Ten minutes later, when he’d shown up at her dorm room, smelling of beer, he hadn’t apologized. He’d just started kissing her, sliding his hands up her shirt and pushing his beer-flavored tongue into her mouth.
Chris had been six feet tall, a hulking, round-shouldered red-faced guy with shaggy brown hair and a beard that extended down the sides of his neck. His size had made him somewhat appealing—the way Mark Medoff had been appealing—except Chris had lacked Mark’s sweetness and wit. He was almost a parody of a gross, grunting fraternity brother-slash-jock; crude, frequently drunk, perpetually horny. At least he’d been willing to take direction, to figure out what Abby liked in bed and try to execute some of it before passing out. And beggars, Abby had told herself, couldn’t be choosers.
For three months, Abby had hooked up with Chris, in her dorm room or, infrequently, in his fraternity house, always between the hours of eleven at night and five in the morning. She’d gotten to the point where the taste of beer made her horny, where she liked the feel of his wiry chest hair brushing against her breasts. Or maybe she just liked the idea that some guy wanted her, and had convinced herself that being with Chris was better than being alone. The nights were at least somewhat enjoyable. The mornings, however, were awful. If they were at her dorm, Chris would wake up and slink out before the sun came up. If they were at his frat house, he’d set his alarm for 5:00 a.m., escort her down the stairs, and send her out into the early morning, when it was still mostly dark outside, never once offering to walk her to her dorm. Chris, clearly, didn’t want to be seen with her; didn’t want his teammates or the brothers of Beta Theta Pi to know that he was dating （or just sleeping with） a big girl.
Abby only told a handful of friends about Chris, and they were not impressed. They told Abby that she deserved better. She knew that they were right, but even so, it had taken her a shamefully long time to end it. Half a loaf is better than none, she would think when her phone had buzzed at midnight, or one in the morning. She would shove condoms and a change of clothes into her backpack and go to him. A guy who only wants to sleep with me is better than no guy wanting me at all.
Finally, Abby had been out at a bar on College Avenue one night when Chris and his rugby teammates, still in their jerseys, had piled in through the door. Chris had seen her. Their eyes had met, and he’d turned away, pretending not to know her, laughing when one of the brothers had glanced at her, then looked away, muttering something in a low voice—something that Abby was pretty sure was a joke, at her expense. How do you get a fat girl into bed? Piece of cake.
Abby had started college feeling okay about herself or, at least, with no more than the average allotment of insecurities. She’d had friends. She’d had boyfriends. Maybe Camp Golden Hills, and Mark, had let her live in a bit of a bubble, insulated from the world’s judgment and scorn, believing that she was pretty and desirable. Staying with a guy like Chris would grind her down. It would leave her worse than she’d been at sixteen.
“Sure, cool, whatever,” Chris had mumbled after the night he’d ignored her in the bar, when, instead of running to his fraternity house after he’d texted, she’d told him not to call her again and then had blocked his number, in case he decided to try. For the rest of her college years, there’d been no one steady. Occasional hookups, crushes that went nowhere. The guys she wanted to call her didn’t; the guys she never wanted to see again did.
Her longest relationship after college and before Mark had lasted just six months. She’d met David at Pup Jawn, where he worked walking dogs during the day while making the rounds of comedy club open mics at night, trying to make it as a stand-up comedian. This meant, Abby had learned, lots of unpaid gigs—gigs she was expected to attend, and even more time spent online, helping David make memes and Vines and YouTube videos, hoping one of them would go viral. Then, much to Abby’s surprise, one of them had. David had been a dead ringer for the then-president’s eldest adult son. He had amassed almost a million views of a video he’d done lip-syncing along to one of the son’s unhinged rants with talcum powder all over his upper lip and chin. Not the most sophisticated humor, Abby thought, but effective. In short order, David had acquired an agent, a manager, and a plane ticket to Los Angeles. “You understand, right?” he’d asked her, once his studio apartment—even less furnished than Abby’s—was packed up, and his worldly goods piled into a backpack and a pair of trash bags.