Read Bigger (The Nicky Beets series) for Free Online

slowly
but surely. It wasn’t exactly a disaster, but certainly a bit alarming. I
assured myself and Chuck – who’d never said one word about my weight
– that with college finished and done with, I’d have the opportunity to
eat right and exercise, and would be back in my size eights in no time.
    I’m not sure who I was trying to fool. I’d jumped out of the frying pan
and into the proverbial boring desk job.
    I was equal parts disinterested and anxious when it came to choosing a
career. I’d fallen back on a liberal arts degree out of sheer desperation. My
wide range of interests but low level of discernible talent in any given area
meant I’d take whatever job I could get my hands on until something better came
along – or so I told myself. That meant I spent each day slogging through
a job I was very close to hating, while growing more troubled about the
likelihood of ever finding a job I could both tolerate and excel at.
    Meanwhile, Chuck had already graduated and started working for a small
local newspaper. I knew he was a talented reporter with the opportunity to move
out of town to work for better publications, but that he’d decided to stay in
Berkeley to be with me. He worked the odd and demanding hours of a rookie
newspaperman and often came home late at night with red, sleep-deprived eyes
and looking a bit pale. He was eating on-the-go a lot and his midsection had
puffed out a bit. His own softer body reassured me – I wasn’t the only
person in our relationship who’d probably had a few too many beers or
hamburgers.
    Chuck and I never discussed the possibility of him finding a better job
somewhere else, which would almost certainly mean moving out of the state.
Newspapers were in rapid decline, and massive layoffs were leaving huge numbers
of well-qualified reporters jobless. Those who were not completely
disillusioned by this development had to follow the money. The rest, like
Chuck, were toughing it out in unstable markets where their jobs were on the
line every day. A third of the writing staff at his newspaper had already been
slashed, and the threat of more cuts was imminent.
    It’s not that I wasn’t willing to move with Chuck if he found a job
elsewhere; I loved him dearly and knew he felt the same – but we seemed
to have an unspoken agreement not to discuss this issue. Me moving away with
him would have meant something pretty serious, and he’d never even hinted at
being ready for that serious of a commitment. You don’t ask your girlfriend to
move across the country with you unless you feel quite strongly that she is the
one you will probably end up spending the rest of your life with. The years
kept ticking by, and all signs seemed to point to an eventual marriage. Even
so, I didn’t want to leave the comfort of the Bay area– the thought of
even trying frightened the bejeezus out of me.
    So, we never talked about it. I remained completely directionless, and
quietly stayed in my position as a legal secretary in San Francisco. It had
been exciting, at first; working in a high-rise in the bustling city, but the
glamour soon wore off as the mundaneness of the job wore on me and the feeling
of not living up to my potential haunted me day in and day out.
    Chuck and I had moved in together shortly after I graduated. We rented a
small townhouse in Berkeley, which was close enough to both of our jobs to be
convenient. Also convenient – for Chuck anyway – was the fact that
the house had a built-in neat freak. Chuck left stuff strewn around the house
on a daily basis; water glasses on the coffee table, dirty socks on the living
room floor, dirty boxer shorts on the bathroom floor. At first, I succumbed to
my compulsion to put everything in its right place, which led to untold hours
spent folding laundry and putting it away; loading and unloading the
dishwasher; and generally straightening up the mess my new male roommate seemed
to constantly leave in his wake. For his part, Chuck was