Free Through Thick and Thin by Alison Pace Page A

onesie, comforted by the softness of her daughter’s little body underneath.
    She’s aware of the light behind her flooding into the barely lit basement and she wonders if Aubrey is aware of it, too, if he’s aware of anything. The light from his computer screen glows out at him, and she can’t see what’s on it. She wonders if it matters whether it’s Internet poker, an Internet pen pal, or even Internet porn, if she really cares what the reason is anymore.
    Aubrey’s leaning back in his chair and even though he’s looking right at the screen, he doesn’t seem to really care about what’s on it either. Maybe it’s gained a lot of weight, too. She’d thought for a while that was it, that it was because she had gained so much weight, that that’s when he lost interest in her, when he disengaged. But then, their friends aren’t fat, and even the friends that are just his, not theirs, they’re not fat. And his job isn’t fat, or the world, or Ivy.
    If he were having an affair, she thinks he’d be nicer. She thinks he’d be guiltier, and she thinks that would make him charming and salesmany again, which are things she once liked about him, even though now she can’t imagine why. She imagines if he were having an affair he’d try to cover up for it by doing nice things for her. He’d buy her little presents, he’d send her roses. She smiles in spite of everything, in spite of the flowers he would send her if he were cheating on her, at the memory of how much she always loved it when he used to send her roses, at how happy she used to be.
    She turns and shuts the door. As she walks away from it, she does know she could confront him. She could say so many things, she could demand so many answers. She could brace herself for when he looked up at her, so much like Rob Lowe in About Last Night , explaining to Demi Moore, “I don’t love you anymore.” And as much as she knows she could, she isn’t sure she can. For as long as she can remember, when everyone else would describe her as so sweet, so nice, an amazing friend, a wonderful person, a fantastic athlete, a lovely woman, she had always smiled. But she’d also wondered why no one ever described her as strong. Because that was always what she’d seen herself as, was always the first thing she thought of when she thought of herself. She wonders sometimes if it was never true. But she doesn’t think that’s it, she thinks it’s more that now, everything has changed.

seven
    the strangest things seem suddenly routine
    Understanding the implications of the Zone can completely change your life. All you have to do is read this book, follow the simple dietary guidelines it recommends, and put them to work for you in your own life.
     
     
    Meredith stares at the words on the page, stares longer until her vision blurs. The Zone might be, for her, kind of like New Jersey. She looks away from the page. She’d like to think it could be possible that dieting—successful dieting, whatever that might be—might be best actually done , rather than read about. And yet with the Zone, she wonders if she’s really ready, if in her early stages of remedial reading maybe she hasn’t quite learned enough. A mystery, she thinks, wrapped inside of a riddle. (She is reminded of the way they wrap dates in bacon at Pipa, on the lower level of ABC Carpet & Home; she’s always been a tremendous fan.)
    But she has determined—she thinks—to face this challenge. She has resolved to embrace the very team-spirited and inherently athletic focus Stephanie has spelled out for them. It shouldn’t be that hard. Even though she’s never been the “sporty one” (or the nice one, or the pretty one, which may or may not have simply meant the thin one) she’d like to think she has at times taken an athlete’s approach to things. Anyone who works as hard as she does has an athlete somewhere inside. Anyone who is willing to have upwards of twelve meals a week in restaurants, anyone