The Husband Diet (A Romantic Comedy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

my two-year stint of slimness when I had been a size fourteen. And even then he’d had something to say about it. He’d told me I was pretty, but that I’d needed to lose just a tiny bit of weight.
    Lose weight? What a joke. Ira didn’t understand me. I was born hungry and nothing could fill me. I liked to blame my mother for never loving me the way she loved Judy and Vince, my siblings. I liked to blame my love for cooking, or Le Tre Donne , my aunts’ Italian restaurant. Or even the desserts section at my local supermarket. But in truth, eating made me happy. It comforted me and made me feel like everything was all right. And up until then I hadn’t given a damn about my weight. Inside I was still me. And I still managed to dress nicely thanks to the Plus Size sections in Macy’s.
    But it was soon becoming obvious to me, once my pink shades had dropped off my nose, that the weight was starting to really weigh me down. I was a busy working mom who could never go fast enough, with never a moment to spare, always running late, always dropping things on the way to the car and wheezing when I bent to pick them up. Of course, if I lost some weight I could actually keep up with the kids and face anything they threw my way.
    Who knows, maybe I was hoping I’d lose weight out of sheer force of concentration and become this irresistible woman that Ira couldn’t help but make love to. Because dieting was hard. I was always too hungry and there was always amazing food around me. If I didn’t have time to bake it or go back to Little Italy, there was always the shop around the corner.
    “I’d say you’re at Stage Four,” Paul diagnosed, which, according to his scale of one to five in troubled relationships, was just before divorce.
    “Nonsense; we’re just in a rut.”
    “And you’re in denial.”
    “Is it really because I’m big?” I asked. Ira had spelled it out to me but it still hurt to believe.
    He shot me a skeptical glance. “Sunshine, only a real man deserves a real woman. That’s my official version. My real opinion is Ira’s always been a shit.”
    “That’s not true,” I countered. When we’d met, Ira was different. He was sexy, alluring, with so many goals in life. “He doesn’t even want to go to Tuscany anymore.”
    Paul had been helping me trawl for farmhouses through an Italian connection of his in Siena, but so far nothing was affordable. He’d suggested settling for a normal house in the country, but I’d put my foot down. No more settling for me. I wanted the real deal.
    “Doesn’t want to go to Tuscany?” Paul echoed. “The guy is beyond helpless. What are you waiting for to split the scene?”
    I stopped to admire the doughnuts in the bakery window. Paul tugged on my arm. “Sunshine, no .”
    I cast a longing look at him, my best friend, the one person I could chew the breeze and be myself with, something we rarely did around anyone else.
    “Just one,” I pleaded. It had been ages. Well, two days, really. Oh, the chocolate glaze! “What’s one measly doughnut? Besides—whose side are you on? Why can’t I be big and be loved all the same? You love me.”
    “Sunshine,” Paul said. “I love you, but I’m never gonna have sex with you. You know I don’t do women.”
    “If you weren’t gay, would you? Do me?”
    Paul chuckled. “And you need to ask? Of course I would.”
    “Even though I’m big?” I insisted.
    “Of course! You’re beautiful—like the Renaissance women, soft and squeezable. Who wouldn’t want you?”
    “Then don’t give me a hard time if I want a doughnut.”
    Paul looked at me, his eyes shining with what I knew was compassion, and sighed. “All right, but only if you promise to leave him.”
    “Paul! All I want is a damn doughnut.”
    “And all I want is for you to be happy. Erica, you can’t go on like this. The kids can’t go on like this. You need to send him to hell once and for all.”
    As if it was easy. I remember the old Ira and our