I glance down at myself, scouring every inch of my body. Lately, I’d been happy. I’d finally found the perfect balance between eating healthy and working out, without being too extreme about it all, without monitoring every single thing I ate. I no longer skipped meals. I no longer felt guilty for missing a run. Not a single thought has occurred to me in months regarding my weight, but now it’s like everything hits me at once. I start trying to figure out how many slices of pizza I’ve eaten while I’ve been in New York. I try to count how many extra shots of caramel I’ve been adding to my lattes over the past year. I wonder if, perhaps, allowing myself to take it easier was a bad idea from the get-go.
“Eden, you look absolutely fine,” Rachael says. Her hands gently cup my jaw as she tilts my face back up away from my body, fixing me with a pleading stare. “Stop it,” she says firmly. Taking a step back and dropping her hands to her sides, she sighs. “Look, I’m gonna talk to Tiffani. She knows making comments like that isn’t cool. But please don’t get upset about it. Just go enjoy your date with Dean.”
I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that now. I don’t even want to leave the bathroom anymore, let alone go out in public with the guy I’m going to be breaking up with pretty soon. In a mood like this, I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up the act.
There’s a knock at the door and both Rachael and I glance over. Dean’s voice vibrates through the wood. “Are you guys okay?”
There’s another knock, this time much gentler, and the voice that follows isn’t Dean’s but Tyler’s. “Eden?”
“She’ll be out in a sec!” Rachael calls back. When she turns to face me again there’s already a tear rolling its way down my cheek, and she rushes to wipe it away with her thumb. “Hey, it’s okay,” she tells me softly. She wraps her arms around me then, pulling me into a warm, tight hug. “I’m sorry,” she says into my hair. “You don’t have to be friends with Tiffani. I won’t mind.”
“I sure hope you won’t,” I murmur, “because it’s never going to happen.”
Dean takes me out for dinner, to a restaurant named Bella Blu, four blocks south on Lexington Avenue. It’s small and Italian, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Dean’s always been proud of his Italian roots, the same way Tyler’s always been proud of his Hispanic genes, despite the fact that he gets them from his dad.
We end up being late for our reservation by twenty minutes, partly due to Tyler purposely holding Dean up and partly because I locked myself in the bathroom with Rachael. Before I walked back out again, I dried my eyes and let Rachael redo my eye makeup, much better than I’d originally done it. No one asked what had happened and no one asked why Tiffani was locked out in the lobby. No one dared to.
Rachael had returned to her conversation with Snake as I left with Dean. Tyler had scowled at me. Emily had kept staring at me intensely, her gaze not only curious but also suspicious. Out in the lobby, Tiffani was leaning against the wall with her arms folded across her chest and a smile on her lips as she told us to enjoy the evening. Dean had said thanks, apparently unaware of the scheming undertone to her voice, and I didn’t so much as glare at her as she took the opportunity to enter the apartment again. I didn’t have that confidence anymore to stand up to her. I just wanted to hide.
At Bella Blu, however, the night is starting to get worse. I feel too guilty being here. On my first night in New York I was in a situation exactly like this, seated at a table in the middle of a cozy Italian restaurant. Only then the restaurant was Pietrasanta, not Bella Blu, and I wasn’t facing Dean, I was facing Tyler.
“So I swear,” Dean says as he swallows another bite of his lobster ravioli, “I’m definitely going to college next fall. I know I said I was gonna apply this year, but it’s actually kinda nice working with my dad. No classes, no studying. Just cool cars.”
I pick at my Caesar salad with my fork, not entirely focused, my stare blank. I’ve been moving the croutons around for the past ten minutes, barely eating any of it. I don’t want to. “Uh-huh.”
“And I know I was set on Berkeley, but I’ve been looking at the business programs in Illinois and—”
“What?” My eyes flash up from my salad to meet Dean’s gaze, as warm and as bright as ever.
“Illinois,” he says again with a smile. “So that we’re closer.”
My stomach twists and I try my best to keep my apprehension hidden. We’ve both always been aware that I’m moving halfway across the country in two months, but we don’t often bring it up in conversation. Neither of us wanted to. It was always hard to talk about, us being separated for four years. We’d have summers together. Spring break. Winter break. Thanksgiving. We’d see each other, but it would be different and it would be difficult. Now I’m not worried about moving away from Dean. In fact, I think by the time he leaves New York, he’ll be glad I’m moving out of state. I don’t think he’ll ever want to see me again.