An Illicit Pursuit by Liv Bennett Read Free Book Online Page A

for getting upset with him. Did he see Adam sitting next to
me? Oh, God, please no!
    I sling my purse over my shoulder and hurry
across the row toward the exit. “What’s the matter?” I ask him as
soon as I arrive at his side.
    “My mother called. My father had a heart
attack an hour ago. He’ll have surgery tonight.”
    “Oh, no, I’m so sorry.” I wrap my arms around
his neck and pull his head down to my shoulder. He’s trembling and
probably fighting back tears.
    “I booked a flight to Denver for tonight. I
want to see him before the surgery.”
    “I’ll go with you.”
    “No, no. Don’t worry. I’ll come back as soon
as his situation improves.”
    He pulls back and holds my hand as we start
walking out. I glance one last time at the court before leaving and
catch Adam staring at me, disappointment clear in his
expression.

CHAPTER 4 - PAT

    I help Zach pack a small suitcase for the
trip and drive him to the airport. I buy three boxes of cookie mix
on the way back to his apartment. Despite the busy street outside,
the apartment is too silent without Zach. His roommate usually
stays out, clubbing the night away on Saturday nights. So, I’m all
by myself tonight. I grab my guitar, settle on the couch in the
living room, and prepare for the songs I’m planning to play
tomorrow, until about eight p.m. Later than that, the old lady
downstairs starts hitting the ceiling with a stick to convey her
discomfort about the loud music.
    At eight o’clock sharp, I set about baking
cookies. I skipped dinner, but I don’t want to go to bed with an
empty stomach. I bake eight large cookies and then eat them all.
They’ll probably give me acne on the forehead and extra inch around
my hips, but I don’t care. I used to eat twice as many cookies at
one sitting in addition to a family-size pizza during my early
adolescent years. I’d save up my pocket money and order pizza when
my mother went out to play poker with my step-father at a
neighbor’s home. I was never out of money, because I had both my
mother and father pumping up my income. Even my step-mother would
squeeze a twenty into my hand every now and then to shut me up when
I was particularly mean to her.
    My waist size was growing almost an inch a
week. One day, my then-best friend, Mary, from junior high came to
my help and showed me how to finger my throat to purge. “Shove
three fingers down the throat while punching your stomach with the
other hand,” she said with an angelic smile.
    The process was painful and the result gross.
Seeing all the half-chewed pizza bread and mushrooms forcing their
way out of my mouth made me want to keep on puking the entire
night. My gums and throat swelled like I’d had mumps, and much to
my surprise, I didn’t want to even look at food the next two days.
As a result, I was forced to the conclusion that puking wasn’t for
me, so I decided to cut down on the food. Rather than family-size
pizza, I started to order normal size and only every now and then
rewarded myself with the family-size or extra cookies.
    My primrose path came to a halt, when one
night my mother and step-father came home early from their poker
night, catching me enjoying an NY-style, pepperoni pizza in my bed.
With my obesity, it didn’t take a genius to add two and two
together and figure my bed-and-pizza affair wasn’t just a one-night
stand.
    My mother grabbed the pizza box and, to make
sure I didn’t steal it when they went to bed, spilled hot water on
it before dumping it in the garbage can. I did steal it and eat it
with the same pleasure as if it’d been dry. What was she thinking?
Me, going to bed hungry? I don’t know whether she noticed the
missing contents of the pizza box the next morning, but she cut all
my pocket money and ordered my father to do the same for “my
sake.”
    So, that led me to babysitting the neighbors’
kids. Even though my mother took the money I earned, the job still
had its perks, such as an easy access to the