Muffin Top (Page 35)

A punch in the gut wasn’t the right metaphor for how Lucy felt at that moment. Run over by a train? That was closer, but still not quite right. Whatever it was, the pain of it shocked her into silence.

Next to her, Frankie wasn’t suffering from the same affliction. “You fucking bit—”

She put her hand on Frankie’s arm to shush him. There wasn’t any point. Bryce was dragging Constance away, his head close to hers as he said whatever it was that kept the other woman’s feet moving.

Lucy just stood there, shell-shocked, the hateful words on repeat in her head.

There must be something wrong with him.

It took a second, but her anger started pummeling her in hot waves of fury. Of course there had to be something wrong with Frankie if he was with her, because people sure seemed to think there was something wrong with her. Her degree, her professional success, her friends, none of it mattered to some people who would only see her as the fat chick to ignore or to passive-aggressively correct. She wasn’t a person. She was a walking, talking morality lesson of what happens when a woman lets herself go, when she fails to meet society’s expectations.

By the time Constance and Bryce were out of visible range, her gut was a sloshing mess of angry bile and humiliation.

“I’m not really in the mood for the Ferris wheel anymore,” she said, squeezing the llama too tight for a cheap carnival stuffed animal, but it was better than tracking the witch down and strangling her. “I need to cool off.”

Most people would have downplayed the bullshit of what had just happened by saying it was just the ramblings of a drunk—or they would have looked at her with pity. Not Frankie. He laid his hand at the base of her spine, offering the comfort she so desperately needed at the moment.

“Does this town have a pool?” he asked. “I wouldn’t mind a little cool-off myself.”

“Oh, there’s a pool all right, but I’ve got a better place in mind.”

Emerson Lake wasn’t really a lake so much as it was an oversized pond a mile down a dirt road in the woods with a floating dock in the middle. When she was growing up, all the cool kids at school had hung out at Woodson Lake, which was bigger and had a beach. Lucy and her small group of friends—none of whom had come back for the reunion—had taken over Emerson Lake and made it their own.

The bubbling anger had cooled to a simmer by the time Frankie parked his car in the makeshift parking spots between two copses of trees. Once she’d slipped off her shoes and put her toes in the water, her vision wasn’t tinted with red. It was close to what she needed, but not quite there. She needed more. She needed water up to her chin, she needed to float free, she needed to be able to let go.

“Turn around,” she said, reaching behind her for the zipper of her dress.

Of course, that just had him turning so that he faced her straight on as they stood on the edge of the lake. “Why?”

“Because I’m taking my clothes off.” The sound of her zipper going down seemed way louder than the gentle lap of the water against the shore.

But talk was cheap. She wouldn’t let Constance’s drunken verbal vomit hurt her anymore, and she wouldn’t be fooled by Frankie’s sweet nothings. Just go with it? She should have known better. This was why she led with insults. Being always on the defensive meant not getting sucker-punched by the assholes of the world who knew nothing about her but felt perfectly fit to judge her anyway. She knew who she was. She was the woman who’d made something of herself, and fuck all those people who couldn’t stand that.

Fuck. Them.

“And I don’t get to look?” Frankie said it with a joking tone, but even in the moonlight there was no hiding the serious set of his jaw.

“No matter what happened the other night, it’s different when you can see the whole package, and I’m done with people who can’t accept me for who I am for one day.”

She’d been through it before. Occasionally there had even been comments. She’d walked out on those assholes while they were holding their dry dicks in their hands. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, though—that didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt today.

“And you don’t think I’ll like what I see?” Frankie’s voice rose with frustration. “Have you been listening at all to what I’ve been saying to you for the past few days?”

Yeah, the past few days when he hadn’t been having any sex at all for the first time in forever. And it wasn’t like they hadn’t known each other before. He’d had the opportunity to approach her before and hadn’t until he’d turned off his sex tap. Hurt and anger and self-doubt and all the old insecurities brought to the forefront by coming home again pummeled against her ribs, made her lungs tight, and clogged her throat with emotion. They’d been at the same BBQs and parties for months, celebrating Ford’s engagement to Gina, but he’d never given Lucy a second look—at least not one of those looks. And now he couldn’t get enough of seeing her?

“You want to see?” she asked, her voice strained with pent-up emotion.

Tension came off him in waves as he spoke slowly and with absolute conviction. “Yeah, I do.”

Okay. If that was what he wanted, that was exactly what he was going to get.

Frankie spoke all the right words, but he couldn’t help himself. He was a natural-born flirt. He had probably been born looking like the redheaded son of Apollo. He didn’t know what it was like to grow up in the shadow of a woman whose posters had been on adolescent boys’ walls. He didn’t see the disappointment in his mother’s eyes when he reached for another cookie. He’d never been given clothes that were purposefully a size too small, supposedly to encourage him to shed just a few stubborn pounds. He hadn’t been the cause of a rift between his parents that had ruined a marriage because he was an embarrassment to his mother.

That had been her.

All her.

And suddenly, everything just seemed too much. The “good for you”s her co-workers would offer when she’d mention she was heading out early to hit the gym. Or the way conversations always seemed to end up on their favorite “easy” exercises and healthy recipes whenever she was around. Or how someone would ask her if she’d lost a few pounds because she looked good today, as though that were a compliment. But most of all, she was tired of the pitying looks.

Why would Frankie be any different?

If he wanted to see all of her, fine. And when he showed pity in his eyes, at least once and for all she’d be able to get her hormones off of this roller coaster ride to eventual heartache.

Because the one thing she knew more than anything else: Frankie’s rejection was going to hurt worst of all. Better to just get it over with. And if there was one thing Muffin Kavanagh knew best, a good offense was always the best defense.

“Okay, fine then.” She released her hold on her dress and shoved it down over her hips so it fell down her legs and landed in a heap in the wet grass. “This is what you get when you have a naked Lucy Kavanagh.” She reached behind her back to her bra clasp. “There are rolls.” The bra hooks gave way, and she shook it off, letting it drop where it may. “There are stretch marks.” She slid her thumbs into the waistband of her high-waisted panties meant to hold her not-perfect stomach in and pushed them with more force than necessary to her ankles. She kicked them off with enough power that they went flying through the night like a red cotton bullet and landed on a bush near where Frankie had parked. “There are curves where there should be dips.” She held her arms out wide. “There is all of this, and I’m not apologizing for it—not to you and not to anyone.”