The Life You've Imagined by Kristina Riggle Read Free Book Online

this morning. Here’s some water and Motrin. Feel better and take it easy.
    I sip the water, but it’s gotten warm overnight so it’s not refreshing and my stomach curdles anyway.
    I fumble for my thermometer in my nightstand, but I can’t find it. Not that my temperature would be reliable anyway. If you don’t get enough sleep—or for that matter, if you drink—it throws off the reading, according to that pamphlet from my OB/GYN.
    That means this whole month’s worth of charting my basal body temperature to figure out my most fertile time is all a complete waste.
    I curl back under the covers and review my decisions of yesterday, starting with letting those silly girls talk me into chardonnay instead of Perrier. Now look at me! And heaven knows what I ate yesterday. The calories, the carbs from the wine. I think I even had cake with buttercream frosting.
    It’s enough to make me sick, only I already am.
    It’s a silver lining if I’m too sick to eat all day. That will begin to make up for some of the ground I lost.
    Frodo hops off the bed and starts pacing and whining. Paul should be here to let the damn dog out, knowing what a mess I’m in.
    Paul whined to me last week, Why don’t we just live together? Then we don’t have to debate about which place to spend the night, and you can save money on rent.
    There’s no way he could understand my answer, so I just didn’t bother explaining that a wedding doesn’t count unless it’s a couple truly starting out together in life. If a couple is already living together, it’s just a big party and a shakedown for presents.
    Sometimes I think I’m the last traditional girl on the planet. At least we have sex. It’s not like I’m Victorian about it. Oh, sex. Paul didn’t get his sex after the party, either. Well, he’ll live.
    Frodo is pawing at the slider now. If I don’t get up, there will be a mess.
    In the bathroom, I splash water on my face and yank my hair into a ponytail. My face is mottled and bloated and I have to pause to dry-heave into the sink.
    On my mirror I’d taped a piece of paper with the saying, written in glitter pen, E very thin day is a good day! And on the other side, like a cheerful bookend, is that old magazine clipping, G o confidently in the direction of your dreams. L ive the life you’ve imagined .
    I need to tape up another one: I gnore people who tell you to “live a little. ”
    People like me can’t afford that luxury.
    I n retrospect, it was optimistic of me to put on my running shoes.
    On a typical morning, I like to imagine stomping down my old self with every stride. Take THAT and THAT and THAT, thunder-thighs!
    At the moment, though, I’m under a tree with my head between my knees, watching the blades of grass swim in my vision, Frodo’s leash around my wrist.
    At least he went to the bathroom, so when I manage to crawl back to the apartment it will buy me some hours of recuperation.
    Meanwhile, I can feel the fat cells making themselves at home.
    I’ll get up even earlier tomorrow, before work. Run twice as far, and after work, too.
    Frodo lunges, and the movement knocks me off balance, the leash slipping off my wrist. I stand up too fast and my vision fuzzes up for a moment, and when I collect myself, I see him tearing off down the road.
    I force myself to plod after him, but he’s far too fast; even on a good day I can’t catch him. “Frodo!” I shriek, but by now he doesn’t even hear me, much less care. “Frodo!”
    I speed up the pace, though my head pounds, holding my stomach with one hand. “Frodo . . .” I lose sight of him near the goose pond. We’re getting close to the entrance to the apartment complex and the main road where people drive too fast.
    I collapse to my knees and dry-heave again, waiting to collect enough energy so I can get up and go find my dog, trying to remember the information on his dog tags, what happens if the animal control people find him before I do, what if