Milk Fed - Melissa Broder Page 0,18

in there.

“Oh, okay,” he said. “You all right?”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said again, trying to suck the giant ball of bar farther back in my mouth. There was no way I could swallow it without choking. It had the consistency of a Tootsie Roll. Instinctively, once it reached my molars, I started chewing.

“Do you always eat in the bathroom?” he asked.

CHAPTER 16

“Where’s Adiv?” I asked, as Miriam greeted me at the counter with a big smile.

“Packing his stuff,” she said.

“Oh?”

“He’s going back to Israel. Basic training. He’s going to be serving in the IDF.”

“Oh.”

The IDF?! The situation was more alarming than I’d imagined. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising. Adiv did seem like the “follows orders” type. He took commands well with a yogurt machine at least, which was more than could be said of Miriam.

“Listen,” I said, before she went over to the machine. “I only want the yogurt to the top of the cup, no higher.”

I said it firmly and solemnly.

“Okay,” she said, shrugging.

She filled the cup, exceeding the rim by a few centimeters—probably out of spite.

“What toppings do you want?” she asked.

So we were still playing this game.

“I don’t want any toppings,” I said.

“Didn’t you enjoy the sprinkles last time?”

Oh, I’d enjoyed them, all right.

“They were fine,” I said. “But I prefer it plain.”

“Maybe try a different topping this time,” she said.

“No, that’s okay.”

“How about this? Why don’t you let me make you something special? If you hate it, I will just give you your plain cup to the rim, exactly the way you want it.”

This was coercion, intimidation by butterscotch. I wanted to tell her to go away, that she was ruining something secure and delicious in my world. But another part of me —that same wild part that had lapped up the sprinkles, the demon of my old insatiable hunger—felt liberated by her enthusiasm.

I opened my mouth and said, “Okay.”

And when I said, “Okay,” Miriam said “Okay” too.

She gave me a huge smile, her face flashing like a candle. I felt my anxiety dissipate. Gone was the fear that she was out to ruin me, the suspicion that she wanted to disappear me from myself, to make me hate myself, to send me spinning out into infinity, a nothing, a blob, so big I could be seen only in fragments, so unwieldy I could never be held, just an overwhelming void, just devastated, just dead. I looked at her smile, and I thought: love.

She moved silently to the toppings bar in her long blue dress, the same dress she wore the first time I’d seen her. I traced the many curves of her body around and around all the way to the floor. I wondered what she was going to do. I was scared. How many times had I made sundaes in my mind, never thinking the fantasies would actually be realized? I’d never even wanted the fantasies to be realized. I’d thought it was safe to fantasize, because my inner wall was so strong. My wall was thick, under my control. But now she was lifting the metal lid off the hot fudge with her pale hand, this sorceress at the cauldron, and not a low-calorie cauldron either, but regular hot fudge. She was taking up the ladle.

I watched her spoon three large puddles of fudge on top, the yogurt plateauing beneath the warm sauce, the sauce dripping down the sides, wildly volcanic. After each ladle, I thought she was going to stop, but she did not stop, she added a fourth, then a fifth ladle of fudge, the yogurt going totally Vesuvius. She paused for a moment, then dusted the entire thing with a layer of chopped peanuts. I was stunned. Never in my topping daydreams would I have thought to incorporate a peanut. She finished with whipped cream—just a dollop—and then a drizzle of strawberry syrup on top of that.

Miriam had made me an ice cream sundae. It was the perfect sundae you might see at a 1940s soda fountain or in a vintage housekeeping magazine. It was a throwback, food of another era, time-traveling to the Yo!Good counter. There was an innocence about it, a childlike quality. It was a treat that a child would receive from a caring older person who wanted to reward them just for existing.

When she handed me the cup, our hands touched. Her fingers were incredibly soft.

“Thank you,” I said.

I didn’t know what to do. I had forgotten how to say no, but I had also forgotten how to