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The memory made Lily’s heart ache. Not for the loss of the man she’d once thought she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, but because she’d truly believed he’d loved her. Just the way she was.
She’d been traumatized.
It had taken her months to put everything into perspective. She’d never be a small woman. She loved to cook. Of course she wanted to be healthy, but she wasn’t going to weigh every ounce of food she put in her mouth and she wasn’t going to deny herself the foods she loved to cook and eat.
The truth of the matter was, Lily was comfortable in her own skin. Some women might’ve gone on a starvation diet to sculpt themselves into a so-called better version of themselves, but not Lily.
It took a while for her pride to mend, but soon she realized that Josh’s problem with her size was just a cover for a problem that ran much deeper in him. And the problem, she decided, wasn’t hers. It was his.
From that day forward, she decided she wasn’t going to starve herself or otherwise try to change herself to fit his image of the perfect woman. She was simply going to live.
Most of all, she wasn’t going to let him rob her of her belief that even at a size twelve, she was perfectly deserving of marriage and a family. Because if she ever wanted that happiness, that sense of belonging, she’d have to find it in her own family. Someday when she met the right man she would have that. Until then, she would keep doing the best she could.
“What’s the matter?” Sydney asked as she came back into the room. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
In many ways Lily had. It was the ghost of her old relationship come back to haunt her. Just when she thought she’d exorcised it once and for all.
It wasn’t that she wanted him back; that ship had sailed long ago. But seeing him in the paper with a woman who was everything he’d wanted her to be cut a little bit. It shouldn’t, but it did.
“I wish I had brought my Spanx,” Lily said as she handed the paper to Sydney, who glanced at her askance as she accepted it.
“Engagement announcements,” Lily said. “Second picture in the top row.”
Sydney’s eyes grew wide when she obviously realized what she was looking at. “Oh! Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”
“He finally found his perfect woman.”
“Well, I’m sorry for her,” Sydney said, in a show of solidarity that Lily simultaneously loved and hated.
Lily wasn’t sorry. Or at least if she told herself that enough, she might believe it.
If the truth be told, perhaps she was sorry for herself. Sorry that everything she’d thought was real with Josh had been nothing but a mirage. How could she be with someone for that long and not see the handwriting on the wall?
They’d been together since they were teenagers and had been broken up nineteen months. Now the guy she thought was the love of her life would be married to someone else by the spring. That fast.
Badda-boom, badda-bing.
Sydney was still glowering at the paper when Lily said, “He’s getting everything he ever wanted. She seems to come from a good family. She’s what? A size two?”
Sydney snorted. “On a bloated day.”
“I was born bigger than a size two,” Lily said. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Oh, well, I wish them nothing but the best.”
“She’s a sorority girl,” Sydney read. “Says so right here. Tri Delta. What in the world does she want with a guy like Josh?”
“He always was ambitious,” Lily said. “I guess we can’t fault him for that.”
“But we don’t have to forgive him, either.”
Lily wasn’t sure if Sydney’s venom stemmed from Josh’s breaking Lily’s heart or because he’d put Sydney in the hot seat. Her job had been in jeopardy when he’d backed out of the wedding. Sydney had pushed so hard for Lily to win the Celebration’s Bride contest. Josh’s decision to break the engagement had thrown the show’s production into a real bind. Then, when one of the producers had wanted to use the footage of Josh breaking up with Lily in place of the wedding footage, Sydney had gone to bat to save Lily’s dignity.
