Page 4 of Burn Falls
I’m bailing on Margarita Friday. I can’t button my fucking jeans!
A few seconds later, she texted me back:
Put some leggings on and suck it up!
I’m not eating ever again.
Valencia:
First of all, you get hangry when you don’t eat, so don’t do that. Second of all, it’s the holidays. People always gain a few pounds. No biggie.
I groaned and texted her skinny ass back:
Fine, but tonight is the last time we have Margarita Friday. I’m dieting when I get home from visiting my parents.
Another new year was fast approaching. Therefore, another resolution would be made that I wouldn’t stick with. Not because I couldn’t, but because I had no willpower when it came to food, and the thought of exercise was enough to get my heart racing. I’d done it all before: the gym, the salads, starving myself. And while it had all worked temporarily, something always happened to make me quit.
It was a never-ending battle.
Growing up, I was skinny and ate home cooked meals every night. I was a track star in high school and college, always coming in first for the 100, 200, and 400 meter races, and I was always the last one to run on the team for the 400 meter relay races because no matter how far behind we were, I always seemed to catch up and pull out a win. That all changed the moment I graduated from the University of Washington and got a full-time job. I no longer had time to run, and most nights I ate junk food because it was fast, cheap, and fucking delicious, so I’d gained thirty pounds in the last ten years. I like to call them my ‘adulting is hard’ pounds.
One minute I was starting my career as a financial coordinator for a major bank in Seattle, and the next I realized five years had passed, five years of working extremely hard that made dieting never stick because the stress of the job always made me shove something into my mouth. There were long hours, tedious numbers to process, and starting next month, I had to prepare everything for taxes. Factor in seeing my mother for the holidays and it was no wonder my jeans didn’t fit me any longer. Plus, I still had to get through Christmas and New Years with said woman—much longer than the four days I spent with her for Thanksgiving.
It also hadn’t helped when my own mother offered to pay me twenty dollars for every pound I lost.‘I just want you to find a nice man to settle down with,’she’d said as though only skinny women got married. The reality of the situation wasn’t that I was extremely obese—though when I got my Wii out of the closet to workout with the game Wii Fit, the damn thing would always tell me I was obese as it weighed me. Not gonna lie, it made me stuff my face with a few fun-sized Snickers as I flipped the TV off and shut down the console.
My phone chirped, and I grabbed it again. Valencia:
I think you’re beautiful. Just order a skinny margarita if that makes you feel better.
I rolled my eyes.
It tastes like water. It’s cheaper to order water.
You’re not bailing on me. This is my chance to get Chance to take a chance on me. ;)
I let out a breath and stood. As I walked to my closet, I texted her back:
You’ve been flirting with Chance for two months. Are you finally going to make your move tonight?
V and I always went out on Friday nights to a bar on Pike Street called Unicorn. Unicorn was a whimsically themed bar that served magical cocktails and carnival foods all year long. It was one of the many reasons my diets failed because V and I always ordered the unicorn balls followed by the magical unicorn burger and then, of course, we would order the unicorn droppings for dessert, which was fried peanut butter cookie dough.
Chance recently got hired as one of the bartenders, and immediately, V was batting her eyelashes. He flirted right back, never once looking my way, but yet neither one of them had pulled the trigger.
I’m waiting until after Christmas so I don’t have to buy him a present.
A date doesn’t mean you have to get each other gifts.
Fine! But I’ll ask him what he’s doing for New Year’s Eve since you’re leaving me all alone again.
You know I go home to my parents every year.
I know. If they didn’t live in the middle of nowhere, I’d come with you so we could party together.
Anchorage isn’t that far.
Most people had never heard of Burn Falls until they discovered my family’s legacy that was known as the O’Bannion Burn (Or what we called OBB). It was a single malt whiskey that, in my opinion, was the best. It was a recipe that had been passed down to my father by his great-grandmother Gael, who was from Ireland. The O’Bannion Burn was sweet, smooth, with a hint of cinnamon and caraway seed that was popular in Ireland. The blend was unique and made your insides warm as it slid down your belly.
My parents moved to Alaska from Dublin, Ireland, before I was born. They took their honeymoon to see the Northern Lights in 1987 and fell in love with Alaska. I wasn’t sure why because, in the winter, there were only about seven or eight hours of daylight a day and then in the summer there were only about five hours of darkness. I hated it, but it was a place for my father to open his distillery based on my great-grandmother’s recipe without having to compete too much with an entire country that was known for their whiskey. My dad started OBB in 1992, wanting to make enough income to support his growing family, and he had been very successful.
