150 Pounds by Kate Rockland Read Free Book Online Page A

had to rent out the third bedroom in their apartment when Alexis quit law school to start her blog. Billy was between bartending jobs at the time, and they needed the money. God knows, she’d rather take in Hannibal Lecter before going to her father for money, after he’d told her she was “dead to me” when she dropped out.
    So when Vanya answered their Craigslist ad, and had the deposit ready, they’d accepted her on the spot.
    Her profession was unknown, and they’d never really gotten an actual look at her face after several years of cohabitation. Only brief flashes of light green eyes, nearly yellow like a cat’s. Her hair was down to her waist and Wonder-Woman black, with a blue sheen. Her skin was a translucent white and she spent most of her days in her room (like a vampire!) playing the kind of weird music with bells sounding and cymbals pinging one heard in a spa. Billy had a theory she was a dominatrix, as she seemed to work only at night, and often wore thigh-high patent-leather boots. She’d once left a book out on the living room table, and Billy and Alexis had pounced on it. The title? Wicca Today: 15 Curses for the Modern Witch . Billy had emitted a little scream and dropped it on the floor like a hot pan. Later, Alexis saw him carefully place it back on the table, precisely as it had been left. His hand had been shaking.
    This morning was only the second or third time they’d heard her speak. Billy shrank closer to Alexis. Vanya had a mix of accents; one couldn’t be sure if she was Irish, Scottish, or Transylvanian.
    “Just a little disagreement,” Alexis said. “Sorry we woke you up.”
    Billy made a small choking sound. Alexis never apologized. “Being hot and skinny means never having to say you’re sorry,” she often said.
    Vanya retreated back into her room (Alexis could swear she saw her feet not actually touch the floor), its walls painted such a dark purple it was cavelike, the reflection of a mirror on the ceiling casting a silver light onto the crack under her door. Only, her door didn’t shut, not really. It seemed to suck closed, like a force field swirled around her space and it was retreating back into itself.
    Billy wiped his forehead with the gold sleeve of his Louis Vuitton pajamas. “She scares me,” he said. Then, as he turned to Alexis, they both started giggling uncontrollably, holding their sides and then each other. Billy was the only man Alexis felt comfortable with touching her regularly. She occasionally slept with men (some married, some not) in five-star hotel rooms, but if they called her or tried to contact her afterward she always told them to lose her number.
    She and Billy were so close it was as though they were married. Dating someone seriously would feel like an intrusion on their friendship; whoever it was would be an outsider. He wouldn’t get their seven-year buildup of jokes and familiarity. They’d both dated but never seriously. Most people who found out about how close they were usually recognized their friendship for what it was: needy and strange. They vacationed together, applied self-tanner to each other’s bodies, and even took baths in their humongous claw-foot bathtub the rich old lady who owned the apartment before them left when she died, their feet hanging over the tub’s lip on either end.
    Billy handled the recruitment of advertisers for Skinny Chick, serving drinks to people in the entertainment industry who wanted to promote their new movie or album on the blog. “I’ll go and get my gay,” Alexis would say, when advertisers called wanting to speak to someone about the site. Billy worked three jobs: he helped run Skinny Chick, bartended, and worked as a fashion consultant for Vogue . He styled the models for photo shoots, lugging items from his own collection (he had a twenty-seven-inch waist, and sometimes the models wore his clothes unawares), or he’d borrow a credit card from Vogue and go shopping for the shoot, with