Heavy Issues (14 page)

“Why are you taking a break?”

She shrugged, not wanting to get into that. “My personal life got complicated, and I thought a change of scenery would be good.”

“So things got hard and you decided to split.”

She frowned at his harsh tone, but then Paige came to take their order and she got sidetracked.

Christy hadn’t even glanced at the menu. She didn’t have to. Perusing a list of foods she couldn’t eat was entering into conversation with her obsession, and she’d learned long ago she couldn’t negotiate with that crazy voice inside her head. She just had to plain ignore it or risk succumbing to it.

“Do you know what you want?” Cole asked. “You haven’t checked the menu yet.”

“No need. The house salad and whatever meat dish you recommend would be fine.”

“I wouldn’t know what to recommend. Nils is a helluva chef, and I have yet to try something of his that I didn’t like. What do you think if we leave it to him to choose for us?”

Ah, Christy thought, how nice would it be to live in that careless world of his.

“Sure,” she answered, not that convinced, and turned to Paige. “I’m gluten intolerant though, so please no wheat in my food. No pastas, bread, pizza, or sauces with wheat. Or any other flour for that matter. I don’t digest them properly.”

Paige cleared her throat. “That may reduce the options a little.”

“I bet it will.” She smiled as the girl turned to head to the kitchen.

Cole looked at her with an oh-shit-I-brought-my-gluten-intolerant-date-to-an-Italian-restaurant horrified look. “You’re gluten intolerant?”

She was ready for her standard answer.
Yes, I am. Since birth.

It didn’t come. Her mouth blurted out the truth. “Nope.”

A stare of utter confusion met her. “What?”

“Sugar is my absolute favorite binge food. Flour is the second best.”

She could see the second it dawned on him. He looked at her, amused. “You lied?”

You bet she did, shamelessly, and had done for five years now. “I’m not thrilled about it, but what I told you the other day, about my food issues, isn’t something I usually tell people. In fact, I go to great lengths to avoid talking about it. It’s not only very embarrassing to me, but most people don’t understand, let alone take it seriously. My head is already crazy enough as it is, and I don’t need them pushing food into my face. If I were an alcoholic, I’d have to say only once that I can’t drink and they’d stop offering right away, but with food? No such luck. They keep trying to talk me into eating whatever it is that they want me to eat. ‘Just a bit, just this once. I bought it especially for you. It won’t do you any harm. I spent hours cooking it for you. Just today. Tomorrow you can start over.’ Guilt-tripping me into eating, as if I need any encouragement whatsoever. It’s so infuriating.” Although over the years she’d discovered that all that pushing had nothing to do with her and all to do with them. They showed love and appreciation through food, and when she refused it, she was refusing their love and they got offended. They were compulsive feeders, hooked on feeding her as much as she was hooked on food. Grandma was one of those, the hysterical, emotionally unavailable anorexic who spent all her life feeding others while she starved to death, literally unable to utter an “I love you.”

“Those are no-win situations,” she continued. “If I give in and eat, I feel like shit afterward, and many times it leads to a binge and huge cravings. If I refuse to eat, people get offended. And just the dilemma destabilizes me. Now I say I’m gluten intolerant—which is a serious medical condition—and, as the most commonly used flour is wheat, voilà, problem solved. Because most sweet foods contain wheat, I’m safe from them too. People stop bugging me, and I don’t get into uncomfortable situations trying to explain to them that just one bite is not an option.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Why isn’t one bite an option?”

Because going for that first bite was like throwing herself from the twenty-ninth floor expecting to stop at the twenty-eighth.

“Because it triggers me into eating more. You see, food talks to me. In tongues actually. It calls me by my name and surname from the fridge, across the street from the restaurant, from the supermarket shelves. Not all the foods, just specific ones. I can’t say ‘enough’ to them; I can only say ‘no.’ Sometimes after the first bite, I lose control right away. Other times it happens more slowly, but the end result is the same: the obsession creeps in, one morsel of certain foods becomes two, then four, then forty, and before I realize it, I’m eating nonstop and checking out of my life.”

Cole studied her in silence. “So the Never Enough inscription on your wrist…”

She nodded. Smart man; he’d figured it out. “It’s there so I don’t forget that there aren’t enough goodies in the world to ever satisfy me.” Mainly because it wasn’t even a matter of physical hunger. She’d gotten the tattoo around three years ago, when she’d reached her goal weight. She’d yo-yoed all her life, being at her goal weight several times—for as long as five seconds—before going back to gain all that she’d lost and more. This time was going to be different. This time she had tools to fight this thing—this monster. Keeping her problem always present in her mind was one. It was on her inner right wrist so every time she brought her hand to her mouth to eat something, she saw it. She was downright scared of what would happen to her if she ever forgot. That was probably why she kept her old pants in her closet too. And notes on her fridge. “The ink reminds me of how bad things were for me, of how bad they could get.”

He ran his hand through his hair, his expression troubled. “This is more complicated than I imagined. I thought just sweets were the problem. I’m sorry I brought you to an Italian restaurant. I didn’t think…”

“Don’t sweat it. Normal people don’t think much about food.” For them a doughnut was made of dough, when in her world the damn thing was made of love and comfort and happiness. Go figure that one. “You’re new at this food stuff. I forgive you…this time.”

“We can leave if you want,” he offered.

“No, no need. You don’t take anything from my plate, and you’ll be safe. And don’t offer for me to try your pasta or put it under my nose. In both instances I may stab you with my fork.”

He smirked.

She raised her left eyebrow. “You think I’m joking?”

“Aren’t you?”

She smiled. “Yes, I am.” Or so she fervently hoped. “For the most part I’m okay with food. I don’t go around knocking out little Girl Scouts and stealing their cookies. I’ve accepted there are things I can’t eat, and people close to me have accepted there are things I won’t eat.” She couldn’t eat ice cream. Or pizza. Or M&Ms. Big frigging deal. She’d eaten enough of that for two lifetimes. She’d exhausted her God-given quota long ago.

“Explain to me something, though. If for you sweets are…”

“Trigger foods,” she helped him.

“Yeah, if sweets are trigger foods, how did you manage to live with Annie for several months? The woman runs a candy shop, reeks of candy apples and marshmallow.”

Tell her about it. “It was difficult. She smelled so much like sweets it was all I could do not to jump on her and lick her.”

Cole barked out a laugh. “I can’t decide whether the image of you licking a woman horrifies me or turns me on.”

“Better horrify you, mister,” she warned him. “I’m not into that.”

“Good. I’d rather have you licking me.”

She blushed and didn’t know what to say.

“So,” he said, studying her with those deep green eyes of his that went through her like laser beams, “you don’t tell people all this stuff about food.”

“Can you blame me? ‘Hello, my name is Christy, and I can’t be trusted around a croissant.’ Great opening line.”

“You really take this with humor.”

“I have to.” She’d cried enough over it. About how horribly unjust it was that she couldn’t eat like the rest of her friends, how shameful it was that a simple candy bar could make her forget all her best-laid plans.

“If you don’t tell most people, why did you tell me?”

Good question. She’d not only told him after literally two days of knowing him, but her mouth kept blurting embarrassing details about the whole thing. It had taken her months to tell Todd. She’d been dating the man, considering marrying him. It just made sense to her to tread carefully about her…shortcomings. Better to present the good side first, so that he wouldn’t turn tail and run in the other direction when he found out how bat crazy she was. With Cole it had been the other way around.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably because you seemed so hell-bent on getting me into your bed. I think deep down I was hoping to scare you into bailing.”

“You’ll need to do a lot better than that to scare me away. I told you, we Bowen brothers are persistent. And talking about persistence,” he said, pulling something from his pocket and leaving it on the table. Her engagement ring. He pushed it at her. “You left it in the diner that day. I really don’t want to keep it. It’s yours.”

“But I don’t want it. It has such bad karma.”

“If you want to give it to Mrs. Patty for it to be donated to the Salvation Army, you’ll have to take it down there by yourself.”

A beauty she recognized as Tate’s sister from the pictures approached them. Her eyes sparkled. “Wow, nice rock. Do we need to start preparing a double wedding?”

“Oh, no no.” Christy hurried to clear up the misunderstanding. “Old ring. Ex-fiancé. Long, boring story. Cole just keeps returning the ring to me every time I try to get rid of it.”

She observed her through big black eyes. “You’re Christy, right?”

“You know me?”

“Sure I do. I’m Elle, Tate’s sister. Holly and I are organizing my sister’s bachelorette party. As a matter of fact, I was the one that told them about the Studs®us.com yearly gala when I found them surfing the net, hunting for an escort.”

Christy blushed. Jesus Christ, wasn’t she ever going to live that one down?

Cole threw Elle a frown. “How come I’m not surprised that was your idea?”

A mischievous smile spread over her face. “By the way, how are the preparations for James’s party coming along?”

“Max’s got everything under control.” He turned to Christy. “I’m just supervising and making sure he doesn’t go overboard and end up stowing away a drunk-to-his-eyeballs groom in a cargo ship to Australia.”

Elle chuckled. “Max is known for getting carried away.”

A snort escaped him. “Look who’s talking. Like you’re famous for stable, grown-up behavior.”

She blew him a kiss. “I love you too, bro.”

“And so you know, if you get strippers for Tate, James is going to flip.”

A “duh” look came from the black-eyed beauty. “Of course I won’t get male strippers for her. The male strippers and the lap dances are for us.” She laughed, and Cole frowned at her. “Now seriously, we’ll be nice girls. We’ll just go out to party, drink, and get rowdy, and then we’ll come back here before calling it a night.” Elle turned to Christy. “You’re coming, right? We’re counting on you.”

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“You have to come. Holly and Annie and Sophie are coming too. They actually told me to sign you up.”

She shook her head. “No, I—”

“Tate will want to see you there. We don’t have so many people from Alden coming to the party. Tate isn’t that popular there—something about snatching one of the golden boys, I hear. You have to come.”

“Well…”

“Great,” she said and then turned to Cole and winked. “And don’t worry; we’ll keep her away from the strippers too.”

Cole growled at her, but she left with a bright smile.

“Nice future in-laws,” Christy noted. “As pushy as you are, you’ll fit right in.”

Before she could say anything else, a boy in his early twenties came from the kitchen.

“Hey, Cole, my man. Who’s the pretty lady?” Then he saw the ring. “Oh. My. God.”

Cole rolled his eyes. “Christy, meet Tim, our jack-of-all-trades. He works for Tate as a chef’s assistant and for James installing alarm systems. Tim, Christy is our new librarian. And this is not what it seems.”

Tim didn’t believe him. “Nothing to be ashamed of, big man. Unless she’s turning you down of course.”

“She is not turning me down because I’m not proposing,” Cole explained.

“Whatever you say,” he said in a placating tone. “My lips are sealed.”

“What do you mean no wheat?” a short man with a mustache asked Paige irately as they approached Christy and Cole's table. “Cole, Paige here says you have something against wh—” Then he saw the ring.

The man shrieked.

Christy shook her head. Cole too.

“Nils, this isn’t—”

“What’s wrong with wheat?” Tim interrupted, frowning.

“So romantic!” Nils squeaked.

“Plenty if you’re gluten intolerant,” Paige said to Tim, and after looking at the ring, she turned to Cole. “Congratulations.”

“He’s gluten intolerant?” Tim asked Paige.

The mustached man waved to Tate. “Tate, Cole is proposing! We need champagne!”

“I’m not,” Cole insisted.

“Cole is what?” Tate asked from afar.

Christy shook her head again and covered the ring with her hand, red as a fire alarm.

“She is.” Paige signaled toward Christy.

“She’s proposing?” Tim asked, surprised.

“No,
she
is gluten intolerant, not him. I don’t know who’s proposing.”

“No one is proposing,” Cole tried to explain, but they weren't paying attention.

“I think he’s ashamed,” Tim said. “She probably turned him down.”

“You’re turning him down?” Nils asked. “Is it because of the wheat?”

He should have known better than to give the ring back to Christy in Rosita’s. Those people didn’t know how to mind their own business. What a frigging show. By the time he’d gotten the mess sorted out, the table next to them had toasted them. He really didn’t know how to deal with loud, larger-than-life people like Nils. Or with pushy female relatives. He loved Tate and Elle, but they meddled so much. Out of concern, sure, but still. Kind of like Aunt Maggie, now that he thought about it.