150 Pounds by Kate Rockland Read Free Book Online Page B

specific outfits in mind. Billy was a genius when it came to dressing women, and even though freelance budgets at many magazines were dwindling, they always found the dough to hire him. Before she met Billy, Alexis dressed provocatively, wearing very short dresses and thigh-high boots. She cringed now, remembering. Her mother had never really helped steer her in any direction with fashion; Bunny wore tennis skirts and tops around the house, which was ironic because she hadn’t picked up a racquet since she peered down the neck of a bottle of vodka years ago and never looked back up. Billy helped give Alexis a more streamlined, polished, adult look. She still was allowed the occasional short dress, but the label had to be Stella McCartney, not Bebe.
    Though Alexis founded Skinny Chick, Billy came across as much more warm in business meetings and over the phone. Clients were scared of Alexis. Men and women alike. She weighed one hundred pounds soaking wet. She wore five-inch heels, everywhere she went, even to the supermarket. Her blond hair was dyed so heavily it was nearly white, and pulled into such a short bob it gave her young face a severe look. Once, when she looked into the carriage of a neighbor’s new infant, the baby had instantly scrunched up its soft face and burst into tears, the mother embarrassed and shushing it.
    But now Billy was ready to go back to sleep. Or at least to bed. “I was having the strangest dream,” he told Alexis.
    Alexis glared at him.
    “I know, I know, you have to go work out,” he said, rolling his dark, beautiful eyes. “Just listen. So I’m nestled there between my two sailors, and I’m dreaming that I go on Craigslist, because you know how I have that obsession where I look at crap people are selling in our neighborhood?”
    “Of course.”
    “So I go on there, and lo and behold, there is my signed poster of Liza Minnelli from Flora the Red Menace, you know, the one I waited for three hours in January outside the auction in Midtown and caught a deadly strain of pneumonia to get?”
    He’d caught a cold, and it had been a mild one.
    “On sale for fifty dollars. My Liza poster!”
    “You are such a gay stereotype,” Alexis said drolly.
    “I know, shut up. So! I keep scrolling down, and ooo, there’s a lovely TAG watch for a hundred bucks, and I look closer, notice the scuffing on the band…”
    “Let me guess, it’s your watch,” Alexis said, rolling her eyes.
    “Yes! Yes! All my shit is being sold online. It was like some crazy Groundhog Day situation.”
    “Only you weren’t living the same day over and over again.”
    “Maybe not exactly the same. But isn’t that weird? I’m totally calling Jasmine.”
    Jasmine was Billy’s psychic, who charged seventy-five dollars an hour.
    “I put a lock on your cell so it won’t dial her.”
    “I’ll call from the house phone.”
    “I shut it off. It cost too much, anyway.”
    “Damn you, Alexis! You skinny, heartless bitch. Don’t I feed you diet pills when you go up a pound every Thanksgiving? And put grapes in the freezer and call it dessert? And pretend to be your husband when married guys you banged call the house? And for what? So you can come between me and the only woman I’ve ever loved?”
    Alexis sighed and threw on her pink cashmere cardigan that hung on the back of the door. She tossed her keys in her purse and put her hand on her hip. “ I’m the only woman you’ve ever loved.”
    “Other than Nana Kay.” Nana Kay was Billy’s mother’s mother, who came over from Korea ten years ago. As both his parents disowned him because of his sexual orientation, Alexis and Billy both adored Nana Kay. Billy once lived with her for several years. She was four-foot-ten and had an apartment in an assisted living facility in the Bronx, where they visited her from time to time. Alexis loved her overstuffed apartment, the shelves in her living room crammed with books, which reminded her of Penny Oliver, a girl from