She was breathing too hard, her ample chest rising and falling. Her head was a mess, such a mixture of emotions. She was angry, confused, flattered, and irritated. Had he really been asking her out? No, guys like Ryker didn’t ask girls like her out. Hot, tattooed men liked the skinny, blonde, cheerleader types.
Everything she was not.
Chapter Four
Furious with herself, Jenna shut the motel room door on Ryker’s retreating back, and turned to face the room. Frustrated energy coursed through her body, making her want to shout and punch things. But instead she would put her anger to good use and take her pent up energy out on the room. Her eyes scoured every surface, mentally working out the order in which she needed to start cleaning things. Germs from higher surfaces would float down onto lower surfaces when she wiped them, so she always started higher.
Bending to one of her bags, she pulled open the zipper and took out a couple of large plastic bags, similar to those favored by dry-cleaners. The bags contained her bed sheets, and she got to work, pulling the motel supplied sheets off the bed, checking the mattress for any stomach-turning stains, and then remaking the bed with her own bedding. She even carried her own pillow with her, unable to bring herself to sleep with her face on something so many others must have breathed and drooled into.
With the bed made, she got to work on the surfaces, cleaning the shelves, the lamp stands, the television remote, and the telephone—though she doubted she’d ever need to use the thing. Her antibacterial wipes found every surface she would touch, including the door handles and the light switches. Finally, she wiped everything down in the basic, but otherwise clean, bathroom.
She disposed of the empty packet of antibacterial wipes, together with all the used wipes, in the trash.
And then she allowed herself to rest, but not for long. Her whole body would be covered in the germs from the day, and she needed to wash.
Jenna undressed, leaving her clothes in a pile on the floor, and went naked into the bathroom. She reached around the old shower curtain, wishing she’d been able to do a better job of it than just wiping it down, and switched on the faucet. The water quickly warmed, and she climbed beneath it. Using her own toiletries, she soaped down every inch of skin and then shampooed her hair. She had her own towels, though they were starting to get a little threadbare from all the use they got, but even so, she rinsed herself off, and used one towel to create a turban around her long hair, and the other to wrap around her body.
She rubbed herself dry and went to stand in front of the full length mirror. This was her obsession, her regime, which she conducted at least once a day, if not more if the situation allowed.
Jenna let the towel drop to the floor and stood, staring at her body in the mirror. Her face was okay, she didn’t mind her face—even if it did cause people to make comments along the lines of ‘you’d be so pretty if you lost a bit of weight,’ and, ‘you have such a pretty face,’ as if highlighting that the rest of her looked like crap would make her feel any better.
Maybe she could lose some weight if she really tried. But what was the point? It wasn’t just the weight she had to deal with. The weight wasn’t the main thing making her body ugly. Anyway, she didn’t have much else in her life now except the few small comforts of the food she enjoyed, wine, and chocolate.
She assumed most women who hated their bodies avoided mirrors at all costs, but she used the mirror as a form of punishment.
Jenna studied every inch of herself. She cupped her large, heavy breasts in her hands, lifting them up to imagine what they would look like if they were round and perky like the women in the magazines men seemed to love. She sucked in her stomach as best she could, then let it out again with a huff. She grabbed the folds of flesh around her middle, pinching the rolls as if she could cut them off with pretend scissor fingers. She twisted to look over her shoulder, at the further folds mid-way down her back, and the expanse of her backside, at the thickness of her thighs and the dimples that covered them.
Once her inspection of her fat was complete, her gaze moved to the huge, twisted scar that ran from the mid-point of one side of her back, right around her waist, to just above her groin. The doctors had done the best they could to stitch her back together, but the scar still appeared like a giant red and white welt, as if she’d literally been cut in two. That wasn’t far from the truth. The metal of the passenger door had folded upon the truck’s impact and sliced into her torso. She’d barely survived. Several days of surgeries had followed, during which she’d lost three liters of blood, together with one of her kidneys and her spleen. She’s also lost one of her ovaries. The doctors had told her she would still go on to live a full life, as long as she was careful to avoid infection and didn’t put her one remaining kidney under too much stress. They’d also told her she should consider not waiting too long before having children. Only having one ovary, plus the other stresses her body was under, meant getting pregnant and staying pregnant would be harder for her.