Misadventures of a Curvy Girl (Misadventures #18)
Sierra Simone
Chapter One
Ireland
The car was my first mistake.
I can admit that now, sitting here in the mud, my windshield almost too splattered with the stuff to make out the herd of cows chewing curiously at me on the other side of the fence.
With a low curse—and a glare back at the judgmental cows—I fumble for my phone, thinking I’ll call someone. Anyone. A friend. A tow truck. An Uber. But when the screen lights up, I realize there’s no LTE out here. There’s not even 3G.
Not even 3G.
No cell service at all, actually. I throw myself back against my seat and listen to the sporadic drumming of rain on my roof. When my coworkers back at Typeset—the social media strategy firm I work for—heard I was heading out to the Flint Hills in my Prius, they laughed and teased, and a couple even offered me their trucks, but I refused. My little blue car may look like a piece of candy, but it’s never let me down in the city. Not once. I didn’t see any reason it would let me down just because I was a couple of hours west.
I see the reason now, I assure you. Two words: dirt roads.
I get out of the car again, pushing open my umbrella to shield me from the petulant, spitting rain while I walk around my vehicle to confirm for a final time that yes, all four tires are stuck deeply in the mud. It’s rained the past three days straight—something not even worth noticing back in Kansas City except maybe to whine about how it slowed morning traffic—but out here in farm country, the rain definitely makes itself known. The roads are nothing but slicks of rough mud, and the lonely trees look huddled and limp. The long fingers of summer grass crowding up along the side of the road are battered down by the days of rain, and the wet emerald stalks peppered with yellow coneflowers and purple spiderwort look just as sodden and battered.
It is beautiful, though. And for a minute, I look up from my mud-bound car and just take it in—the heady abundance of green grass and wildflowers, the brooding sweep of the hills in the near distance. The line of black clouds in the west, promising rain and wind and danger. It’s like something that would be printed in a calendar, and the moment I think the thought, I dive back into my car for the expensive Nikon camera in the passenger seat. And then awkwardly crawl back out, abandoning my umbrella so I can capture the moment before it vanishes—the energy, the quietly decadent riot of wildflowers, the promise of abundant prairie summer.
I take as many pictures as I can, trying to pick my way through the mud in my ballet flats, and for a brief moment, I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d taken that photography scholarship out of state instead of staying local and studying marketing all those years ago.
I wanted to see the world once. I wanted to be one of those photographers who tramps all over Patagonia and Punjab, who snaps arresting photos of little Alpine villages and intrepid Antarctic outposts. And maybe if I took enough gorgeous, stirring photos, no one would’ve cared the woman behind the camera wasn’t gorgeous or stirring herself.
Stop it, Ireland.
This is exactly the kind of thought I am done entertaining. I turn to the car, seeing my reflection in the window just as I knew I would. I make myself look at it. Really look. Not the half-sideways glance I used to give, as if my view bounced off any mirrored surface without me actually seeing myself. No. I look, and I take in the pale twenty-four-year-old woman standing there. Ireland Mills.
She has dark hair almost to her waist because she loves having long hair.
A girl of your size really should have shorter hair.
She has wide hips and thighs in a formfitting pencil skirt, and a thin silk blouse that does nothing to hide the shape of her soft, swelling breasts.
Don’t you think that’s more of a “goal” outfit? For when you lose weight?
A mouth in lavender lipstick, the sweet color visible even in the faint reflection.
I wouldn’t draw attention to your face if I were you. I would want to blend in.
Pursing my attention-drawing mouth, I raise the camera and take a picture of myself. It’s not a coincidence all the negative thoughts in my head have my sister’s voice behind them, and I’m done listening. I’m done listening to her, and I’m done listening to my ex-boyfriend, who dumped me last month when I told him I stopped my eternal diet and dropped my gym membership so I could go to dance classes instead.
“But those classes aren’t designed for people to lose weight,” Brian explained patiently, as if there was no way I could understand something as complex as a hobby. “They’re for fun.” Then his expression changed, as if he were about to give me a present. “How about you keep going to the gym, and then if you meet your weight goals, you can take the dance classes as a reward? I bet it’s not even too late to reverse your gym cancellation.”
He smiled benevolently at me then, like he’d just solved all my problems. Maybe a year ago I would have done anything he asked because I’d been so grateful anyone could want to be with me—because I wanted to be this better, skinnier version of myself that he seemed to envision.
But something shifted deep in my brain, and while I didn’t know exactly what it was, I knew I was over it. I was over the diets that didn’t work. I was over the grueling gym schedule that left no time for fun. I was over hiding behind my friends whenever we took pictures. I was over shopping for print tunics at Blouse Barn.