In the complex, often superficial world of dating, Larkin had spent the better part of her twenty-eight years believing that her worth was tied to her appearance. She was “the big girl”—not in the way that invited trendy praise, but in the way that invited unsolicited advice from relatives and pitying glances from strangers. To compensate for a body that society deemed difficult to love, she became exceptionally easy to live with. She was the reliable friend, the tireless helper, and the one who remembered everyone’s coffee order. If she couldn’t be the most beautiful woman in the room, she resolved to be the most indispensable.
This was the version of Larkin that Sayer met at a trivia night. Sayer was handsome, well-groomed, and seemingly captivated by Larkin’s wit and “realness.” They dated for nearly three years, a period during which Larkin felt she had finally found someone who saw past her exterior. They shared a life, a Netflix account, and the vague, hopeful outlines of a future involving a dog and eventually children. Her best friend Maren, a naturally thin and effortlessly beautiful woman she had known since college, was a constant presence in their lives. Maren was the one who had held Larkin’s hand through her father’s funeral and encouraged her to believe she deserved a partner who never treated her as a secondary option.
The betrayal was as cinematic as it was devastating. Through a shared photo notification on her iPad, Larkin discovered that her life was a lie. A single image—Sayer and Maren together in Larkin’s own bed—shattered three years of trust in an instant. When confronted, Sayer didn’t offer the frantic apologies of a man who had made a mistake. Instead, he offered a cold, clinical justification: Maren was simply more “his type.” She was thin, she was beautiful, and in his eyes, she “matched” him. He told Larkin that she hadn’t taken care of herself, suggesting that her weight was the primary reason for his infidelity. Within months, the two were engaged, leaving Larkin to collapse inward under the weight of a shame she hadn’t earned.
The aftermath of the breakup was a dark period of internalized hate. Larkin found herself believing Sayer’s cruelty—that if she had only loved him enough to lose the weight, he would have stayed. Driven by a desperate need to fix the only thing she felt she could control, she began a grueling journey of physical transformation. She joined a gym with her friend Abby, enduring the humiliation of early failure until the minutes on the treadmill turned into miles. She overhauled her diet, obsessively logged her meals, and watched her body change. Six months later, the “big girl” was gone, replaced by a version of herself that the world suddenly deemed worthy of attention. People held doors for her; strangers smiled; and relatives whispered their approval.
The day of Sayer and Maren’s wedding arrived like a ghost from a past life. Larkin had planned to spend the day in isolation, but a frantic phone call from Sayer’s mother, Mrs. Whitlock, derailed her peace. Mrs. Whitlock, a woman who had spent years making passive-aggressive comments about Larkin’s health, was now begging her to come to the Lakeview Country Club. Out of a mixture of curiosity and lingering trauma, Larkin drove to the venue, only to find a scene of total domestic carnage.
The reception hall was a wreck of overturned chairs, smashed centerpieces, and spilled champagne. The wedding had imploded before it could begin. Maren had been caught in a web of her own lies; she had been seeing another man and bragging to her bridesmaids about how she planned to “ride the ring” for as long as it was convenient. When Sayer confronted her, she had laughed in his face, called him boring, and walked out in her bridal gown. Mrs. Whitlock, desperate to avoid the public humiliation of a canceled wedding in front of Sayer’s boss and social circle, had devised a grotesque solution: she wanted Larkin to step in as the replacement bride. Now that Larkin had lost the weight and “matched” Sayer, she was suddenly deemed a suitable backup plan.
Larkin looked at the woman who had once insulted her and saw the entire situation with a clarity that only distance can provide. She realized that to the Whitlocks, she was never a human being; she was a spare tire to be used when the primary one blew out. She refused the “offer” with a calm, biting dignity, informing Mrs. Whitlock that Sayer had humiliated himself months ago by being a cheater, and she would not be his PR strategy.
Later that evening, Sayer appeared at her door, looking like a shattered version of the man who had left her. He was disheveled and desperate, but his core remained unchanged. Even in his moment of total defeat, he tried to frame his return as a mutual victory. He looked at Larkin’s new, thinner frame and remarked that they “matched” now. He suggested that they could turn their tragedy into a romantic story of “ending up with the right person,” effectively erasing the pain he had caused. He truly believed that her physical transformation meant she was finally worthy of his presence.
In that moment, Larkin realized the most important truth of her journey. She hadn’t lost eighty pounds to get Sayer back; she had accidentally lost the belief that she needed to earn basic human respect. She stood in the doorway and looked at the man who had once been her entire world, and she felt nothing but a quiet, powerful indifference. She told him that while she had been big, she had still been too good for him. She explained that he hadn’t left her because she was unlovable, but because he was shallow and sought a trophy—and Maren had simply been a better player in the game he had created.
When she closed the door and slid the chain into place, she wasn’t just shutting out an ex-boyfriend; she was shutting out the version of herself that believed her value was a number on a scale. Larkin didn’t shrink herself to fit someone else’s idea of love; she grew into a woman who understood that she was enough exactly as she was. The “fat girlfriend” was a ghost of a life lived in service to others’ expectations, and the woman standing in the quiet of her own home was finally, for the first time, standing on her own.
