet him for dinner.
Lori used her key to unlock Stu's door. She'd knocked, but he hadn't answered and his car sat in the driveway. He was likely taking a nap after a long day at the restaurant.
As she moved through the house, an unfamiliar sound met her ears, a steady clack-clack-clack. It reminded her of the washing machine when it had too many clothes in it, rocking unevenly against the wood floor, but the accompanying washing machine sounds weren't there. Lori was halfway to Stu's bedroom, where the sound seemed to arise, when she heard a woman's voice. She knew the voice: Nicki. The server who'd been flirting unashamedly with Stu for years.
"Yes… yes."
"I'm almost there…" Stu groaned.
Lori froze, her organs plunging lower in her abdomen.
"Stu… you're so hot. Don't stop…" Nicki shouted.
Lori slumped against the wall, listening to their voices growing louder, merging into moans, coupled with the frenzied clacking, which she now knew to be the brass bed-frame smacking the drywall.
The intensity of their cries gave way to murmurs and the lulling whispers that came after the climax.
Nauseated, Lori forced her feet to move, aware that at any moment the bedroom door would swing open and she'd have a visual to go with the story already playing across her mind.
As she breezed through Stu's foyer, she noticed the keys she'd missed earlier—the hot pink stiletto key chain hanging from the little keyring. She snatched the keys and slipped out the door. On her way to her own car, Lori stopped and dropped them through the grate into the sewer. She barely thought of what she was doing. Her mind had become a tornado of images and sounds coupled with the physical sensations: rolling stomach, dry mouth, shaking hands. She jammed her key in the ignition, started her car, and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The car lurched forward as the engine shrieked at her mistreatment.
Her mind blanked and, rather than driving home, she maneuvered her Prius onto the highway and drove north. When she arrived in Clare, she bypassed her mother's house and drove to the hospital. Numb, she walked inside, taking the elevator to the basement cafeteria. She put a hunk of chocolate cake on her tray and chose a dim booth in the back corner.
"Hey." Ben's voice broke her thoughts, and she looked up to find him in turquoise scrubs, looking at her curiously. "What are you doing here?"
Lori looked from him down to her plate. All that remained of her chocolate cake was a smear of dark frosting. "You said the chocolate cake was the best on Planet Earth."
"So you drove all the way here to try it? That's determination."
"Well, I walked in on my boyfriend of four years screwing his co-worker today, so it seemed like a good time to do it."
Ben's eyes widened, and an expression of pain flitted across his face. "I'm sorry. Do you want some company?"
"Sure." She sighed, leaning her head back against the seat.
Ben slid into the booth, setting his own tray on the table. He had a saran-wrapped tuna sandwich, a bag of chips and a bottle of water.
"No chocolate cake?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I've got another six hours to go. If I eat chocolate cake now, I'll be asleep in the janitor's closet in twenty minutes." He unwrapped his sandwich, but paused before taking a bite. "Are you okay?"
"I don't know yet. Maybe it hasn't fully hit me."
"Did you confront him?"
"No. I just wanted to get out of there."
"That's fair."
"It's weird. I was just talking about Stu with my mother. She was giving me this lecture about unchanging Stu, implying that I needed to take more risks. Obviously, Stu wasn't as safe and solid as she thought."
"Same isn't necessarily safe. I've met a lot of people who never change—stay in the same town, working the same job, dating the same girl—but on the side they're closet alcoholics or they have a gambling problem or they're at the strip club every Friday night."
"You know a lot of people like that?"
He chuckled. "Well, maybe more like a few, but I know some and the impression I've always had is that they're bored, but scared to do anything differently, so instead they find secret ways to get a high, a rush, which usually destroys everything they were trying to hold on to."
"Is that why you ran away from your home town and old life?" she asked.
"I didn't run away. I escaped."
"I thought I did too, but wherever I go, there I am."
"Somehow Stu banging another chick is your fault? Is that what this chocolate cake pity party is about?"
"He's been flirting with that girl for years. Literal years. I never confronted him, never walked away. He's probably been sleeping with her for years. And I've been the clueless idiot still calling myself his girlfriend."
"He's a prick. But you're not an idiot, Lori. Trusting someone doesn't make you an idiot."
"Well, I sure feel like an idiot."
"I recommend you transfer those feelings to him. He's the jerk here. He intentionally lied and cheated behind your back. People get duped by partners like that all the time. We have our lives. How can we expect to be constantly checking up on the person we're dating? We can't. That's how they get away with it. But now you know and that's a gift because you're not married to him and you don't have kids. You guys don't live together, right?"
Lori shook her head. "We talked about it a few times. He wanted to move in, but I always pushed back. Maybe if I had—"
"What? Then he wouldn't have cheated on you? Not a chance. Instead, you would have found him with this co-worker in your bed instead of his."
Lori cringed.
"I'm sorry to be harsh, but I'm not going to water it down. You need to be shocked right now, pissed. You need to have the courage to get out of that relationship."
"I've always suspected I wasn't relationship material. Maybe I'm finally getting proof."
"Relationships are tough, even the good ones. You just gotta lick your wounds and then get back up and get out there."
"Have you ever been married?"
“No. I’ve dated a few women seriously. My last relationship ended"—he scrunched his face as if counting back the months—"six, seven months ago."
"Why did it end?"
"She wanted more. Specifically to move in together. We'd been dating for a year. I wasn't ready, but she's in her mid-thirties and wants to seal the deal. We work together, so that's made for a few awkward encounters."
"She's a nurse?"
"No, a doctor actually. She's an anesthesiologist."
"Wow." Lori felt a little twist in her stomach. Jealousy, inadequacy, something. "Who breaks up with a doctor?"
"I didn't. She broke up with me because I wouldn't move into her house. We weren't destined for the long-term. I always knew that and probably shouldn't have gotten serious with her at all."
"How did you know you weren't?"
"Because I know myself. Taylor was great, but we never stayed up all night talking or spent lazy Sunday afternoons reading in bed. That stuff that usually at least happens in the beginning, you know, when the fireworks are flying and you can sit together in a cardboard box all day and still be having fun. It always felt like we were missing a beat together.”
Lori considered Stu. Had they ever had those days? All-night chats, lazy days in bed? Their lazy days in bed usually resulted from Stu having a hangover and holding her hostage beside him, so he didn't feel guilty abo
ut sleeping half the day.
"How about you? Anyone before Stu? Other relationships?"
Lori shook her head, slightly ashamed by the admission. "No. I went on dates once in a while, but… it always felt so forced. I hated dating. I hate dating."
“It’s not my favorite thing either,” Ben said. “How about this. While we’re playing detectives, we’ll give ourselves a break from the dating scene. We can pretend we’re too busy to care.”
Lori smiled. “Deal.”
14
Lori stayed the night at her mother’s house, then returned to her apartment the following morning.
"There you are,” Stu announced when she stepped from her car. “I've called you like fifty times. Why haven't you called me back?" Stu stood from the front stoop of Lori's house where he'd been sitting. He had a can of beer in his hand. He glanced at it and grinned. "Kenny, your downstairs neighbor, gave it to me. They're pre-gaming here before going out. We could join them, party on campus like old times."
Lori clutched her keys so tightly they dug into her palm. She loosened her grip and searched for her rehearsed speech. "I… No. I'm not interested in going out with the guys downstairs."
Stu shrugged and opened his arms as if to hug her.
Lori lurched back, caught her heel on a crack in the sidewalk and landed hard on her butt. Her keys flew from her hand and clattered on the pavement.
Stu rushed to her side. "Damn. You okay? Here." He offered his arm, but she shoved it away.
Lori closed her eyes, her tailbone throbbing, and climbed gingerly to her feet. "I saw you," she hissed.
When she opened her eyes, Stu's brow was wrinkled, but he seemed to be clueless about what she accused him of. "You saw me? When?"
Lori swallowed the lump in her throat and glared at him. "Yesterday. You were in bed with Nicki. Does that jog your memory?"
The color drained from his face and then he plastered on an incredulous look. "You're kidding, right? Nicki was most definitely not in my bed. I—"
Lori held up a hand, grinding her teeth and fighting the desire to lunge at him, tackle him into the yard and shove his face into the grass.
He seemed to sense her rage and took a step back, holding up both his hands. "Okay, okay. It happened. One time. I swear just one time, and her boyfriend broke up with her a couple weeks ago and she's been so depressed and I just—"
Lori didn't let him finish. She stalked past him, raking her fingernails across his hand when he tried to reach out and stop her.
He whipped his arm back, saying no more as she stormed onto the porch and to her door. She jammed the key in the lock and nearly snapped it off as she twisted it to the side. Forcing herself to calmly wiggle it, she got it unlocked, yanked open the door, and slammed it as hard as she could.
Lori sat on the bottom step that led to her apartment and stared in numb silence at the floor. She didn't cry or scream or feel ripped in half with his betrayal. She felt hollow.
After a while, she got up and walked out to her car. She drove to the party store she could have easily walked to and bought two boxes of Hostess cupcakes and a bag of pretzels, sensing the clerk's judgment. He knew she was going to binge-eat everything that sat on the counter. Lori avoided his gaze as she paid.
Back in her apartment, she turned on a movie and sat on her floor, unwrapping cupcake after cupcake and shoving them into her mouth, eating until she felt sick, tears streaming down her face as a comedy with Meg Ryan played on the screen.
She ate until she felt so full, she could barely breathe, the emptiness within her now bursting.
Lori had once read that eating disorders were a form of control. That people who suffered them were less obsessed with food than a need to have control in a chaotic world. When she thought of all the ways people evolved around her and she stayed the same, she saw that same grasping for control. If she changed nothing then nothing would change. Same apartment, same job, same boyfriend—same, same, same… Same was safe, comfortable, easy.
Discovering Stu in bed with Nicki had jolted her. The carefully built house of cards had tumbled, revealing that it was an illusion, never a house at all, merely an arrangement of carefully placed bits of cardboard waiting for a breath of air to send them flying.
Lori sat on the floor and folded her arms on the bay window seat, resting her forehead on her stacked hands. Tears slipped over her cheeks. It wasn't Stu she cried for, the loss of some great love. It was the illusion, the loss of that safe space, the sense that Stu wasn't the only house of cards in her life getting ready to fall.
Though Lori had never been to the Holy Faith Church in Mount Pleasant, it mirrored a dozen others she'd visited during her time recovering from binge eating disorder.
She opened the heavy wood door. The air was stale and smelled of mildew and overpowering perfume, the kind her dad's mother wore that had made Lori recoil as a child when the woman hugged her. Thick dark carpet that led into a tall square greeting space muted her footsteps. Before her, glass double doors led to the pews, but a cardboard sign posted on a metal stand read "Overeaters Anonymous This Way" with a large red arrow pointing toward a closed door on the left.
Lori sucked in a breath and grabbed the handle, pulling it back. The women, all seated at one of four long tables, turned to look at her. The room was bright, with long fluorescent lights shining off the freshly mopped linoleum floor. Along the back wall stood a kitchenette, but unlike most church events where the counter would be arranged with baked goods from the parishioners, the counter stood empty, gleaming bright white.
"Welcome," a woman said, smiling broadly and standing. "I'm Gale. I host the bi-weekly meetings here at the Holy Cross. Come in and have a seat."
Lori half-smiled shyly, and sat on the hard metal chair. "I'm Lori," she murmured.
"Welcome, Lori," the group chorused.
Lori took a seat and crossed her legs, squeezing her hands between her thighs.
“Amber is sharing her story,” Gale explained. “Please, go on, Amber.”
The girl glanced self-consciously at Lori and then spoke. "I just can't seem to stop." Her face was long and drawn, her eyes bloodshot, likely from the purging, and her voice rasped when she spoke. "I've been watching that Lifetime movie When Friendship Kills about the two best friends who both have eating disorders and then one of them dies. I watch it every day, sometimes twice a day, and I keep trying to make the lessons stick. This is bad for you, this will kill you if you keep it up, but I can't seem to stop eating and throwing up. I want to. I really do." Tears spilled over her cheeks, and a middle-aged woman to her right leaned over and clasped her hand.
"Thank you for sharing that with us, Amber," Gale said. "After everyone has told their story, if they'd like to share this evening, we will move into creating positive change. Bethany, would you like to share?"
The woman Gale had spoken to sighed and removed her glasses, folded them and unfolded them and put them back on her face, thick with powdery foundation.
"I haven't binged in a decade," Bethany told the group. "I celebrated ten years last month." The woman held up her hand where a large blue stone glittered on her finger. "I bought myself this ring as a reward and a reminder. It's my mother's birthstone. The last time I binged was when she died. I was so lost and so heartbroken. I ate for days. I didn't leave my house. I was sick, sick in my heart, and I tried to fill the void of her absence with food, but that just made me sicker. I went to a meeting and made the commitment. It wasn't easy. Every day when I thought of my mother, I wanted to eat. I wanted to use food to numb the pain. But I didn't and now it has been ten years and I know you can do it too, Amber. I know you can."
"Lori, would you like to share?" Gale asked.
Lori bit her cheek and stared at the faded linoleum. "I guess it started for me after… after this one terrible year. I was fourteen and one of my friends disappeared and then my parents got divorced and my dad moved away. I'd always struggled with food. It was my happy place, eating
, which meant I struggled with my weight, which sucks when you're fourteen. After that summer it got worse and worse. I'd eat entire boxes of Hostess cupcakes or make a full batch of cookie dough and just sit and eat the batter. Sometimes I'd throw up because I'd eaten so much, I felt sick to my stomach. I put on more and more weight.
“I was seventeen when I attended my first meeting. I had a sponsor named Sam who called me every day for six months to check in. It took a long time to stop. Half a box of cupcakes, then only three in one sitting, then two, then one, then none. I moved away to college, and that helped because I didn't buy the food—out of sight, out of mind. I started eating healthy and working out at the university gym and eventually I got better. I've been better for almost a decade. I've had slip-ups now and then, but never like those earlier years. Until today. Today, I ate and ate until I thought I'd throw up. I didn't because I've never been a purger. I saw it all happening again and I… I got online and found this meeting."
"Good for you, Lori. It takes courage to ask for help," Gale said, the other women nodding along with her.
The meeting went on, with more stories and then a round-robin of suggestions. Take a walk, call a friend or sponsor, chew gum, brush your teeth, remember your why. The why behind wanting to stop, needing to stop.
Lori slid behind the wheel of her car, opening her phone to two new email messages. One was from Ben and included links to the news articles he'd found about the girls. The second was from Dr. Chadwick's receptionist with an offer for two potential appointment times. Chadwick had had a cancellation the following day and could see her at noon.
Lori responded accepting the appointment and then sent a message to her mother saying she’d be spending the night again.
Lori texted Ben.
Lori: I'm staying in Clare tonight. Have time to talk?
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