Chapter One
NY’Airy Buckle
I almost didn’t come. I contemplated turning around and getting back into my car. It was Tuesday, and if I left now, I could beat traffic, make it to Taco Tuesday at La Bellas, and grab my usual table in the back. I hadn’t missed a Tuesday in a year. As soon as I walked into the Mexican restaurant, whoever was greeting that day would nod and say my name in broken English. I usually smiled back politely and went to the back to seat myself. I didn’t have to call a waiter over. In less than fifteen minutes, someone would be bringing my usual to the table: six shrimp tacos, three Birria tacos with sour cream, an order of queso dip and chips, and a frozen house margarita to wash it all down. After feeding my face and people-watching, they usually brought the check with a brown paper bag filled with six more shrimp tacos to go.
If I focused really hard, I could taste the succulent shrimp on my tongue. My stomach rumbled loudly in anticipation. My mind and body were both on board with the plan. I could do this another day. I turned around to walk back to my car, but as I looked down, I noticed the safety pin in my jeans holding my zipper up. These were my favorite pair of jeans, and they used to zip up easily on their own and stay zipped. They were the biggest pair I owned, and it was time to go jeans shopping again to replace them. I had stood in front of my closet for fortyminutes this morning, trying to force my thighs into them. I finally got them over my butt triumphantly, convincing myself that jumping up and down to get into jeans was sexy because Beyoncé said so.
Shit was cool until the time came for me to zip them.
I lay back on the bed, held my breath, and struggled to get the zipper up. When I finally got it up, I giggled like a schoolgirl. As soon as I stood up, the zipper slid right back down. After five attempts, I decided to place a safety pin in the center to keep the zipper up. It was the only way they would stay zipped, and I had no other options aside from leggings.
My body had officially stopped negotiating with me and was sick of my shit. I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at myself in the mirror in front of the bed in annoyance.
Larry had bought us the floor-to-ceiling mirror to put directly in front of our California King-sized bed because he had an obsession with looking through the mirror while we fucked. If it weren't so damn heavy, I would have moved it a long time ago. Now I was forced to look at it and be reminded of my ex-husband. The only action it caught was of me playing with my toy rose to the thought of Larry. Lerado Daly was my first love, the man who promised to love me through sickness and health and rich or poor; thin or bigger was where he drew the line. Our divorce had been finalized one month after he left. The pain still felt as fresh as it did the night, he came home and told me that he had fallen out of love with me.
I sat staring at my face. It was the only thing I loved about myself. I knew that I was beautiful. People told me all the time that I was pretty, but they always had to add in ‘for a big girl,’like I needed to be reminded about my weight. I stared at the silhouette of a woman I used to recognize but didn’t fully know anymore. I reminisced on my doctor visit from two weeks ago,when my physician looked at me solemnly and suggested that we needed to begin pre-diabetic medication; I wanted to tell her to go straight to hell. I lost my mother, grandmother, and one of my aunts to diabetes. To hear that I was digging my grave in the family plot to lay beside them made my stomach churn. I politely told her no thank you. That day after my visit, I stopped at a store and bought a gym bag. I came home and threw all my comfort food away, determined to get up and go to the gym the next day to start a membership.
That was two weeks ago, and the bag had never been used.
It sat in my corner every day, taunting myself and reminding myself of the promise that I made to myself. Losing my husband and being told that I had one foot in the grave, apparently, wasn’t enough to make me want to use the gym bag, but not being able to fit into my favorite pair of jeans was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I grabbed a pair of leggings, a T-shirt, a towel, and my Stanley cup, then placed everything in the bag. Instead of going to Taco Tuesday, I was taking my ass to the gym around the corner from my condo that I passed a million times. I was going to make the first step and get a membership started. I planned to pay for it for six months, to force myself to go. The only thing I hated more than wasting food was wasting money.
Now here I was, standing in front of the gym, about to run and grab tacos.
“Fuck those tacos, you know what they taste like,” I mentally scolded myself and turned back towards the door. I felt pressure in my chest as I walked forward. It was the same pressure I felt whenever I forced an extra two scoops of ice cream down my throat. It was the same pressure in my chest I felt when Larry told me he wanted a divorce a year and a halfago. If I was going to feel the pressure anyway, I might as well feel it when I was doing something right for myself.
I inhaled and exhaled as I slowed my pace but kept walking towards the door. I noticed a few people walking past me like I was in their way. A few shirtless men with bulging muscles made me fight the urge to roll my eyes in annoyance. They were already buff; how many more muscles were they trying to gain? The women with little shorts and tiny shirts were no better. I sucked my teeth loud enough that only I could hear. They were already perfect, so why were they here? The thought of being in a room surrounded by beautiful, skinny women made me feel physically sick to my stomach.
As a clerk for a private law firm, I worked from home and mostly communicated via email and phone. I only had to go into the office a day or two every week just to drop off files and update them. Going out to eat and shopping online made it easy to get little to no human contact daily. What if the bitches here were mean and high school-like? For the second time, I contemplated going back to my car. Maybe this just wasn’t the place for me.
“How are you going to judge the place before you even set foot inside of the door? They are no better than you, and you belong here. You are the one who is two seconds away from being put on diabetic medicine and holding up your zipper with a safety pin. This shit is personal, it’s between you and you,” I told myself. I couldn’t allow my own jealousy and insecurities to make me feel like I didn’t belong here. I continued to push myself forward.
On the outside of the door, the sign readBrick & CO Fitness.
It looked too clean for how nervous I felt. There were two sets of doors on opposite sides. I thought about my ex again, and my heart fluttered.
I met Larry during my freshman year at Georgia State University. I was eighteen, and green as broccoli. I had an amazing body that I kept covered because being raised by older women, taught me to make sure my butt wasn’t hanging out. We were both pre-law majors and shared a lot of the same classes. He would taunt me when I laughed too loudly in the library. I pretended it annoyed me, but I developed a small crush on him and made sure I did it every time after that to get his attention. The loud laugh, flat tummy, and long hair made him notice me and ask me on a date. The virgin pussy made him ask me to be his girlfriend. After graduation, he asked me to be his wife. He went on to Emory Law School, and instead of going to law school as well, I became a law clerk for the same company I work for now. We were together for four years before marriage, married for ten years after that, and divorced for a year and six months. I had given fourteen years of my life to someone who eventually looked at me like I was something he had outgrown. We didn’t have children because he was never “ready,” so imagine my surprise when he got married two months after he left me and knocked his new wife up less than three months later. He was more than ready; he just wasn’t ready with me.
I stalked my ex-husband’s new wife for six months after we were divorced. She was posted all over his social media page, in the spots my pictures had once been. I still didn’t know what annoyed me more, the pictures of her being gorgeous while pregnant or her snapback. Her body looked like she had never even given him a child. I used to have a body that I loved before the happy weight snuck up on me. Now the weight wasn’t happy, but it didn’t want to leave like my ex-husband did. Larry’s newwife reminded me of someone I used to know. She reminded me of the woman I used to be before I let love make me comfortable enough to lose myself.
I was determined to get back to that girl to show Larry that she was still here. All he had to do was love me and be patient with me instead of leaving. I still loved him, and if he came back after I lost the weight, I would forgive him. He was my soul mate.
I was thirty-four years old, and I told myself I still had time to pull myself out of this despair. Me telling myself I still had time, only made me put my journey off another day, then another month. The clock wouldn’t begin until I started. I stepped closer, and the doors slid open automatically. Inside, the gym was louder than I expected. Weights dropped, the sounds of hip hop music flowed through the speakers, and the electric sounds of the whirring of treadmills competed with the loud shouts of training, encouraging people to do “just one more rep.” The voices layered over each other like life didn’t pause for anyone in here. Everyone was running their own race. I stood at the entrance for a second too long, then walked over to the front desk.
The front desk had two computers, scanners sitting on the counters, and two women standing behind the counter. They were both two different types of pretty. The first one looked like one of those Instagram fitness influencers who snuck and got thousands of dollars’ worth of surgery but posted half-naked pictures in the gym. Her long weave, extra chocolate skin, clustered eyelashes, long red nails, and extra-tight ALO set made her look like she belonged on a pole. The other woman was petite with long legs. Her complexion was light enough to be mixed; she had her blonde hair tied up in a high ponytail, wore short French-tipped nails, and wore a Lululemon workout set that fither like a glove. She looked like a gym employee instead of a Magic City bottle girl.
“Hey! Welcome in,” the light-skinned petite one said as I looked down at her nametag, and it read Shelly.
“First time?” she asked. I nodded, and my voice felt stuck somewhere behind my ribs.
“Yes,” I replied timidly.
“You’re in the right place,” she said sweetly, already typing. “What’s your name?”
“NY’Airy.”
“That’s a beautiful name I’m sure people mispronounce it a lot,” she giggled, causing me to loosen my shoulders a little as I leaned on the counter.
“Girl, you have no idea. I have been called Nyasia, Nyla, and every other thing you can think of,” I chortled.
