The Au Lait Way
5.
The following week, everyone around the office noticed something different about Erika. She was just so much more... agreeable. Although she was just as capable as ever, people were able to stop by and ask a question without getting their heads bitten off. Email responses came quickly from her, but without acerbic, scathing sarcasm. She said hello in the morning as she passed people in the hallways, sometimes even smiling.
Erika had been noticing some changes in herself as well. For one thing, she was always ravenously hungry. She was constantly eating all day long, and then going home to have steak and potatoes for dinner or something equally heavy and calorie laden. Despite this, she hadn’t seemed to have gained a pound, though she’d been neglecting the gym even more than usual lately, which made the fact that she was sore all over every morning a puzzling thing.
That, at least, she had become accustomed to, with it becoming a mild ache rather than the sharp pain it had been the week before. She could raise her arms over her head with hardly any discomfort, although her hair hadn’t been pulled back into a bun since then. A ponytail was just fine, Erika had decided.
She might have to cut back on the eating though, she thought this morning as she got dressed. Whatever the scale said, the cotton pantsuit she put on felt tight pretty much all over, and she’d needed to buy a new bra earlier that week. If she kept this up, she’d need to go shopping for a new wardrobe.
Erika collected her purse, phone and keys, and headed out the door. Then she came back, went in the refrigerator and grabbed a small bottle from the last remaining six pack, putting it in her bag as she left again.
Her day at work was a great one. Sitting in Jessica’s cube with Kate, the three of them chatting in the morning over coffee was so much more fun than she realized. Over the past week, they were getting to be the best of friends, and were even going to go catch happy hours drinks after work on Friday.
Erika still didn’t really approve of how unproductive Kate and Jessica usually were, but as she settled in behind her own workstation, she didn’t cast any dirty looks at the pair of them, gabbing away. They really were sweet girls.
At lunchtime however, Erika actually declined the girls’ invitation for lunch. Her pantsuit was driving her crazy, and she decided it needed to be taken care of immediately. She went to the mall on her lunch break, grabbed a protein shake from the food court’s juice bar, dumped in her tasty little bottle and went in to her usual department store. She browsed through the women’s professional apparel section, impatiently flipping through blazers and suits, looking for something to catch her eye and eventually gave up after half an hour, going back out to the main mall.
Walking around, a sign caught her eye, for one of the new boutiques that Kate had mentioned one morning earlier in the week. Erika decided to go in and take a look. The girl behind the register looked like she’d fit right in at the office in a cube: tall, blond, skinny and tan.
“Hi! I’m Aimee, can I help you find something?”
Erika found the girl’s sunny disposition a little over the top, but she was just like Jessica and Kate—a sweet little girl. She smiled back. “I need a new wardrobe!”
Aimee looked over her navy blue pantsuit and loafers and wrinkled her nose. “Ick! Uh, YEA, you do!!
“Uh... no offense, I mean,” she added.
But Erika was laughing along with her. “No, no, I mean, I think I’m putting on the pounds, because this outfit is too tight.”
“What?! You look great, girl!” And Erika could tell the girl really meant it, and preposterously, she actually felt herself blushing. “It’s not too tight at all,” Aimee said, “it’s just that the style... well, let’s take a look around, ok?”
They spent the next hour picking out skirts, blouses, heels, along with all sorts of accessories Erika had never bothered with before—bracelets, earrings, cute little cocktail rings. Aimee was actually very knowledgeable about fashion. It was pretty judgmental to think you had to work in an office to know anything, Erika reflected, as she followed her around the store, sipping on her protein shake as they shopped together.
An hour and a half later, she was walking out with four bags full of new outfits, which if anything, ironically, were every bit as tight or tighter than the outfit she was wearing. But Aimee thought they all looked good, and Erika was pretty sure Kate and Jessica would like them too.
It wasn’t really that she cared what they or anyone else thought, but if she were going to go out with them at the end of the week, she supposed she wouldn’t want to stand out as the plain, dowdy one.
Later that night, she stood in front of the mirror, in one of her new outfits. This is the one she’d wear Friday, she decided. It was a long pencil skirt, which was a great look she’d seen someone else wearing some place, and a nice fitted white button down blouse with rolled up cuffed sleeves. She felt extra tall and slim with the black high polish heels she was wearing, and if open-toed shoes were a little casual, well, if Bill could get away with short sleeve shirts, then she could bend the rules some too. And besides the pedicure she had gotten on the way out of the mall was too cute not to show off.
She took a sip from the small white bottle on the dresser, and then undressed and carefully folded her clothes to the side for the end of the week. Passing the dresser mirror, Erika gave her reflection a glance, did a full double take and then immediately walked into the bathroom to stand in front of the full length mirror.
Aimee had been right. She hadn’t been putting on the pounds at all. Somehow, if anything, she looked fitter. Her shoulders and arms had more definition than she remembered, and her belly was without a doubt flatter, with a gentle line going down her midsection where her abs were showing. Her waist seemed thinner, and by contrast, her hips now curved out slightly. The only thing that seemed heavier was her bust. The straps were too tight again.
Erika’s brow furrowed. What was going on? She’d bought that new bra a few days ago. She raised her arm to take another sip from her bottle and then stopped, surprised that she had even brought it with her into the bathroom.
She stared at the bottle with something like rising panic. What was this stuff? Was she out of her mind? Why in the world had she been drinking it all week long?!
A small voice inside of herself answered: You know what it is.
Erika stood there trembling, looking at her reflection. The entire week, she’d been completely on autopilot, and she’d lost nearly two days, and been acting like a totally different person, and guzzling over a dozen of these bottles of...
Bottles of what..?
You remember.... Don’t you? It’s milk.
Erika shuddered suddenly as some memory flashed in her mind quickly and was gone again, like a flashlight shining briefly over a large animal in the night. She stared down at the bottle again, horrified.
It’s this... stuff. Whatever it is, she thought, unwilling to think about the revelation that nearly broke through. It’s doing this to me. It’s changing me.
She stood in front of the sink. I need to dump this out right now, she thought, along with whatever’s left in the fridge.
She held the bottle over the sink, wavering for a few seconds, and then poured the rest of its contents down the drain. She practically slammed the empty bottle into the waste bin and then stomped over to the kitchen, where she yanked the refrigerator door open, pulling out one of the three remaining bottles and twisting the cap off.
Erika tipped her head back and drank it down.