Page 38 of The Lumberjack and the City Slicker

“Okay, I get the health stuff, but if it’s not hurting you, and you’re just worried about gaining weight, then I think, if you like Nutella,” he says, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, gaze locked onto mine like I’m the only thing in the room, “you should fucking eat it whenever you want.”

I blink.

It’s so direct I don’t know what to do with it.

“B-but I’ll get fat,” I blurt, then immediately want to crawl into the woodstove and die. “Um, fatter, I mean.”

The change in him is instant.

One second he’s calm—grumpy, but calm—and the next his posture goes razor-sharp, like a switch flips.

“Who the fuck called you fat?” he asks.

My mouth opens and closes like a fish.

“What?”

He doesn’t blink. “Who.”

I let out a short, nervous laugh.

“No one—well. Not like that. I mean, people don’t say it to your face. It’s just implied. You know? My ex-fiancé used to tell me I’d look like a model if I could get the weight down.”

His jaw flexes, a muscle jumping near his cheek.

“Clara,” he says, and my name coming out of his mouth like that—steady, rough, certain—makes my stomach flutter in a way I refuse to unpack. “You seem like an educated woman.”

I swallow. “Okay?”

“So I know you don’t believe what someone else calls you matters in this world.”

I stare at him, stunned, because the truth is, I do believe it.

I’ve believed it in a thousand tiny ways.

In the way I order salads when I want fries.

In the way I keep my laughs smaller in public.

In the way I’ve spent years trying to be acceptable.

His voice drops lower.

“Fat is an ugly word,” he says, fierce now, like the word itself offends him. “And it doesn’t mean shit.”

I blink again, throat tight.

“Some people have fat heads,” he continues, like he’s talking about weather, “or fat mouths. Like your piece of shit ex-fiancé. But I’ll tell you this—” he points at me with two fingers, like I’m a fact he’s decided and that’s that, “—I know beauty.”

My heart thumps once, hard.

“And you’re it,” he finishes.

I freeze.

I don’t know what to say.

No one talks to me like that.