Chapter 3

I was stunned by that message. I never imagined that something could have gone wrong.

"My God! It was the egg."

I remembered that I had put an extra egg in the carrot cake. That could have ruined everything. This customer had never complained; he had been buying from Candy Cake for a long time.

I checked his information and saw that he had already placed more than 50 orders at our store. The first thing I should do was apologize.

"I'm sorry, sir. I can replace the order for you right now. Does it have a strong egg taste?"

"What egg, Candy? I ordered a carrot cake with chocolate, and you gave me a salty cake. What the hell is this?"

I couldn't believe what I was reading. What did he mean? A salty cake?

"I'm sorry, but did you say the cake was salty?"

"Yes. This thing is full of salt. Do you want to come and taste it?"

After he said that, I tasted a slice of the cake. It really was salty, and I couldn't understand what had happened.

"I'll refund your money, sir. Besides that, I'll send you another cake as a courtesy. You don't have to pay for it. What flavor would you like?"

"And you think I'm going to trust you again? Don't send me another cake. I just want my money."

The customer was harsh with me. I started crying. It wasn't because of him; those tears were about something much bigger.

Maybe, in the middle of my desperation, I had switched sugar for salt. But that had never happened to me before. And to me, the whole problem came down to one thing: the fact that I was too fat.

That's why I cried even harder. The customer didn't speak to me again, and the orders kept coming in. I needed to get up from that chair and continue packing the cakes, but I didn't have the strength.

I took a deep breath and cried again. My face was swollen when I reached the bathroom. I rubbed my eyes and looked at myself in the mirror again.

"I will never cry over this again. I will never be fat again. If I am going to be fat, then I'll be proud of it. But I never want to suffer like this again. I'm going on a diet."

At that exact moment, I thought about the cakes I made every day. How could I resist so much sugar? I answered myself while still staring at the mirror.

"You will be strong, Candy. I believe in you, woman. Start shutting that mouth of yours. That's all you need."

I put on some more upbeat music and started cleaning the house. But I wasn't cleaning furniture.

I opened the cabinets and took out all the junk food in the house. We had two kitchens, one for Candy Cake and another for our home.

The kitchen that belonged to George and me had a lot of chocolate. Cookies, bread, and canned foods occupied practically the entire cabinet. I decided to take everything out.

I gathered all the food I no longer wanted and put it into bags. The second step was to attack the refrigerator.

Soda, pudding, and high-calorie yogurt. Practically 90% of the food in that house was mine. Only at that moment did I realize that very little of it belonged to George.

While I maintained a high-calorie diet, George ate out. He rarely had breakfast at home or ate dinner there. Lunch was always at the gym.

It took me a long time to understand that he was avoiding my food. That's why I decided to gather everything and donate it.

Only a few probiotic drinks that George kept in the refrigerator remained. In the cabinet, three or four cereal bars that he had forgotten there. Sugar, flour, a jar of Nutella.

All of that was no longer going to be part of my life. The humiliation at the gym had pushed me to change my reality. After it affected my work too, there was no other path.

I know it's going to be difficult, but I'm going to try. I looked at the jar of Nutella and started crying.

How pathetic, Candy. Are you crying over food?

I thought to myself. But I was certain that I was on the right path. I removed almost five large bags of food that no longer served me.

I rushed to finish taking care of the orders that kept coming in. I packed all the cakes and shipped the orders. It didn't take long for hunger to arrive.

I thought about eating a cookie or having one last spoonful of that Nutella. My mouth was watering.

I had barely said goodbye to the food, and I was already thinking about having a farewell ritual. I felt like I was weakening in the face of the changes I had chosen for my life.

"Come on, Candy. You're strong, you huge fat woman."

I said it out loud while looking at myself through my phone's front-facing camera. I started behaving like George to make sure I wouldn't back down from the diet.

"I'm going to eat leaves. Lettuce, spinach, and watercress. I'm going to become a cow, a skinny cow. I'm never putting junk in my mouth again."

I seemed convinced of my decision. But I was still hungry. George wouldn't return from the gym until late that night. I looked at my phone and saw that he had called me, but I preferred to keep ignoring him.

Without healthy food, I had only one choice: go shopping. I could have ordered something through the app, but the cabinets were empty. The supermarket would also be the first test of fire for a former fat woman.

That's right, I had already put the prefix "ex" before that description that frightened me.

I spent almost an hour resisting the urge to eat something. I felt weak, as if my blood pressure were dropping. Even so, I went to the supermarket. I drove there, and it took less than five minutes to arrive.

At the supermarket, those looks continued. Inside, I already felt thinner, but it seemed like nobody noticed.

While I was choosing vegetables and fruit, a thin woman approached me.

"That's right, stay focused on your diet, girl."

That woman started making conversation as if she knew me. There were tangerines near us, but I caught her scent. She was a hybrid, but I didn't remember her from the clan.

"Excuse me, but do we know each other?"

"I do know you, Candy. I work out at your husband's gym every day. I saw you there earlier today."

She made a point of showing that she knew about the humiliation I had gone through. But neither she nor George could change my decision.

"Sorry if I offended you. I'm just rooting for you to lose weight. Nobody deserves to go through what you went through. You can count on me."

Suddenly, she wasn't repeating the usual speech of every fatphobic person. She was offering me help. My eyes filled with tears.

"Thank you so much. I really feel completely lost. I want to lose weight. I've already started my diet, but everything is so difficult. What's your name again?"

"Lucy, Candy. Let's become friends. I'll teach you several recipes that will help you lose weight. The most important thing is not to give up."

"I'll never give up on this again, Lucy. I'm focused now."

"That's right. That's how you do it. But wait. There's one more thing that could help you lose weight. Are you ready?"

"I'll do whatever it takes."

"It'll hurt a little, but it's for your own good."