The light flicked to green and she turned in the direction of the boulevard that would take her by the office. “Maybe I didn’t eat because I was unhappy. Not entirely, at least. I ate to be bigger than they were, so they’d stop grabbing me. When my waist was bigger than my bust, it worked. It worked like a charm.”

The Oreos, the donuts, the rice and gravy, she thought. I ate because college computer classes were mostly boys and they were all around me. I didn’t want college to be like high school. I wanted to be darned sure my work was what people knew about me. As soon as I went to work for that women’s clinic I stopped eating so much.

Oh, holy shit, how clichéd was that? She pulled up to the curb in front of the office building. The security guard glanced up from his desk and she sketched a wave as she got out of the car.

Once in the elevator she continued her monologue. “You know, Mom, I think I ate because I wanted the boys to stop thinking I was attractive. I was scared I was going to get raped. I mean, lots of people think lesbians are lesbians because they hate or can’t deal with men. Here I am overweight and obsessing about every little thing I do and eat because I let boys scare me into putting on twenty, thirty, fifty, seventy pounds? I thought I was smarter than that.”

Hell, her plan to get the boys off of her was smart. It had worked, hadn’t it? Jeez.

“Finally, Mom, I meet someone who actually finds me attractive for the me inside and she doesn’t scare me at all. In fact, because she likes the me inside, I’m trying to work on the me outside. I think it’s what I should do, even if she dumped me. Because I think she dumped me. Typical of me, I don’t even know if I’ve been dumped. Pathetic.”

She let herself into the Finders Keepers suite. She didn’t even need to go to her office. From Heather’s desk she took a set of ten bound pages and a sharp number two pencil. She was done being pathetic. She wondered how bad it would be to call that new client and ask for a nutritionist referral. Who cared? She’d do it first thing tomorrow.

Later, when she undressed for bed, Marissa eyed the flab and extra rolls that still hung from her body and muttered, “Boys. No way, no how, are boys going to win.”

She sat down at the table with a hot cup of peppermint tea. “If money was no object,” she read aloud, “which of the following three activities would you do?” Discarding attending Wimbledon and dining at a five-star Parisian restaurant, she carefully filled in the bubble for taking a flight on the space shuttle.

Chapter 11

“You’re kidding, right?” Linda peered up at the gigantic structure. “This is ‘the cabin?’”