Free The Cinderella Pact by Sarah Strohmeyer Page B

For one thing, he’s incredibly tall and blocklike in a Herman Munster way. I’m a sucker for really tall, blocklike Herman Munster guys.
    For another, he loves Nancy—still. Exotic Latina girlfriend or no.
    Ron and Nancy fell in love at Seton Hall in South Orange where she was a nursing student and he was a center on the school’s basketball team. The first time I met him was when Nancy brought him home to meet her family and friends over Thanksgiving vacation when we were sophomores. I remember being struck by how softspoken Ron was, how he’d bend down to catch Nancy’s every word, his eyes twinkling merrily as she rested her head against his upper arm.
    Back then Nancy was a bubbly butterball with dimples in her cheeks, wavy brown hair, and the kind of chest that made Victoria’s Secret stuff look like training bras. Boys were nuts for her, though there were signs even then—her full face, her lust for cheeseburgers and french fries—that Nancy teetered on the precipice of obesity. No one seemed to care. She was fun and light and “bursting with love,” as she gushed to me shortly before saying her wedding vows, “for my Big Ron.”
    What changed only Nancy and Ron know, but I personally think it had more to do with Nancy than Ron. Their early marriage was textbook perfect. She worked at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia to put Ron through Temple Law, spending her free hours helping him study. Then she discovered, much to Ron’s delight, her own quick mind for case law and legal reasoning. When he passed the bar, she enrolled in Temple and trumped Ron’s own academic performance, editing the Law Review and graduating magna cum laude.
    Some men might have found her successes castrating, but not Ron. He threw a surprise party when she passed the New Jersey bar, was thrilled by her clerkship in Trenton. He adjusted his work schedule to be home for her and took cooking classes. He did the food shopping and paid the bills. All of which Nancy took for granted.
    The constant griping about Ron started shortly after she became an associate at Barlow, Cafferty and Kline—New Jersey’s top criminal defense firm in Trenton. Suddenly, according to Nancy, Ron wasn’t making enough money in the Philadelphia public defender’s office. He was too laid back. Not ambitious enough. Plus, he was hinting about starting a family, an idea that she proclaimed “completely unrealistic.”
    It was as though her Big Ron had started to shrink.
    While she had started to explode.
    Each year she added an extra layer of fat the way a bear prepares for hibernation. Her cute dimples disappeared and her once pinup, Playboy-bunny chest was swallowed by the folds of fat around her middle. Her blood pressure rose and her breathing became more labored. The day Ron suggested she take an exercise class, she tossed a copy of the New Jersey Statutes Annotated Volume 23 at his head.
    Two months later, Nancy got a phone call from American Express verifying that a hotel in Cozumel was not fraud. Ron had told her he was off to the Poconos for a fishing vacation at a family cabin. He didn’t mention that he’d left a few days early to join Gina, his twenty-five-year-old Guatemalan law clerk, on a Mexican beach.
    His bags were packed and on the doorstep when he got home. Nancy refused to listen to one word of explanation.
    That was about a year ago, and here we are in the Princeton Arms and I, for one, am frustrated that a couple meant to be together for eternity is splitting up for no good reason.
    â€œHe wants to get remarried, you know. That’s why he’s been so nice to me lately. Don’t cross your legs, Deb, remember? Blood clots.”
    Deb uncrosses her legs. I am impressed that Nancy picked this up from Suze’s lecture.
    â€œHe’s getting married? To Gina?” I ask.
    Nancy finishes off her champagne and helps herself to a refill. “Who else?