Lucy Wagner Gets In Shape (A Romantic Comedy) Read online

  Lucy Wagner Gets in Shape

  By Claire Matthews

  Copyright 2012 by Dana Morales

  Smashwords Edition

  Chapter One

  I am locked in my bathroom, trying desperately to get the overpowering smell of Indian Summer potpourri out of my nostrils. I’m not sure whether I should get some nasal spray and try to flush it out, or just blow my nose until I can’t smell it anymore. I don’t have any spray, so I try the nose-blowing technique until I give myself a headache, then sink to my knees on the hard tile floor and begin to cry--big, fat teardrops that roll hotly down my cheeks.

  Today was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life, and until forty-five minutes ago, it was. At one o’clock this afternoon, I entered the halls of Southeast Texas State University as a meager, ill-paid but optimistically good-natured graduate student, and emerged two hours later as Dr. Lucy Wagner, PhD. Defending my dissertation in comparative political economies wasn’t as difficult as it sounds, since most committees won’t even let you sit for a defense until they are pretty sure you’ll pass. I mean really, who wants to waste all that time? Still, the possibility of saying something stupid in front of my mentors, or shifting my weight on one of those ancient vinyl conference chairs and making a farting noise, was enough to put me on edge.

  So at 2:48 pm, when I left the conference room with five pretty jovial professors, and then rounded the corner and squealed my head off with Jenny and Will, my two best friends, it was, in fact, the happiest day of my life. After running to the bathroom to pee, I pulled out my cell and tried to call Paul, but his phone went immediately into voicemail.

  “Hey there,” I said breathlessly. “You are no longer the only doctor in the house. Call me when you get this, it went great! I love you.” Then I hung up and joined everyone—my friends, my professors, even the department secretary--for drinks at the campus watering hole, the Mucky Duck.

  The Duck is actually a dark, dank hellhole of a bar, where they still let ancient faculty members sit in the corner and smoke, but it’s been our hangout for the last four years, and I’m thrilled to be at the seat of honor in our regular booth, throwing back luke-warm Shiner Bock and reveling in my success. The afternoon wanes, and pretty soon the only ones left at the table are Will and Jen. We have one last beer for the ditch, and then, a little glassy-eyed, they serenade me with a really bad rendition of “Isn’t She Lovely”. Finally, we stumble out of the bar and they walk me to my shuttle stop, where we say our sloppy good-byes. They are so proud of me, and I love them so much. Okay, so I’m a little wasted. I love everyone when I’m wasted.

  As the shuttle winds through campus, I take out my phone and check for messages, but Paul has yet to call. I figure he’s had a busy afternoon, since it’s cold and flu season and he’s a pediatrician in a very busy practice. I almost feel bad, having such wonderful fun while he has no doubt been swamped all afternoon, so when I get off the shuttle, I stop at the corner market and pick up a bottle of his favorite cabernet. I’m swinging my bag as I walk the short block to our condo, feeling as if my life is on the right track for the first time in, like, ever.

  And then, when I get home, Paul meets me in the front study and tells me he’s in love with another woman.

  ***

  “Who the hell is she?” I scream, eliciting an out-of-body moment where I seem to see and hear myself from above, and inwardly cringe at the soap-opera drama of it all. We’re about five minutes into our little scene, but it’s just as well that I skip the language spewed forth during the first four minutes of my one-woman screech-fest.

  “It’s Langley,” he murmurs, his head hung low, one butt-cheek perched on the edge of his antique desk. And now I’m outwardly cringing, because it’s one thing for your boyfriend to cheat on you, but it’s so much worse if the woman in question has a name as ridiculous as “Langley”. I mean, shit, that’s not even a name, it’s the fucking CIA headquarters.

  “Langley? You mean your running partner? I thought she was married!” I can be so naïve sometimes. Paul is silent, but when he finally raises his head to meet my gaze, his look says you can be so naïve sometimes.

  “We never meant to hurt anybody,” he whispers. I answer with a derisive snort and kick the side of the couch. It’s either that or kick him square in the crotch. He’s still looking at the floor, his sandy brown hair flopping mournfully across his liquid brown eyes. He looks so remorseful, and it fills me with rage.

  “Well, if you never meant to hurt anybody, then, hey, I guess everything’s cool.”

  “Luce,” he sighs, uncomfortable with my sarcasm.

  “Did you fuck her? Did you fuck her in this house? Did you fuck her in our bed?” And I swear, I normally don’t throw the f-bomb around this much, but at the moment I am feeling entitled.

  “Lucy, I won’t discuss this with you.” Which means the answers to my questions are yes, yes, and yes. I am furious, but I will not let him see me cry. Well, I mean, tears are streaming down my face as I yell at him, but I won’t let him see me cry cry, with the snot and the puffy eyes and the hacking sobs. That’s for later.

  “Get out.”

  He sits quietly, his eyes following the toe of his loafer as it taps the leg of the desk.

  “I said, get the fuck out! What are you waiting for? Get. Out!”

  “Lucy, I’m leaving.” Hooray! “But we need to talk about this when you’ve calmed down.” I will never calm down. “This place is half mine, so we’re going to have to come to some kind of arrangement.”

  “You fucked yourself out of your half when you brought that bitch here and stuck your nasty dick in her!” And who am I? What kind of animal has taken over my body and made me say such horrific things? I stop short, shocked at my own vehemence, as well as my filthy language, and Paul is now looking at me like he had, in fact, better get out before I start foaming at the mouth. He side-steps me as he makes his way to the door, then turns and gives me what I’m sure he thinks is a comforting, appropriately baleful glance. “For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you, Dr. Walker.”

  “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? Get OUT!” I grab the closest weapon available, an unsuspecting potpourri bowl that Paul’s brother and sister-in-law gave us as a housewarming gift, and hurl it at his head. Luckily for him (and me, I suppose) I miss, and the pot hits the doorjamb with a dull thud, before falling to the floor and splashing at his feet.

  Paul scurries out in an ass-saving minute, and I stare, mesmerized, as the scented oil spreads, like a perfumed amoeba, across the dark slate floor of the study. I walk to the bathroom and get an old towel, inexplicably worried about a potpourri spill when my entire life is pretty much falling apart. By the time I’ve wiped up the mess, I’m encased in the scent of sunflowers, so pungent and strong I’m not sure where the tears of emotional devastation end and the tears of vapor sensitivity begin.

  And so that is why I’m crying, in the bathroom, smelling like a freshly cleaned toilet at an overeager bed-and-breakfast, on what should he the happiest day of my life.

  ***

  “Was that him?” Jenny is toweling her hair dry as I hang up the phone. She came over as soon as I called last night (my wailing and general hysteria clued her in that something was up), and we both slept on the queen-size bed in the guest room. I can’t stomach the idea of sleeping in our bed—Jen and I have already renamed the master bedroom the “Puta Palace,” because Jenny is Mexican, and she loves whipping out Spanish cuss words in a crisis.

  “No, it was Will. He’s bringing beer and onion rings.”

  “Burger Shack?”

  “Nah, Sonic.”


  “He’s such a boy.” Everyone knows that only Burger Shack onion rings have the deep-fried batter capable of mending a broken heart. We shake our heads at his utter cluelessness.

  By the time Will arrives, we are both showered and dressed in our best wallowing attire (yoga pants, ancient Abercrombie T’s from our undergrad days, and spa socks. Even in an emotional crisis, cracked winter heels need some lovin’).

  “Is it too early to say that I always thought he was an asshole?” Will offers by way of greeting, as he drops three greasy bags of onion rings and two six-packs on the coffee table.

  “No.” It’s never too early for some ex-boyfriend snark. “I knew you never liked him. Gimme the dirt.”

  “Well, let’s see,” says Will, opening his Fat Tire Ale with the bottom of his T-shirt, “the guy blew me off when I invited him to play Golden Tee, like, a thousand times. He’s anti-social.” Will and his friends are addicted to Golden Tee, which is a huge video golf game that’s popular in a lot of the bars around campus. Video golf is, in actuality, as lame as it sounds, but all the guys at work head down to Uncle Charlie’s every Wednesday and Friday night, buy several buckets of beer, and play until the bar closes, or until someone assaults the machine and they all get kicked out. I, for one, never blamed Paul for skipping it.

  “Really? That’s the best you’ve got?” Will can tell from my scathing look that he’s struck out.

  “But the real reason I never liked him was because he wasn’t sensitive to your needs.” He raises his eyebrows at me, like a puppy seeking approval, and I pat the top of his curly head as I reach for a beer.

  “Much better.”

  “Hey, can I have his DVDs?” Will asks suddenly. I hear Jenny’s bark of laughter from the kitchen.

  “Will, he’s not dead.” No thanks to me. “He will return for his things, you know.”

  “Yeah, but I thought you could do that thing from the movies, where you throw all his stuff on the front lawn, and then, hey, if some items are missing by the time he finds out…” Will shrugs his shoulders as I stare at him, then digs in the grease-soaked bag for another handful of onion rings.

  “I think he lost interest in me when I refused to start training with him.” I say to no one in particular.

  “I think he’s an idiot who can’t keep his dick in his pants.” This is Jenny, from the kitchen.

  “No, really. I mean, I can sit here and play the blame game all day, but it takes two to make a relationship work, and it takes two to make it fail. I freely admit I never took an interest in his racing.” Paul has been training for an extreme racing event for the last four months. Langley is on his team. They run, kayak, and bike, for over fourteen hours. Truth be told, Paul wanted me to join the team with him. He begged me to. But because the thought of running and biking and paddling, nonstop, for an entire day, ranks right up there with foot surgery on the list of “things I really need to avoid until I die,” I said no. Again, and again, and again.

  And suddenly it occurs to me. Maybe I’m just lazy. Maybe I wasn’t a supportive girlfriend. He wanted so badly for me to join him—maybe he was reaching out, maybe he was desperate to spend time with me. And I laughed in his face! (Not just metaphorically—when he first asked if I wanted to train with him, I literally laughed in his face. I thought he was joking.)

  “Luce, don’t turn this around on yourself. He slept with another woman. In your home. In your bed. There is no excuse for that! You think if you’d run around the park a few times with him, it would have stopped him from cheating?” Jenny’s in my face now, and I can tell she’s one step away from slapping some sense into me. I scoot back an inch on the couch.

  “Well, maybe.”

  Chapter Two

  Now, before you jump to the conclusion that Paul is a no-good cad, and that I am a sap for actually questioning my role in our breakup, I must point out that our relationship, up to the point of him cheating on me and falling in love with someone else, has been a strong one. Really.

  Paul and I met at a wedding—he was a groomsman for Nate, one of his old fraternity brothers, and I was a bridesmaid for Katy, who waited tables with me at The Main Event during our freshman and sophomore years in college. The wedding was your basic suburban fete, with finger sandwiches and a “beer and wine only” bar, and as we posed for several thousand pictures in the chapel after the ceremony, the only thing even remotely interesting about the entire evening was Paul. As we lined up on tiered, red-carpeted steps in front of a garland of white roses, Paul was placed directly behind me in an overblown group shot. While half a dozen people fiddled with the train of the bride’s gown, he leaned down, his mouth no more than an inch above my neck, and said “you smell like heaven,” all deep and low and hot against my skin.

  And I swear, I wouldn’t normally fall for such a line, but when I looked back at him, I was sucked in by Paul’s greatest asset—his incredibly brown, liquid, watercolor eyes, so deep and soulful they would make your grandmother blush. Seriously, I’ve seen grandmothers blush. When I gazed back with my not-nearly-so-mesmerizing green peepers, we just clicked, and a new couple was born.

  A month after we started dating, we moved in together, and our lives began to gel quite nicely. Things that most couples see as negatives, we were able to spin into positives--like, we had no mutual friends (other than Nate and Katy), so there was no fighting about who to go out with, or which friends “trumped” the others at parties—we usually just went out separately, and we never had parties, because Paul hated the noise and mess. Also, we never really made each other laugh (Paul was much too serious for silly games or goofy romantic gestures), but that was okay, because I had Jen and Will to make me laugh, all day long. By the time I got home, I was tired of laughing. Really, sometimes all that giggling and snorting can be exhausting.

  Anyway, Paul was beautiful, and smart, and sexy as hell, and much more refined than me. Plus, he was mature, and reliable, and could make a kid with a broken arm smile with nothing more than a Jolly Rancher lollipop and a Magic 8 Ball. (“Will Brandon’s arm be as good as new in six weeks?” “All signs point to yes!”)

  Our biggest conflict centered on, of all things, working out. Paul was pretty much addicted to exercise. When we met, he was training for a marathon, but after he finished a few of those, he moved on to bigger and better things—triathlons, cross-country relays, endurance swimming. When we first started dating, it was a joke between us—Paul, with his macrobiotic meals and two-a-day workouts, would tease me for being such a couch potato. But after a few months, I could tell it really bugged him that I wasn’t more active. I tried to join the gym a few times, and even took a power yoga class with Jen, but the instructor…okay, there’s no other way to say it, he had a real girly butt, and he’d wear these white biking shorts that totally accentuated it, and Jen and I would laugh so hard at downward facing dog that eventually we had to quit going, since we were a distraction to the rest of the class.

  By year two of our three-year relationship, we had come to an impasse, by which I mean I never worked out, and Paul made sarcastic remarks about my laziness, which I pretended to ignore. His last attempt at getting me moving was when he started preparing for an extreme racing event about four months ago. He asked me three or four times to join him, but I refused. It’s one thing to join the gym and do a forty-five minute aerobics class, but this was crazy—running ten miles, plus God knows how many miles of kayaking, and some insane bike ride through the hills. There was no way I could do it, and there was certainly no way I could do it with Paul—he was so much faster than me, he’d be nothing but a sexy speck of ass over the horizon as I gasped in his muddy, wet wake.

  So he began training, after work and on weekends, which suited me just fine, because I was finishing up my dissertation anyway, spending hours in the library, or in Will’s office while he helped me edit and refine my last three chapters before I sent them off to the committee. Looking back, I suppose I should have been suspicious of all the ti
me he spent away from home, but I was too busy watching Glee with Jenny, and eating Taco Bell Nachos Bel Grande without hearing the calorie and fat gram count quoted to me in Paul’s disapproving voice. (“God, Luce—thirty grams of fat? Seriously, that should be illegal. Corporate America is literally profiting off the early death of the fast-food-addicted public.”) Paul used to tell me that even though I was thin on the outside, thanks to my blessedly forgiving genes, I was fat on the inside, my arteries a veritable sludgefest of Crisco and plaque.

  He was right. Of course he was right. And everything he said was because he cared about me, and wanted me to be healthy and happy.

  It’s true!

  So now I’m sitting with Will and Jenny, on the day that I should be indulging in beer and making jokes about Paul’s inferior penis size, but instead I’m wondering what I’ve done to help bring about the downfall of our relationship.

  “Do you think it’s possible to be thin on the outside and fat on the inside?” I ask this with an onion ring in my mouth, and the irony is not lost on me.

  “Holy shit, that’s a Paul platitude, isn’t it?” Jenny says accusingly.

  “No way,” Will interrupts. “If you’re thin on the outside and fat on the inside, your inside would start oozing out of your outside. I mean, you’d eventually explode, right?” Jenny and I stare at him blankly.

  “Will, you’re an idiot.” That’s Jenny. Jenny and Will get along quite well most of the time, but she doesn’t really “get” him like I do. Like, when he’s being a smart-ass to try to cheer me up, Jenny just thinks he’s being a smart-ass, period.

  “True, but I really think I’m right on this ‘fat on the inside’ thing.”

  Jenny ignores him, and points her fiery gaze at me. “I don’t know if you’re going through some kind of ‘stages of grief’ thing or what, but do not, under any circumstances, make excuses for that asshole. He’s a lying, cheating piece of shit. Good riddance. You are now a fabulous, multi-degreed political economist, and at the very least you should pick a piece eye candy from the teaching assistant pool and have some meaningless youngster sex.”