Read Online Who You Know by Theresa Alan - Free Book Online

was making me crazy so I came home for lunch to do a little baking. Baking always makes me feel better.”
    Avery must not get upset often or else she didn’t eat the fruits of her baking therapy because she weighed about eleven ounces. No, the reality was that she probably ate all she wanted. We fat girls like to think skinny girls must starve and suffer to avoid our fate of crowbar-ring our way into size twelve jeans, but the truth was probably that they never bothered to count a calorie as they mowed their way through grocery carts full of lard-laden delights.
    Her counter was covered in flour and measuring cups. I watched as she added the oats and the blueberries to the bowl.
    Avery had enviable domestic skills. Her home was impeccably decorated. Every silk flower, every throw pillow, every picture frame, every detail was coordinated and classy. All of her furniture looked like it belonged in a modern art museum.
    â€œI’m on a diet,” I said.
    â€œWhat on earth would compel you to do that?”
    â€œI have a wedding dress to squeeze into.”
    â€œYou do realize Marilyn Monroe, sex goddess extraordinaire, wore a size sixteen.”
    â€œA sixteen? Really? Well, she had her fat arranged better.”
    â€œYou are hopeless. You look just like the woman in Rembrandt’s The Bather, did you know that?”
    â€œI didn’t know that,” I said. “I’ve never even heard of that painting.”
    â€œWell, she’s gorgeous. She has your color hair and your voluptuous figure . . .”
    â€œVoluptuous. Voluptuous is a transparent euphemism for fat cow. Do you get sick of me bitching endlessly to you? I promise I’ll get some other friends soon; then I can spread my bitching out a little.” I sat down at her table. She set a cup of coffee in front of me and set down small matching china saucers with cream and sugar. She used an entire dish to put the cream in instead of just pouring the cream from the carton into the coffee. Can you imagine unnecessarily messing up another dish that would have to be washed? She cracked me up.
    â€œSo, how’d the interview go?” she asked.
    â€œI don’t think it went very well.”
    â€œI’m sure you did great. It would be so wonderful if you worked with me. I could use a close friend at work.”
    â€œWhat about Jen?”
    â€œJen is a blast, but I don’t know if we’re close friends. I mean I wouldn’t call her in times of crisis.”
    I nodded. Jen was the type you could always count on to have a good time, but she had a short attention span. She only liked to hang around for the fun stuff.
    â€œJen has always been like that. It bugged me until we were both in college together,” I said. “It’s supposed to be the older sister who teaches you about orgasms and blow jobs and draws diagrams of the clitoris and that sort of thing, but she was always the accelerated one when it came to fun stuff. She did a great job of corrupting me.” It was funny: We’d never hung out in high school, but when we ended up at the same college, suddenly we went out together a lot. Until Jen got to the University of Minnesota two years after I did, the most scandalous thing I’d ever done was get tipsy with the girls in our dorm room. Then Jen got there and I tried pot, saw my first porno, and spent a good number of weekends in a state of drunken debauchery. Jen had been the ringleader of every crazy thing I did in college.
    â€œI believe it,” Avery said. She went over to the oven and pulled the scones out. They smelled divine. “Sure you don’t want one?” she asked, transferring the scones to a plate.
    â€œWell, they have fruit and oats. That’s very similar to being healthy.”
    â€œExactly.”
    As Avery finished up in the kitchen, I glanced across the room and noticed a black and white photo of her on a bookshelf. She was standing in a dance studio