“Sit down in front of the TV?”

“No...”

“Eat your way through a bag of chips? A carton of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey?”

“I don’t even like Chunky Monkey.”

Olivia is gaining momentum. Her purple-black polished nails tap-tap the laminate on my desk. Her stellar eyebrows flatten. “You’re getting fat.”

The word “fat” hangs there a moment between us, pointed, sharp. Ugly. This is a full-scale assault.

For a moment nothing comes to mind, and I inhale hard, topple forward in my chair, feet clattering to stop my fall.

I check to see if anyone else has heard. This is about as low as anyone could go. She knows it. I know it. “I’m not fat.”

Surreptitiously I glance down at my lap, homing in on my thighs. They do look rather big, but that’s because I’m wearing speckled wool pants, and the fuzzy spotted texture isn’t exactly slimming. “My clothes fit fine.”

Olivia shrugs. Says nothing.

I feel all hot on the inside, hot and prickly and a little bit queasy. I move my right thigh, check the shape. It does look rather spread out on the chair. “I need to work out,” I add awkwardly. “I haven’t joined a gym since moving here.”

She shrugs again, and I look down, see my lunch still sitting on my desk: a half-eaten burrito, guacamole and sour cream oozing, obscuring the chicken and black beans.

I can picture my leg naked. Or what it must look like naked if I ever looked at myself in a full-length mirror anymore, because I avoid mirrors, especially full-length mirrors. I haven’t taken a look at myself naked in, oh, three months—ever since I moved to San Francisco and realized I couldn’t bear to look me in the eye, couldn’t bear to see what I, once so pathetically hopeful, had become.

But beyond the burrito and the mirror, it’s not all bad. I still drink Diet Coke. I’ve always drunk Diet Coke. There are limits to indulgence, and I know mine.

“The point is,” Olivia says more delicately, “you go straight home after work. You sit on your couch. Veg in front of the TV. That’s no life, and you know it.”

For a moment I say nothing, because I’m not even thinking about my new apartment in San Francisco, but about the house I left in Fresno, where until recently I’d been a brand-spanking-new wife.

The house in Old Fig Garden was originally Jean-Marc’s, a 1950s ranch that looked cozy and cottage-y with a split-rail fence and hardy yellow summer roses. After we married, I couldn’t wait to make the house mine, too, and I loved personalizing it, adding festive, feminine touches like the new cherry-sprigged dish towels from my bridal shower, hanging on towel bars in the kitchen, or the sparkly crystal vase with zinnias and yellow roses displayed on Jean-Marc’s dining table. We had new 300-thread-count sheets on the king-size bed and fluffy white-and-blue towels in the bathroom, and it was like a dollhouse. Charming. Warm. Storybook.

Turns out I wasn’t the storybook wife.

“Holly.”

Olivia’s impatience cuts, and I look up quickly, so quickly I have to bite my lip to keep the rush of emotion away.

“You moved here to start fresh.” Olivia taps her nail on my desk. “So do it.”

Olivia’s right. I’m lonely as hell, but I’ve hit the place where it’s not just a little lonely but really lonely.