mom, and food represented the love she wasn’t giving me.
“I love this song. I want it to play at my wedding someday,” I said through a mouthful of dough.
Bruno smirked a weird “I’m Euro” smirk but said nothing.
Once I’d ingested every carb on the table, I excused myself to the bathroom. I made sure I was alone, then proceeded to use my entire fist to plunge up the five pounds of flour currently sitting in my stomach. After my recent stint in rehab, I had successfully convinced Bruno and everyone around me that I’d beaten anorexia. The truth was, rehab made me the best anorexic ever . Half the hospital was skinnier than me (annoying), so I had to learn new tricks in order to keep up. One of those tricks was bulimia. According to my then roommate, who’d recently been put on a feeding tube and looked great, you could eat whatever you wanted as long as you threw it all back up within thirty minutes of swallowing. Any longer would result in absorption of sugars, fats, and feelings.
Working yourself into vomiting feels kind of like working yourself into orgasm. You basically rub back and forth along the back of your throat until you explode. Once you are finished, you’re left with a nose full of snot, the worst breath in the world, and an overall sense of euphoria. Eventually my behavior led to the loss of my period, most of my hair, and my entire social circle (made up of two people). But like all addictions, when you are in them, they seem like the best idea in the world.
I quickly washed my hands up to my elbows, blew my nose, wiped the tears from my eyes, and walked back to the table. When I returned, a chocolate lava cake covered in a mountain of whipped cream was waiting. Suspecting nothing, I watched as Bruno stood up to pull out my chair.
“Ich liebe dich so sehr mein schatz,” Bruno professed.
“Ich dich auch,” I replied, locking eyes with the lava cake.
Just then, Etta James’s “At Last” kicked in again, only this time louder.
I looked over to the DJ, who seemed to be staring directly at me. As the music continued, Bruno took a deep breath, rolled out of his chair, and crawled over to me on his knees.
“Wha—? What are you doing?” I was scared to hear his answer.
“Jen, will you be engaged to me?” He opened up a small box that must have been hiding in his ass. Inside the box was a small white gold band with a tiny sapphire embedded between two diamond chips. Now, look, I didn’t want to get engaged regardless of what kind of ring Bruno had. But, come on, diamond chips? This felt like some kind of cheap move my dad would pull. The only other time I’d seen diamonds that small was when my father bought me studs for my eighth birthday instead of the dog I’d been begging for. A week into wearing them, the diamonds slipped backwards through my ear holes and were gone forever.
“Well?” asked Bruno, looking back for support from the sea of strangers awaiting my response.
“I … I hate you,” I said.
Before I elaborated, Bruno interpreted my “I hate you” to be less of an “I don’t want to do this” and more of an “Oh shucks, you got me,” and forced the ring down my swollen, bulimic finger.
The crowd erupted in applause.
“No, wait, I can’t do this,” I whispered.
Bruno looked at me in utter disbelief, his hand still covered in the whipped cream he no doubt planned to plant on my nose, then lick off with a kiss. He got up from his knee and sat down quietly as the cruise pulled back into port.
As we disembarked, we were bombarded by pats on the back and congratulatory high fives. Bruno refused to look at me. We walked silently to the nearest cab and jumped in. Neither of us spoke a word until we were back at my mom’s apartment.
When I opened the door, my mom and her meathead boyfriend were waiting for us.
“Show us the ring, you engaged gal!” she said.
This was irritating on two levels: one, the fact that my mom aided in Bruno’s ambush; and
Laurie Kellogg, L. L. Kellogg