Good Luck, Fatty

waffles. There’s four or five left.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Don’t you want something to eat?”
    I admit, my lack of appetite is alarming. “Eventually,” I say, because I know it’s true; I can’t (and won’t) hold out forever.
    “Everything’s fine,” she tells me, her tone supple and coaxing. “Max is fine. I’m fine. Orv’s fine.” There’s a little clicking sound, as if she’s tapping her press-on nails against the wall outside. “Tom’s okay too,” she adds, sounding reluctant. “I talked to his father. It’s all sorted out.”
    I slip out of bed, the mattress squeaking in my wake. “I’m sorry,” I say from my side of the door. Denise doesn’t respond, so I crack the door open and, with a recalcitrant frown repeat, “Sorry.”
    Denise shoves the door wide open and scoops me into a tight hug, so tight I’m sure I can feel that baby of hers and Orv’s trying to befriend my bellybutton. “Let’s just forget about it,” she suggests softly at the side of my head, the “it” being my boyfriend’s irrational explosion. “Okay?”
    I fight back a sniffle, scratch my itchy nose on the shoulder of her flannel nightgown. “I’ll try,” I say, and that’s about the most I can promise.
     

----
     
    I wait until Orv and Denise clear the driveway (two days before the wedding, Orv broke down and bought a car—a compact, foreign thing that shall remain nameless—on credit) for their “honeymoon” (a day trip to a popular park and waterfall) before calling Tom.
    No matter what Denise claims, yesterday’s goings-on are far from settled, in my mind anyway. “Is Tom there?” I ask boldly when Wilma picks up.
    “May I ask who’s calling?”
    Is she for real? “Uh, yeah…it’s Bobbi.” There’s no use lying, since I doubt a bunch of other girls are beating a path to my boyfriend’s door.
    “Just a minute,” Wilma says curtly.
    After some muffled sounds that have me picturing Wilma with the cordless handset tucked into her armpit, Tom finally gets on the line. “Hello?”
    “Hi.”
    “Oh, hi,” he says, sounding surprised and, at the same time, Zen-calm, as if someone’s slipped him a Xanax or an Ambien.
    I don’t know how to broach the subject of his wedding-day meltdown or the melee that ensued. “How’s it going?”
    “Eh, all right,” he says with the depth of a sheet of paper.
    The line goes quiet for a while, and then I come up with, “Nobody’s mad at you, you know. If you’re worried about—”
    “Mad at me?! ” he says, his voice spiking.
    “Well…’cause…Denise said she talked to your dad. They hashed everything out or whatever.”
    “Yeah, right,” he says with blatant sarcasm.
    “That’s what she said.”
    “Sure she did.”
    “But she did,” I insist. Does he want me to spell it out in blood?
    He sighs. “Listen, Bobbi…”
    “Yeah?”
    “…I like you…”
    “I like you too.”
    “…but I don’t know…”
    Well, ain’t this a punch in the kisser? “You don’t know what?”
    “It’s not your fault,” he says, gentler now. “I know that, but I don’t know if I can keep…getting into trouble for you.”
    He’s lost me. “Huh?”
    “You know how many fights I’ve been in because someone called you fat? Or when they said you were a slut?”
    “I’ve never seen you fight,” I counter, because even if what he’s saying is true, I’m nowhere ready to accept it.
    “ A lot. It’s a lot of fighting, over the years. And it’s not getting any better.”
    “So you’re quitting?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “Sounded like you did.”
    “He called you the c-word, ” he says, a belated click of his tongue acting as punctuation. “I didn’t plan on hitting him; it just happened. Conditioned response, I guess. Pavlov’s dog and all that.”
    “You’ve been punching people’s faces in for years, on my account?” Suddenly I feel ill.
    “It’s not like that exactly,” he backpedals. “But I stick up for my friends.”
    “But you’re not going to anymore?” When I called him, this wasn’t the conversation I had in mind.
    “It’s just that…it’s everywhere. Since all the…” He stops, gropes for the right wording. “…sex stuff, it’s gotten out of control. I mean, your cousin’s wedding, for Christ’s sake? I didn’t see that one coming.”
    “Sorry you feel that way,” I tell him tightly, a steel cage clicking into place around my heart.
    “I think we should take a few days,” he says,