The Girl in the Gym

Head-desk

The next morning Jack woke up with the alarm. Wearily, he turned to his little clock on the bedside table and tried to put it to snooze. Remembering it had snowed, he realized he would have to start his morning commute to work early if he had any hope of reaching on time. It was still dark out, but it looked like the sky had cleared. The morning air was sharp and piercing. Jack rolled out of bed, and walked to his bathroom, rubbing his eyes furiously. There was something he was forgetting, but he couldn't figure out what. He had finished brushing his teeth and was on his way to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee before it struck him. He dropped the cup, then jumped up and down comically.

Oh god. Oh my good god.

Slowly, he made his way to the dining table and gingerly sat down on one of the chairs. It creaked under his enormous bulk.

He was literally jobless. Memories of the night before came flooding in his mind. Somehow it had seemed unreal. He pinched himself once, then twice, to make sure he wasn't still asleep and that he had quit his job in a dream. Absently soothing away the hurt of his pinches on his arm, he just sat there for a few minutes. It was six in the morning, and for the first time in ten years, he had nowhere to get to.

His stomach grumbled loudly, shaking him out of his early morning drowsiness. Well, there's one thing that didn't change, he thought. He tried to shake off the weirdness that seemed to envelop him. Getting up with a start, he walked over to his refrigerator and started taking out the milk to have with his cereal. Until he decided to go for a more hearty meal instead. For years, he had had no time for luxuries like a good breakfast. He would usually gulp down his coffee, grab a handful of cereal and then stop at a bakery near his workplace where they sold hot muffins and croissants in the morning.

So, he took out some eggs, flour and some blueberries to make pancakes. He didn't have maple syrup, but he did have butterscotch sauce. After making about a dozen golden brown pancakes, he lathered them with the sweet sauce and started eating.

Everything is better when you have a hot meal in your stomach, he thought cheerfully, as he speared another bite with his fork and chowed down.

For as long as he remembered, he had been a foodie. When he was a baby, he would wait for Sundays, when his mom would bake a cake for her church friends, and he would be allowed to lap up the batter in the empty container. And if he was lucky, he'd get a huge sticky piece of chocolate or apple caramel cake as well. When he started growing up and got his pocket money every week. The only thing he would spend on was food. Candy, chocolates, cola, popcorn, hotdogs, pizza, you name it. And the love for food just grew. At university, he was exposed to foods from different cultures, and that was when he well and truly fell in love with it. He had Indian friends, Japanese friends, friends from Africa and Vietnam. They would take him to all the best restaurants which served their local food, and a lifelong passion was born. He even took a cooking class but was average at it. Nonetheless, it helped him make good friends all over the world. His favourite cuisine was Southeast Asian, specifically Indian food. Oh, the mouth-watering delicacies that he's tried over the years were too good to be forgotten. He fondly remembered a cosy little restaurant tucked away in Italy which had boasted of the best Indian food. He had not surfaced for hours, the food had been so good that he kept sitting there the whole afternoon. Unfortunately, this love for food had not been kind to him. Looking down at his burgeoning paunch, he felt guilty for wolfing down so many pancakes.

And with that guilt, came the familiar anxiety that had become his life. He could not remember how he had managed to gather his courage and quit the job. He was not thinking about anything except the despair that had threatened to crush him daily.

Maybe they'll understand. Maybe they won't. He started walking around the kitchen muttering to himself. Feeling a panic attack coming on, he stuffed himself with more pancakes and guzzled butterscotch sauce straight from the bottle. Wrong move, he thought, when he started choking on it. Gulping the last bit down, along with copious amounts of water, he decided to call his boss and his assistant. It wasn't right to break off a working relationship of four years just because he inconveniently had a breakdown.