Meg Cabot - Big Boned

Except the U.S. government.

Well, I guess a couple that runs together stays together…

Only not, because he’s like five laps ahead of me.

Make that six.

How did I let him talk me into this? Oh, wait, I know how… I just want him to like me. And since he’s a fit, health-conscious person, I want him to think I’m one, too. It’s amazing I’ve managed to keep him going this long… almost three months. Twelve weeks the guy and I have been going out, and he still thinks I’m the kind of girl who runs 5Ks in the morning for fun, and not the kind of girl who takes baths instead of showers because I’m too lazy to stand up for as long as it takes to wash my hair.

This, undoubtedly, is due to the fact that he takes off his glasses before we go to bed.

Cooper tried to warn me, of course, in his own subtle way. He ran into us while Tad and I were grabbing lunch at Zen Palate one day. I’ve never brought Tad home because… well, Cooper never brings his lady friends home. And I’m pretty sure he has some, because there are occasionally messages on the answering machine that can’t be explained any other way… a woman’s voice, purring sexily,Coop, it’s Kendra. Call me. That kind of thing.

But I hadn’t been able to avoid making introductions at Zen Palate, which Tad goes to because it’s vegetarian, and Cooper goes to because—well, to tell you the truth, I have no idea why Cooper was there that day.

Anyway, later, I hadn’t been able to resist asking Cooper what he’d thought of Tad. I guess this part of me was totally hoping that, now that Cooper had seen me all happy with a killer Frisbee—playing hottie, he’d regret telling me I needed a rebound guy, and that he didn’t want to be it.

But all Cooper had asked was, considering Tad was a vegetarian, what on earth we could possibly have in common.

Which I found sort of insulting. I mean, there’s lots of stuff I care about besides food.

And, okay, Tad isn’t really interested in any of them. Like, he’s more into the Cartesian plane, and I’m more into the Cartoon Network. He likes Neil Young, and I like Neil Diamond (as an ironic pop culture figure, not to listen to. Except “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” and only when I’m alone). I like movies with explosions in them. He likes movies with subtitles in them.

That kind of thing.

But still. Who goes around asking people that kind of thing? What they have in common as a couple, I mean? How rude is that? I wanted to ask Cooper what he thought WE, as in he and I, had in common as a couple… until I remembered we’re not a couple.

The scary thing is that Cooper and I have tons of things in common… we both like good food (such as Nathan’s hot dogs, oysters on the half shell, and Peking duck, to name a few), and good music (such as blues, all jazz but fusion, classical, opera, R and B, any kind of rock except for heavy metal, although I have a secret soft spot for Aerosmith), and good wine (well, okay, I can’t really tell the difference between a good wine and a bad one, but I do know the good stuff doesn’t taste like salad dressing or give me a headache).

And, of course, really bad TV. Which I hadn’t known Cooper liked, too, until recently. I’d come across him in a moment when he’d clearly thought he was alone in the house. He’d reached hastily for the remote, attempting to switch to CNN before I got a look. But I saw. Oh, I saw.

“Shame on you, Cooper,” I’d said… though inwardly, of course, I’d been thrilled. “The Golden Girls?”

“Shut up,” he’d replied affably.

“Seriously,” I’d said. Because who doesn’t love The Golden Girls? Well, except for Tad, who doesn’t own a TV (I know. I know, okay?). “Which one are you?”

He’d just looked at me like I was insane. But not for the reason I’d thought. Because it turned out he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Dorothy, of course.”

My heart had nearly stopped. “Me, too,” I’d murmured. And then I’d settled onto the couch beside him, to watch.

Cooper and I have a lot in common—even down to the fact that we both can’t stand to see a social injustice go unpunished (or a crime go unsolved), even when we might have to risk our own lives in order to make things right. Not to mention, we are both somewhat emotionally estranged from our families.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not totally into Tad. I am.

I’m just maybe not into running with him.

Which was why, when Tad passed me for like the eighth time, and slowed down to ask, “Heather? Are you doing okay?” I suddenly developed a limp.

“Um,” I said. “I might have pulled something. If it’s okay with you, I was thinking maybe we could call it a day, and go back to your place and take a shower. Then I’ll take you out to breakfast. They’re serving Belgian waffles in the café today.”

It turns out you should never underestimate the appeal of Belgian waffles to a vegetarian killer Frisbee—playing tenure track assistant professor. Even one who is trying to get his girlfriend to embrace physical fitness.

Then again, it could have been the shower. Tad is convinced it is environmentally unsound for two people to waste water by showering separately when they could shower together.

I have never been a big fan of the shower until now. And the fact that Tad has to take his glasses off before he gets in, so I don’t have to huddle against the wall in an effort to hide my cellulite? Well, that’s just an added plus.

Especially when Tad, as we’re soaping each other’s chests, asks, a little diffidently, “Heather. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Oh?” It’s hard to keep your voice neutral when a guy is massaging your naughty bits with a washcloth. Even if he can’t really see said naughty bits due to being extremely myopic.

“Yeah. Do you have any, er, plans this summer?”

“You mean, like… for a weekend share, or something?” Is he asking if I want to split a rental on the shore with him? Well, this is awkward. I am so not a beach girl. Because beach means bathing suit, and bathing suit equals sarong, which equals social awkwardness when it comes to everyone asking,When are you going to take your sarong off so you can join us in the water?

“No,” he says. “I meant… could you maybe take a few weeks off?”

“I don’t know,” I say slowly. A few weeks at the beach? How can I plead disfiguring case of heat rash and therefore cannot remove sarong for a few weeks? “I’ll only have accrued about a week of vacation time since I started… ” Would he believe me if I say I’m allergic to sand fleas?

“This’ll take longer than a week,” Tad murmurs, as his hand moves even lower. “What about a leave of absence? Do you think you could wrangle one of those?”

“I guess I could ask.” What’s going on here? I mean, I know what’s going on downthere. But what’s going on up there, in my boyfriend’s head? This is sounding less and less like a weekend beach share and more and more like… I don’t even know. “How long are we talking about? What have you got in mind? Cross-country road trip?”

Tad smiles. “Not exactly. And actually… Forget I said anything. I want to ask you when the timing’s right. And right now, the timing is definitely… not… right.”

The timing was perfectly right, if you asked me. Just not for anything other than… well. Good clean fun.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit flustered. What on earth could Tad want to ask me—but only when the timing’s right—that would require me taking a significant amount of time off from work this summer?

Hmmm… what… no…

No. Definitely. Not. Not that. It couldn’t be. We’d only been dating for twelve weeks!

On the other hand… I did go running with him this morning. If that’s not a sign of commitment, I don’t know what is.

Still, it’s the little things that count most in life. It really is.

Looking back, it’s funny (strange funny. Not ha ha funny) that at the exact moment I was thinking this, my new boss was taking his first sip of morning coffee…

And dying.

I’m feeling pretty good about things as I’m heading back toward my office after breakfast. Yeah, okay, Pete, the security guard, snickered at my elaborately casual good-bye to Tad as he left the building—me: “See ya.” Tad: “Later.” I guess a few New York College employees might be on to us by now. Certainly Magda, when she saw that both my hair and Tad’s was still damp (I have to remember to buy a hair dryer to keep at his place, along with the change of clothes I’ve been stashing in the single bottom drawer he so generously allows me to use), could not seem to be able to repress a smirk.

But whatever. It’s not like they’re going to tell anyone. Although maybe we should be more careful about breakfasting in the residence hall. What if another one of Tad’s students should happen to show up there one morning, and see us sharing a grapefruit half? That would be pretty hard to explain away as a private tutoring session.

The one person I definitely have to be careful around, where Tad is concerned, is my new boss, Dr. Owen Veatch (PhD). Owen was transferred from his position as ombudsman to the president’s office to interim director of Fischer Hall, while a countrywide search is being conducted in order to find a suitable permanent replacement for Tom, my last boss, who got a promotion.

You wouldn’t think it would turn out to be so hard to find someone to run a seven-hundred-bed residence hall in exchange for thirty grand a year and free housing in Greenwich Village, which has some of the highest rents in the country.

But when there’ve been several murders in that residence hall over the course of a mere nine months, garnering that building the nickname Death Dorm, you’d be surprised how few candidates express a willingness to work there.

It’s a shame, because Fischer Hall is actually a kick-ass building. It’s one of the biggest on Washington Square Park, and still maintains a lot of its mid-nineteenth-century grandeur, with its marble floors and fire-placed lounges. I mean, aside from the fact that most of the rooms have been carved up into double-triples (two bedrooms adjoined by a bathroom, with three residents in each room, making for a total of six students sharing one toilet), and the other day I found human waste (of the scatological variety) in one of the ornately carved mahogany phone booths in the lobby.

I can’t imagine why every higher ed grad in the country isn’t clamoring for the position.

Anyway, in the meantime, we’re saddled with Owen, who’s totally nice and all, but super old school. Like, he wears a suit to work every day. In a place where people poop in phone booths. Go figure.

And he’s way strict about following college guidelines for every little thing. Like, he actually said something to me when we ran out of the paper for the photocopier, and I sent our graduate assistant, Sarah, down the hall to borrow some from the dining hall office. Owen was all “Heather, I do hope you don’t make a habit of borrowing supplies from other offices. Part of your job is to make sure our office is at all times fully stocked with the items we need.”

Um. Okay.

Plus, Owen’s way involved in the current campus brouhaha involving the graduate student workers unionizing in order to protest cuts in their pay and medical benefits packages. He’s supposed to be acting liaison between the students and the president’s office—which basically means that half the time he’s in his office in the residence hall, he’s arguing over school policy with angry graduate students who don’t even live here.

So you can see why I’m extra careful to keep my relationship with Tad on the down low, with Owen around.

Which is a shame, because Tad’s really helped me to become a better employee. Not only do I make fewer math mistakes when I’m calculating payroll these days, but I’m always a few minutes early to work on the mornings after I’ve spent the night at Tad’s, because Tad’s college-subsidized studio apartment is a block closer to Fischer Hall than Cooper’s brownstone. My best friend Patty wants to know how I managed to find and hook up with the one man who lives closer to my place of employment than I do, and just how large a part this played in my decision to pursue him romantically.

My best friend Patty is surprisingly cynical, for a happily married young mother.