Big Girl Panties Read Online Free PDF Page B

duty. Holly could be picking apart reality TV, snickering at the fools who willingly set their dignity aside for the sake of being in front of a camera. But this wasn’t just another night. It was the night before her first training session. She felt anxious. In less than twenty-four hours, she would be the one looking like a fool. Holly needed a diversion. She wished she could find the infomercial of Tony Little pushing his Gazelle. Even when Bruce was rapidly deteriorating, Tony Little was a good for a much-needed laugh as she watched his long Fabio hair trying to keep up with his frenzied pseudo-leaping as he shouted inspirational mumbo jumbo.
    Holly stopped on a show about hoarders. The people featured looked more like her but were living neck-deep in garbage and broken keepsakes. She watched in horrified fascination as teams of well-meaning, hazmat-suited cleaners came to the hoarders’ rescue. They scooped the trash up off the floors while doctors asked the hoarders how they felt about discovering a twenty-five-year-old blanket full of holes and covered in rodent droppings, or a petrified fruitcake they got from a neighbor back in 1996. Within the hour, their homes were set right and their problems solved. She knew it wasn’t that easy.
    The show was interspersed with endless commercials of what a person could take or use to make themselves better. This lotion will give you skin that shimmers and begs to be touched. That shampoo will make you a man magnet. Drug companies hawked pharmaceuticals with lists of side effects that sounded worse than the diseases themselves. Sure, you may become suicidal, but at least you can say you quit smoking. And then there was the never-ending parade of diet ads. Celebrities who’d had, in Holly’s opinion, perfectly acceptable figures to begin with were transformed into skin and bones, and now they were living the life they always dreamed of. What the hell was wrong with their lives to begin with? Holly grimaced through one more commercial, her favorite. The one about the pill that sheds the pounds magically and in record time but should only be taken by those who “seriously need to lose body fat.” Even the way the spokeswoman said the word “fat” was a comical overpronouncement of the three letters, stretching them out for full effect, emphasizing the gravity of the situation. Holly pointed the remote at the television and turned it off.
    She could see her reflection in the now-dark plasma screen, a distorted mirror image of Holly sitting on the couch. She stared into it. The image on the screen was an amorphous blob. Flesh stacked upon more flesh oozing all over the couch. The neon yellow and green from the top of the Funyuns bag between her legs was reflected with unsettling clarity. She squeezed her thighs together tightly and heard the crunching sound of the Funyuns being pulverized. Holly leaned her head back on the couch and sighed. Tomorrow, all this will change, she told herself. Tomorrow she would become the disciple of Logan Montgomery, the tallest, darkest, handsomest stranger she’d ever met. A man who was not only convinced she needed saving but was confident he could save her. She took a deep breath, trying to quell the mounting panic that accompanied the thought. What if he wasn’t as nice as he seemed that day on the plane and was really Attila the Trainer? What if he was all looks and no knowledge and ended up snapping something she needed, like her spine? What if she farted while trying to do a sit-up?
    The phone rang and Holly reeled in her fright. She threw the Funyuns on the table in front of her and took a quick sip from the Coke. She reached across to the other side of the couch to pull the handset from its cradle.
    â€œHey, girlfriend,” the cheery voice said. “How you holding up?”
    Tina Abbott had known Holly longer than anyone. Tina was a hometown girl who’d married her high school sweetheart