“Why?” Emmaline asked as they went to the car. “I don’t get it, Kevin.”

“She told me the truth,” he said. He wouldn’t look at her.

When they got home, he went straight to the bathroom and turned on the shower. A minute later, she heard him crying. It broke her heart, but he wouldn’t unlock the door when she knocked.

He didn’t eat for the rest of the day.

The next day, he wasn’t there when she got home from work. She texted him; he didn’t answer. Around nine, he came in, sweaty and red-faced, a stiff new SweatWorld gym bag in his hand.

“Hey!” she said. “How was it?”

“Good.”

“Um...honey, I’m so glad you’re doing this, but do you think Naomi is the best person to—”

“Yeah. I do. Thanks.”

Three days later, he came home from the gym with a list in his hand and, without further ado, opened their cupboards and began tossing everything into the trash, making disgusted noises as he read labels.

“What are you doing?” she asked, retrieving a can of chicken stock. “Come on! That’s not even opened!”

“It’s poison,” he said. “Look at the sodium count.” He gave her a condemning look. She did the grocery shopping, after all. He picked up a packet of pad thai sauce and tossed it in the trash.

“Okay, hon, we can donate this to the food pantry. But can you tell me what’s going on?” He tossed an unopened box of Special K, which she snatched. She loved cereal. “Are we going gluten-free or something?”

“Yeah. And sugar-free and dairy-free.”

“What’s left?” she asked, trying to make a joke.

He turned on her. “Do you think this is funny? Look at me. I’m sickening.”

“No, Kevin, you’re not.”

He rolled his eyes and went back to the purge.

That weekend, he was so sore he could barely put on his pants. But he went to the gym, anyway. “Naomi says pain is weakness leaving the body,” he told her.

She went with him, but Naomi ignored her, preferring instead to screech at Kevin, calling him lazy, a quitter, a slug. Twice Em had to go to the ladies’ room to cry.

“I think it would be best if you and I went to the gym at different times,” he told her on the way home. “I appreciate the support, but I need to focus.”

“But...well, sure. Whatever you need, babe. Whatever works.”

“Thanks,” he said, squeezing her hand.

Naomi took Kevin grocery shopping, and when Em saw the receipt, she yelped; two bags of gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, organic food cost more than she spent in a month.

All through the fall, he kept it up. He ate only lean protein and hard-to-digest vegetables and lumpy shakes made from green powder and soy milk. Quinoa and flax and wheatgrass. Egg-white omelets and raw broccoli, grilled fish and red peppers. He did fasts and cleanses and purges. The bathroom smelled ghastly. His sex drive dropped.

And all he could talk about was working out. “Naomi says” became the two words that began most of his sentences. Caloric load, adipose, anaerobic, layered eating... It was all they ever talked about. Well. All Kevin ever talked about.

He did, however, start to lose weight.

Nine pounds the first month. Eleven the second. In December, they had a big fight over her wanting to bake Christmas cookies to send to her parents and Angela. Kevin said they “couldn’t afford the risk” of her baking something not in his diet plan.

She baked the cookies anyway when he was at work, boxed them up, sealed them with packing tape and addressed them, then went for a run. When she came home, she found Angela’s package ripped open and a furious Kevin. He’d eaten at least a dozen cookies, he said, and it was her fault. She threw temptation in his path when he was at a vulnerable point, and how was that being supportive?

“See, I thought I was baking cookies for my family,” Em said frostily. “I didn’t realize I was such a temptress.”

“Laugh it up. You’ll be crying over my coffin if you can’t support me.”

“I do support you! And, my God, I’m so sick of that word!”

“I have to go to the gym,” he said with a martyred air. “And I’ll have to fast now for three days. Please have the rest of the cookies removed from our apartment when I get back.”

“For God’s sake,” she muttered. “Fine.” She sighed, then hugged him. “I’m sorry. I love you, and I’m really proud of you, okay? I just didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to bake for anyone anymore.”

“I’m an addict,” he said. “Please be more respectful of my issues.”

He only lost four pounds that month. Her fault again, he said, for bringing him to her office party and letting Angela and her mother make Christmas breakfast.

The gym became his favorite place. Those long hours at the law firm weren’t as carved in stone as they’d seemed. In fact, the partners were all thrilled he was taking better care of himself.

So was Emmaline.

Except she barely saw him anymore, and, when she did, all he could talk about was food and exercise.

They couldn’t go out to eat with friends because the temptation was too great. If Emmaline went out with friends from college or coworkers, Kevin asked her not to bring home the leftovers. They couldn’t go to the movies. Night after night, they stayed home, Kevin falling asleep in the chair, exhausted from his workout.

Occasionally, they’d go for a run together, but Kevin mapped their route with painstaking care because God forbid they pass a bakery or hot dog vendor. “Naomi says it will take an entire year for my resistance to strengthen,” Kevin said as they ran through a deserted industrial park at seven o’clock one Saturday morning. “Until then, I have to be really careful.”

Emmaline went along with it, eating what Kevin ate, not buying anything that wasn’t listed on the Naomi-approved list, not smuggling in Ben & Jerry’s, no matter how much she missed it.

Kevin had taped Naomi clichés on the fridge, which made eating at home a guilt-riddled affair. Whatever you eat in private, you wear in public. Abs are made in the kitchen. Don’t kill your workout with food. The question isn’t can you, it’s will you. Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels. Em had to dispute that last one. Ben & Jerry’s definitely tasted better than being thin was. Not that she was thin. But she wasn’t fat.

Not yet.

As Kevin lost weight, food became more seductive than ever to Emmaline. It was all she could think about. Time became measured in the hours until she could eat. She fell asleep thinking about food, and as soon as she was done with one meal, she started imagining the next.

While once she’d brought a yogurt and an apple for lunch, she now started eating a huge meal at work. Philly cheesesteaks and burgers and nachos, clam chowder and the Scrammy Hammy at Big Boy. She craved cherry pie, a Michigan specialty.

One day, she came home from work to find Kevin there, a rarity since he’d discovered the gym. “Hi, babe!” she said happily, dropping her bag on the floor.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, hugging her close, and for a second, she felt such a surge of love and longing it nearly made her stagger. She hugged him back, noting that her hands could now touch. He really was melting away.