Page 109 of Searching for Sadie
"Dude, watch it," he said in a simple warning.
"What?" Lucas looked at him surprised.
"If you don't want to solidify your villain role right now, I would shut up," another guy warned him.
"And you're an idiot," the other guys said next to him. "I mean look at her, she's a knockout."
Damn fucking right, she's a knockout, Lucas thought as he watched the drama play out.
"And don't put this on her," said one of the women next to Sadie. "You've been going behind her back this whole time. You were trying to get us to be on your side, and when none of uswould you decided to get back in Sadie’s good graces, but luckily she can see right through you."
"This is bullshit! All of this fucking bullshit!"
"LANGUAGE! We are taking a break."
Once the cameras cut off Ryan stood from the couch and started to make his way over to Sadie. Lucas stood, ready to find a way to storm the stage. But before he could, one of the guys wrapped his arms around Ryan holding him back.
"Let go of me."
"Walk it off, bro."
"Fuck you," Ryan said as he turned and shoved the man.
Then two security guards took to the stage and ushered Ryan out as the crowd erupted into applause.
In a few minutes they were rolling again.
"Well, wasn't that a tense moment. Ryan has left the show and won't be joining us again. Sadie, do you have anything you would like to say before we finish?"
"I do," Sadie said as she sat up and looked at the camera. "I want to say this to all the women out there who look like me, because there are a lot of us. People and the world around you will try to tell you that you are not worthy of love as you are. They will try to tell you that you need to shrink yourself, cut yourself into more digestible pieces to find love. The diet industry is a billion-dollar industry that has to make us hate ourselves to generate profit. That is disgusting. It shapes the way we feel about ourselves and the way we are perceived by others."
Sadie licked her lips and looked around the stage before continuing. "All of us here set off on a journey to find out if love was blind. It would be easy to assume after my experience that it's not. But who can say what the world would look like if they didn't spend so much time and effort making us hate ourselves. If we could find value in the person and not the body. I'm notgoing to say that would have changed the outcome of my story, someone an ass is just as ass."
At that the audience gave a little rumble of laughter.
"But if we could change those things, it would give us all a fighting chance. Now, I can't change the diet industry. None of us can do that alone. The only thing I can do is refuse to shrink. I will not make myself smaller for other people. I will just find a place and the people who accept me for who I am. And maybe if we all do that a little bit more, we can make a stand."
She paused and everyone in the whole building was stunned in attention.
"We can show them we are all deserving of love as we are. Just as we are right now. That is what I hope some people can take away from my storyline."
At that the whole place erupted in applause.
After that the show wrapped up quickly. The cast was all stopping her to talk, but she felt so strange. It was like the feeling of floating and looking in on herself in her own life. She had never intended to become the voice for fat women when she started this journey. She was just hoping to find love and have a little adventure.
But then as she made her way into the green room, she saw a man standing there beaming at her, and she realized that is exactly what she'd done. While it wasn’t the adventure, she thought she would take, it was the biggest adventure of her life, and the culmination could end in her dream job and the love of her life.
Her feet carried her as fast as they could to Lucas who just swept her up in her arms and swung her around.
"You're a badass," he said, still holding her tight.
When he finally set her down, she smiled up at him. The love shining back in his hazel eyes settled all the leftover anxiety she'd been holding on to since the show. "Let's go home."
"Yeah," he said before kissing the top of her head. "Let's go home."
CHAPTER 41
LUCAS
