Page 70 of Always Salty

“But, he made steak! Dammit, I’m tired of steak,” she grumbled. “We’re eating in a calorie deficit. I’m trying to eat under twenty-three hundred calories a day, so I chose to eat two thousand calories a day.”

“Aren’t you still breastfeeding, though?” Brecken took a large bite of her steak, which she’d just massacred with her steak knife. “That should give you a few extra calories to play with.”

“Yeah,” she grumbled. “But I was pretty much done anyway. Making milk is hard,” she glared at Brecken. “Not everyone is making as much as you are.”

Brecken raised her hands. “I was just asking.”

I sensed that the milk production thing was a sore subject, so I gently steered it in a different direction.

“Back to the diet,” I said. “Aren’t you still training for a marathon?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “Because Milena is making me. I hate running. But since I’m doing it, and I never do anything half-ass, I set a lofty goal. My ultimate goal is to make it to Boston. I have to shave forty minutes off my time to make that happen.”

“She wants to go to Boston with me, so that means that I have to run faster, too.” Milena snickered. “Glad she set a goal for both of us…”

“Then you need fuel to feed that,” I pointed out. “You can’t just be in a calorie deficit and expect to put up times that’ll get you qualified for Boston.”

“I know,” she sighed. “But I hate looking at myself in a mirror.”

That made my stomach clench.

That was part of why I’d hated nursing.

Sure, you got to help people, but you saw people at their lowest. And I didn’t like seeing people at their most vulnerable. It felt like an invasion of privacy.

“You had a baby,” I pointed out. “That’s the biggest accomplishment in life for most women. I mean, you grew an entire person inside of your body. One that was created with love. That’s worth every single wrinkle, stretch mark and fat roll.”

She sighed again. “When you put it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“I mean, getting healthy will help you with your goals of Boston,” I pointed out. “But doing it in a way that you are happy will be the best for you and your family.”

“I have to stick to this for at least two more weeks because I bet Haze that I could make it a month,” she grumbled.

The table erupted in laughter.

“What, exactly, were the terms?” I asked as my phone buzzed, feeling no guilt for pulling my phone out despite no one else having theirs out.

I glanced at the picture Dima had just sent me and giggled.

“I have to be able to stay away from sugar for at least thirty days,” Nastya answered.

“Like, sugar as in sugar that is white or brown? Or sugar that’s honey? Or sugar that’s in tortillas?” I asked curiously as I swiped to the next picture.

“At the time, it was only sugar in its raw form, and sugar that’s in cookies, cakes, and pies,” she reported. “But I can see you splitting hairs over there. But first, tell us what has that huge smile on your face.”

I showed them the photo of Dima, decked out in all black, with a fluffy white kitten on his back.

Nastya smiled. “Tell him to bring the cat home.”

I did.

Me:

Nastya wants you to bring the cat home to her.

Dima:

She wants me to steal someone’s cat?

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