Love Has The Best Intentions Read Free Page B

across
the street,” I whispered. “Tonight, for a change, I asked for my
order to go.”
     
    THE END
     

 
    Perfect
Body—Perfect Match
     
    Becca was in pursuit of the American Dream.
She craved what every man and woman secretly yearns for—a perfect
body and someone to appreciate it.
    Her best friend, Lana, had a perfect body.
Becca sometimes wondered if Lana had ever endured the pimples and
awkwardness of adolescence. She appeared to have stepped, fully
grown, from the pages of a fitness magazine advertising French cut
leotards. Whenever Lana walked down the street, men forgot urgent
appointments, slammed into traffic light standards and drooled on
their silk ties.
    If Becca hadn’t acquired a perfect body yet,
it wasn’t for lack of trying. One of her recent ventures into the
realms of fitness was the purchase of an exercise bike. After a
week of nightly workouts, however, she came to the conclusion that
her own seat was completely incompatible with that of the
bicycle’s.
    Next, Becca bought several fitness DVDs. The
shapely women on the covers were frozen in mid-movement and the
clincher for Becca was their happy smiles. She spent the next month
sweating, bumping into furniture and “going for the ‘burn’. The day
she found herself sneaking out of the room when the instructor’s
back was turned to brew a cup of herbal tea was the day the fitness
DVDs were banished to a cupboard.
    As she perched in her cubbyhole at the
studio, sketching designs for a toilet paper campaign and nibbling
M&M’s, Becca dreamed of possessing a body where dimples peeped
coyly near her mouth instead of her knees. So she signed up for a
YMCA rebounder class, hoping to obtain the benefits of jogging
without the dangers posed by dogs, cars and pedestrians.
    Memories of that rebounder class fiasco still
gave Becca a guilty twinge. Bouncing in unison with ten other
women, she began to feel almost weightless, no longer trapped
within the folds of cellulite.
    After a few minutes of gentle jogging, the
instructor encouraged them to step up their heart rate. “Jump,
girls, jump! Take it higher and higher. Pretend you’re a ballerina
floating gracefully into the air.”
    Even though she had a wonderful imagination,
she couldn’t see herself floating in a tutu. Becca had always felt
more in tune with animals, so she pictured herself instead as a
jack rabbit. Bounding along a dusty path and keeping a sharp rabbit
eye out for coyotes, she sprang into the air but, unfortunately,
her trajectory must have been slightly askew.
    Like a rocket gone off course, Becca soared
up and across the neighboring rebounder, taking its occupant with
her on a path of errant flight.
    Mrs. McCarthy suffered multiple bruises,
especially on her ample rear portions, while Becca ended up with a
badly sprained ankle. When the next brochure from the YMCA arrived
in the mail, someone had used a red marker to slash through the
rebounder class. She suspected the change had been made exclusively
on her copy.
    Over orange blossom tea on a Sunday
afternoon, Lana suggested a solution to Becca’s quest for that
perfect body. “Join my health club, The Fitness Studio. You can
lift weights, work out on state of the art machines, swim ... all
with the aid of a personal instructor. The men are real foxes!”
Lana leaned back on the kitchen chair, drew a deep breath and
crossed elegantly sculpted legs. “I get all the personal attention
I need.”
    “I’ll bet you do,” Becca muttered, tearing an
envious gaze from her friend’s shapely limbs. Her own legs would
never reach that length, but if the rest of her body would
cooperate, she might possibly aspire to become a pocket Venus.
    “Come with me to The Fitness Studio tomorrow
night,” Lana urged. “You’ll love the new you that you become.”
    Becca picked up a calico ball of fluff named
Lady BoJangles, and scratched her cat companion behind the ears.
She had to face facts: exercising her creativity each day