Summer is so NOT in the mood for this. She already has a raging headache, but is too tired to fight Taylor off. So she is dragged down the stairs and shoved in front of a strange, but pretty handsome, guy who's dressed in dirty clothes that hang loosely on his frame. As Summer is pulled closer she also realizes that he stinks. Hasn't this guy ever heard of a shower?
When Taylor introduces the man as her ex-husband, Summer feels a mix of shock, disgust, and irritation. Did Taylor seriously sleep with this weird, smelly man? Henri-Michele seems totally unaware of Summer's instant dislike for him, as he holds out his hand and croons a "Bonjour." In spite of her disgust, Summer cannot help but feel that his voice is extremely sexy. Damn accentBut Taylor looks at Summer pleadingly, and Summer realizes that Taylor wants her to get rid of him. This is immensely unfair, Summer thinks, seeing as Taylor was the one who married then divorced him. So she mutters "Hi" then wanders rudely off to the kitchen, shooting Taylor a You're on your own sort of look as she goes.
She decides not to eat anything for breakfast except a banana. There. She has something in her stomach, and that should keep her from gorging during lunch. She feels instantly better, and suddenly realized that she hasn't tried on the clothes that she bought yesterday with Kirsten and Taylor. She'd just gotten a size small for all of them, because she knew they would fit. Now, she can't wait to see how they look on her.
Casting a glance at Taylor, she sees the other girl trying to guide Henri-Michele gently to the door, to no avail. For some unknown reason, this makes her feel even better, and she practically skips upstairs.
She happily pulls a shirt from the top of the pile of clothes that was dumped onto her closet floor last night. The shirt is light pink with tiny black dots, and black trim on the edges of the sleeves and collar. Summer pulls off her pajama top and slips the shirt over her head, then twirls to face the mirror, grinning widely...then stops and stares. She doesn't stare because she looks lovable and cute in the shirt. She stares because the pretty shirt is hanging loosely off her, looking like a cute-patterned blanket that she just threw over her torso. Not only that, but her chest looks astoundingly flat, because she hasn't yet put on her super-padded bra that makes it look as if she still has curves. To add to the horror, her collarbones are sticking way out, and her arms look like sticks.
And in spite of all this, Summer's eyes travel to her hips. They look surprisingly wide. Too wide. Her butt looks too big for the rest of her as well. Horrified, Summer cautiously drags her eyes up to study her face. She doesn't like what she sees. Like her hips and butt, her face is not thin. Her cheeks do not have that modelish, slightly sunken look that she craves.
Summer rips off the shirt, replaces her pajama top, and crawls into bed to cry.
x x x x x x x x x x
They have not even reached the house before Kirsten starts to feel sick. Chemo is different than she expected, and part of what she expected was more time before she starts to feel nauseous. Still, the nausea isn't overly threatening, so she resists the urge to scream at Sandy to Pull the car over, dammit!
She's also feeling increasingly tired. She wants to curl up in a ball and sleep and not wake up for ten years. Instead, she yawns and leans her head on the window, clutching her purse tightly. She closes her eyes and focuses on the memory of last night's dinner, then realizes that this is probably not the best train of thought, because food has the startling tendency to make nausea worse.
Seth and Ryan are waiting for her. They are attempting to play video games but are failing miserably, to distracted to concentrate on killing ninjas or whatever they do on those games. She manages to send them a grateful, (hopefully) encouraging smile before ambling upstairs to sleep.
She is woken by the violent need to puke. Kirsten hates puking, because it is the combination of everything that she was brought up to hate- it is dirty and undignified and something she has no control over. She shoots out of bed, skidding into the bathroom with barely enough time to kneel before the toilet.
It hurts, and the pain pisses Kirsten off. She does not deserve this, and she knows it. She mentally spits out a string of curse words.
Even before she has finished retching her guts out, Sandy has arrived to hold back her hair for her. And when she is done, he holds her close and rather than complaining about her breath smelling bad (which she was sure he would) he assures her that everything will be okay.
She silently prays that he is right.
x x x x x x x x x x
Julie starts feeling better around two o'clock, so she lugs her briefcase out and starts rifling through the folders within. She doesn't want to get drastically behind on her work; not only because it would fatally affect New Match, but because she doesn't want to disappoint Kirsten.
Thing is, Julie is still utterly clueless about matching people up for blind dates. She herself has never been on an actual blind date, so how to go about setting one up is foreign to her. After about half an hour of going through the folders, she is muttering complaints to herself, angry that she has gotten stuck with running a business by herself while she has a cold.
Then she immediately reprimands herself. It's not like she has it that bad; Kirsten is most certainly the worse off out of the two of them.
This thought forces her to continue working for the rest of the day, stopping only once for lunch. She works until almost nine, when everyone else is getting ready for bed and it's getting dark out and the moon is appearing, sending slivers of light through her bedroom window. She sets the folders aside and switches off her lamp.
She feels good, like she accomplished something today, and she falls asleep quickly and peacefully.