Read Online Bigger (The Nicky Beets series) by Erin Mayes - Free Book Online Page A

was chronically single and lived with only her cat, Jujube.
As best I could tell, her fridge contained only Type-O diet-friendly foods and
almost every evening she ate a small, lean piece of meat and a sweet potato,
plain. Sometimes she sucked on a single, small piece of dark chocolate, and
claimed to be cured of her chocolate craving for the day. She was a creature I
did not understand.
    Roxanne seemed to have little interest in settling down. She dated
frequently and was often entertaining me with news of her latest rendezvous.
But normally within about five dates, her new relationships fizzled. She would
lose interest when she realized the man had a paunch he’d been hiding or that
he didn’t floss his teeth regularly or that he had a dog – she hated
dogs.
    I accused her of being petty in her dating pursuits, comparing her with
Jerry Seinfeld’s character on Seinfeld – he’d once dumped a woman because she smelled like soup. But the truth
was a large part of me envied her.
    Roxanne led the kind of life I envisioned was possible for myself, if I
could only take more than a passing interest in my mental and physical well-being.
Rox slept in on weekends, curled up with Jujube, and rolled out of bed when she
was ready to. She’d pull on a track-suit and Gucci sunglasses, sweep her hair
into a ponytail and walk to a nearby coffee shop from her San Francisco
apartment. She often spent weekends enjoying facials, manicures and pedicures
before joining her single girlfriends for tequila shots and flirtation with the
abundant men frequenting bars in the city.
    I could have done those things, too, sans the flirtation, obviously. The
main personality flaw preventing me from doing so was complacency; things were
good enough the way they were. Chuck and I went about our routines every day,
and life was tolerable enough, especially when there was a nice bottle of red
wine waiting at the end of the day. Breaking that routine would require effort,
and I’d already proven to myself that putting forth any amount of effort to
improve my quality of life was not my strong suit.
    And then there was the fact that I didn’t feel I deserved to be happier
than I was. I didn’t deserve happiness, therefore I stagnated. Nothing changed
for the better, which caused me to be disappointed with myself, which in turn
perpetuated my ongoing belief that I didn’t deserve happiness; the proverbial
vicious cycle.
    So I’d stick to what I always did. Cooking meals, cleaning the house,
grocery shopping, doing laundry, scheduling blog posts. It didn’t seem like
much. So why did the necessary tasks in my life seem so much more overwhelming
than those in Roxanne’s?
    We finished lunch and were waiting for the server to bring our check when
Roxanne looked at me pointedly.
    “So, you are going to come to yoga tomorrow, right?” she asked.
    I sighed. My complacency didn’t want to go to yoga; it wanted to go
straight home after work, sit on the couch, and eat Chinese food. I inwardly
shushed my complacent voice and answered, “Yes.”
    “Ok, good,” she said. “So you should probably eat light for lunch
tomorrow. Otherwise you might get a little burpy.”
    “You mean I might vomit,” I grinned ruefully. “I can’t imagine trying to
exercise after what I just ate.”
    “That’s just the thing,” Roxanne said. “You might want to think about
changing your eating habits if you’re going to take up exercise. No need to
negate all your hard work with cheeseburgers.”
    This was the closest Roxanne had ever come to telling me I needed to
participate in portion control.  
    “You’re right,” I nodded. I wasn’t sure why Rox could tell me this
without offending me. When my mom broached the topic, I flew into a rage. Probably
because Rox hadn’t been sending me mixed messages my entire life. I might have
been offended if she had said this to me on any other day, but after the
humiliation of the evening prior, I had no choice but to face