Free Glitter on the Web by Ginger Voight

that? Another person entirely?”
    He leaned forward. “If you’re lucky.”
    I snatched my hand back, which only amused him further. I slid the napkin across my lap and dove into my tiny steak with relish. And of course he had a comment about that, too.
    “It’s refreshing to be on a date with a woman who enjoys food.”
    I spared him another side-eye glare. “It helps when you date actual women, not stick figures.”
    He laughed. “You’re so angry with me for being a sizeist pig, yet it never occurred to you that you might have your own biases.”
    I sat back up and gaped at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
    He shrugged. “You tell me. You say the songs I sing are lies just because I don’t date fat chicks, right? Aren’t you being a little hypocritical to assume just because the girls I date are thin that I’m only dating them for that reason? You don’t know who they are. And really, you don’t know who I am, either.”
    I blew up my cheeks and mooed at him for effect, reminding him of that hateful video that Rhonda posted.
    “Bad example,” he conceded with a nod.
    “Face it, Eli,” I said. “You could never fall for someone like… well, like Jordi for instance.”
    “True,” he agreed. “But maybe that has nothing to do really with her size. Maybe I just feel we wouldn’t have anything in common. I like to be active. She’s clearly an indoor kind of girl.”
    “So you’re saying a fat chick can’t be active,” I surmised.
    “No one who has ever been able to keep up with me has been fat. I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” he concluded.
    My pot was boiling by the second, and the lid was about to come off. “Fine. I’ll go shopping with you on Friday. But clear Saturday for me.”
    He leaned across the table with that provocative smirk of his. “You gonna teach me some things, Carly?”
    I speared a piece of red meat with my fork, popped it in my mouth and chewed, making him wait for my response until I was done. “One year with me, honey, and you’ll learn more about fat chicks than you ever thought possible.”
    His blue eyes sparkled, endlessly entertained. “It’s a date, then.”
    The days alternately sped up to and stalled leading up to our double dates at the end of the week. Of course I was nervous about what kind of blow-up doll he had in his twisted little mind to make me up to be. I was likewise nervous to introduce him to my friends, nay my California family, for Saturday’s festivities. It didn’t help that all his lovey dovey tweets were all dedicated to the girl who wouldn’t unlock her social media accounts. I had disabled Facebook entirely, making Twitter and Instagram private. He, on the other hand, was milking this new “relationship” for all it was worth. He had even managed to sneak in a selfie in the car, where he introduced me. “This is Carly. She hid her face. She’s shy.”
    Of all the things I had ever been called in my life, shy had never been one of them.
    But the marketing ploy was working so far. He had crafted this asinine story that I was intimidated by all the attention from dating a superstar, since I was the “girl next door,” which is why it took him seven long months to get me to go out with him. This also explained my dour demeanor whenever PING got anywhere close to me. At this point, I was pretty sure they were having me tailed like the CIA. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without some paparazzo there to snap a photo.
    Even Ling, my sweet, grandfatherly Ling, had been snapped waving his broom at the moochers who dared loiter near the entrance to his restaurant.
    It was clear I was going to have to move sooner than later, but I sure as hell didn’t want to move in with Eli. I hunted for houses in my spare time, thinking that I could use my unexpected windfall to secure a permanent residence in Los Angeles. I made the disheartening discovery that a million dollars just didn’t go as far as it used to. Factoring in