chapter 3- too good to be true (p1)

As the morning light began to produce a mild glow in the cloudy sky, the sound of rainfall pitter-pattered atop the dilapidated roof of the downtrodden apartment building. The relaxing sound was a welcome relief to Claire’s ears. Last night, she’d fallen asleep to some awkwardly loud sex noises that pounded into Paul’s bedroom from the noisy couple living below them in apartment 2b.

As she began to stir, the peaceful quiet of Paul’s bedroom soon gave way to the gentle rustling of covers. Claire rolled to the side of the bed as quietly as she could to grab her phone. Tapping the screen and checking the time, Claire couldn’t believe it!

*5:59AM*

It was amazing! Somehow, she’d done it again! She’d woken up a minute before her alarm was set to go off! A week ago, when she’d first done it, the experience had been a welcome surprise. She hated waking up Paul with her alarm. Since he was such a peaceful sleeper, she hated ruining it for him. With a quick swipe of her finger she disabled her alarm and let out a quiet yawn.

Her morning spin class was set to start in an hour. She’d only made three out of five classes last week and she was determined to make all five this time. No excuses. She needed to get out of bed and get ready.

Quietly digging herself out from under the covers, Claire softly rolled out of bed and stumbled sleepily toward Paul’s closet. After her wardrobe difficulties three weeks ago, Claire had convinced Paul to let her store a larger array of clothes at his apartment. In fairness, it hadn’t taken much effort to convince Paul. He was always so supportive. Especially recently with her diet.

Joining weightwatchers had been a big change for her, but also for Paul. He’d had to learn dozens of newer recipes to cook for her and he had to change his normal grocery shopping habits to accommodate Claire’s new dietary needs. She was thankful for his support, but she also felt a bit guilty. Her diet was interfering with how they usually had fun. She’d cut drinking pretty much cold turkey and Paul didn’t like to drink alone. Their weekly restaurant dates had largely stopped, since apparently low point options seemed to be hard to come by in the culinary sector of the birthplace of America.

However, despite all the changes, Claire and Paul still found ways to enjoy their time. They walked around downtown together. They watched their TV shows together. They were never short on finding engaging topics of conversation, and the sex was still wonderful. Everything was going great, except for one thing.

Despite her efforts to stick to weight watchers and attend the gym more regularly, even as she stared at herself in the mirror right now, Claire couldn’t notice a big difference in her body. Sure, the scale told her she’d lost 5 pounds so far, but she’d been kind of hoping for better results. Her clothes didn’t really fit any better. Her tummy still looked big and flabby. Her butt hardly felt any less round and jiggly. What did she have to do to lose some serious poundage?? What was the secret?

Trying to calm herself down, Claire quietly creeped out of Paul’s room and snuck toward the kitchen to grab herself a banana for breakfast. However, before she even passed by the bathroom, she could hear a noise coming from the main room of the apartment. At first, she thought her sister was awake and watching TV, but after blinking away the blurry vision from her eyes, Claire could see that the noise she was hearing stemmed from two sources. The first was repeating music on the TV. It looked like Emma had left her DVD of Titanic on its menu screen all night. The second was her older sister’s annoying snoring. She was loud even when she wasn’t awake.

As Claire’s eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room, what she saw horrified her. For starters, the apartment was a bigger mess than usual! Her sister’s clothes were clearly discarded all over the place. There was a jean jacket on the kitchen chair, a tank top on the oven, shorts on the floor, a sock on the TV stand, and leggings hanging from the back of the sofa! But that wasn’t the half of it!

On the coffee table, there was an opened, and empty, domino’s pizza box with two slivers of stale crust lying next to it on the table’s surface. They weren’t on a plate. They were crummy, greasy and laying right where they shouldn’t be, next to the remote. And of course, there were the multiple empty beer bottles all thrown about in no logical ordering on the poor coffee table. Claire counted six in total, no.. seven. There was one on the carpet too.

Stepping onto the carpet and looking at the culprit, Claire glared at her sister. Emma was passed out asleep on the couch in nothing but a bra, panties and what appeared to be one of Paul’s flannel shirts that he’d been keeping in his box of winter clothes toward the back of his closet. How had Emma gotten her hands on it?

Claire wanted to contemplate the possibilities, but she didn’t have time right now. She had to clean this up before Paul saw it! Her boyfriend and older sister had gotten off on the wrong foot three weeks ago. She knew tensions between them were a little high, while they adjusted to living under the same dilapidated roof.

Paul’s main complaint about Emma was that she took up a lot of space and made it difficult for him to get comfortable working on his art. She hogged the bathroom. Sang loudly in the shower. Didn’t clean her dishes or pick up after herself. When she was in her bedroom, she was blasting music. And when she was in the main room, she was hogging the couch and the TV. The only time she would leave the apartment was to pick up food she’d ordered or to pick up a case of lionshead beer from the store down the street. He kept finding the distinctive puzzle caps freaking everywhere. It appeared Emma couldn’t get enough of them.