keep moving on (Christy)

[Deleted]

Terri had given Christian his pizza before going into the hotel room she shared with her daughter. This was their last night in a hotel. They would be getting into Toronto the next day. And while Terri hated to admit it, she was a nervous wreck. A lot had changed since the last time she was in Toronto. It had been eighteen long years. All the people she had left behind, her friends, they could very well have forgotten her by now. And really, she wouldn't blame them. After all, she was only sixteen when she went into her coma, and she never saw them again after that. It had been twenty years since she saw Ashley Kerwin, Jimmy Brooks, Marco Del Rossi, Paige Michalchuck and Hazel Aden. So, naturally, she was nervous.

As she opened the door to the room, she pulled out her cell phone to check the time. It was after eight. With a sigh, she set the pizza down--half sausage, half supreme-- as well as a couple of cans of soda. She set them neatly on the table and grabbed the plastic cups supplied by the hotel, unwrapping them and filling them with ice from the bucket. Maybe she'd wait to have pizza. Maybe she'd go relax by the pool first. Terri didn't swim a whole lot back home, even though her husband had a pool put in when the kids were nine. But this time, she could really use it.

She looked to the bathroom door. With a sigh, she walked over to it and knocked. "Dinner's here. I know it's a little late. We'll eat better tomorrow. Terri had always been finicky with meal times, especially dinner. While she had never liked her weight, she was never successful with diets. Terri had been trying to lose weight since she was a kid. Since before she was a plus-size model. And now that she had lost her husband, she was beginning to think that Manny Santos' offer to finance lipo-suction for her back when she started writing and had gone to LA to try to get published wasn't so bad. Though, by now, she could afford her own lipo-suction. And she happened to know that the best plastic surgeon in North America was in Toronto.

That was one of the reasons she was going back. She wanted to find Dr. Simpson. She wanted to make arrangements for the surgery. Terri didn't care about the risks or dangers that it could pose. She was so sure that nobody would want a fat cow like her. She never understood why William wanted her. And after he left them, what little self-confidence had been built over the last twenty years was completely shattered. There was just no way she would ever find romance without it.

It didn't help that she was pregnant. She found out a month after William left. Her first instinct had been to call her ex's cell phone and use it to bring him home. That was, after all, the best thing for them, right? For the kids to be with their father? But she didn't want that to be the reason he came back. Because then she would be stuck in a loveless marriage. And Terri would rather be single and lonely than married and lonely. She definitely had more pride than to force him to be with her when he didn't want to be.

Right now, though, she needed to keep her mind off of everything. She went to her suitcase, and as she opened it, she set aside the pamphlet discussing the pros and cons of lipo-suction. She wasn't going to worry about it until after she got to Toronto. Pulling out her swimsuit, she looked at it and sighed. She didn't even know if she could put it on. As much as she wanted to swim, she didn't know if she could bear the humiliation.