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emergencies, and having sex with the lights off in case someone walked in. This last habit had nothing
to do with shame about the weight I’d gained in college or with the time my mother called me zaftig,
a word I had to look up in private.
“You called me fat?” I screamed to her.
She protested dramatically. “No, honey! It means curvaceous. Why, it’s a lovely thing to be.”
Don’t get me wrong, Luke constantly told me how beautiful I was, how desirable, and I believed
him. I wasn’t afraid of my curves. I wasn’t prim. I was adventurous. I liked sex. I just preferred it on
my terms, my way, in flattering positions, in the dark, and showering directly after.
After graduation, Luke, Charlotte and I shared the second-floor, two-bedroom apartment on Philip
near Coliseum, which is where I still live, one of those old clapboard Victorians painted yellow with
white trim. The apartment had original windows and faced the street corner. Luke set up his desk and
began to write what he called his “Southern Opus.” Our bedroom was drafty in the winter, but I didn’t
mind because Luke kept me warm most nights and paid his share of the rent when he could hold down
a part-time job. I hired him for a brief stint in the store, but I blanched when he tried to make
suggestions to improve the business, or moved stock around on the floor so it would sell faster. “Be
careful,” my mother warned. “Men don’t like criticism or self-sufficiency in women. They need to
feel needed.” Dad disagreed. “Men just want to be wanted,” he said.
And the way Charlotte teased Luke or threw an arm around him, I always assumed was sisterly and
benign. Luke was a nerdy writer, insular like me. Charlotte just wasn’t his type. He once called her
flaky, whereas I was solid, layered. Charlotte was “Rocky Road” to my “Vanilla,” not an insult he
explained, since I was his favorite flavor.
But tastes change. Working in fashion, I ought to have known that.
It was my day off, so I wasn’t supposed to walk in on them in the office at the back of the store,
Charlotte atop a pile of sturdy suitcases we were refurbishing, her white skinny thighs straddling
Luke, his stupid black jeans bunched at his dumb ankles, his ass clenched, mid-thrust.
“My goodness, I am so sorry,” I mumbled, backing up and closing the door behind me. You know
your Southern upbringing has grown twisted when your first instinct is to be polite when intruding
upon your boyfriend fucking your best friend.
My back resting against the door jamb of a change room, I kept my hand over my mouth for the time
it took for them to dress and assemble in front of me in a state of disarray and shame.
Luke, the writer, offered a bunch of words.
I’m so sorry …
We didn’t mean to …
It just kinda happened …
It wasn’t planned …
We tried to end it, but …
These words assembled themselves into the only answers that were pertinent. One: This had been
going on for a while. Two: They were in love.
They moved out that night.
I bought Charlotte out of the business for enough money to move to New York, where Luke wanted
to relocate before his second novel was published. Six months later, Big Red came out to more great
fanfare. A “morbidly honest tale about the corrosive effects of the South on an overweight, sensitive
young woman trying to break from the past.” When I read his description of his protagonist, Sandrine,
a “tense, controlling redhead” with a “sylph” of a sister and a “ballsy” best friend, I was in a state of
shock for days, weeks, months … years. When it hit the bestseller lists, young girls ducked into the