I find Atlas in the kitchen. He’s put on a T-shirt that drapes over his boxers while he constructs a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“Hey you,” he says. I love it when he says that.
“Hi,” I say.
My arms slither their way around his midsection, and I plant a kiss on his neck. Atlas isn’t overtly muscular, but I love the feel of his flat stomach against my palms. I trail them underneath the shirt, the hair on our skin grazing each other’s. He shudders from my touch.
“Babe, I’m trying to make a sandwich. Please don’t make me horny,” he sighs.
“Sorry. What time is it?”
“Six a.m.”
“Shit. I have to be on shift in two hours.”
“Don’t go,” he complains.
“You know I need to,” I say.
He cranes his head back and rests it against mine. This tiny act of affection has become normal, comfortable even. It seems easy now, after everything. It took us a damn long time to get here, but we’re here now.
“That was amazing . . . what we did earlier,” he whispers.
“It was,” I mumble into his ear.
He turns on me and pushes me against the island counter.
We kiss ferociously, hungrily, with a desire that shouldn’t be there this early in the morning. His hands find my ass and squeeze it hard.
“Mmph, thick,” he breathes into my lips.
Atlas tastes like peanut butter and jelly. We’re locked in for another five or so minutes before we break apart. Something is happy between his legs.
“Jesus Christ. How?” I guffaw.
“I have the endurance,” he jokes.
I playfully shove him. He snorts and I dive for his sandwich to take a bite. He grabs it away from me with an enormous frown. Atlas scarfs the sandwich down whole.
“Fiend,” I say.
“My sandwich,” he pouts.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, “I’m going to shave.”
I escape to the bathroom. Inside, I gently massage the shaving cream on my face, noticing the acne dotting the mound of flesh on my chest. The groan I emit is long and harsh, made even worse the longer I fixate on my belly, which is fatter than it was several months ago.
“You look great, babe,” Atlas tells me from the bathroom door. He sidles in and plants a loud, wet smooch on my cheek, excess shaving cream splattering his lips. He wipes his face clean, returning to the kitchen. My mouth cracks from the pure joy he elicits.
Atlas and Ezra love my belly. I’m aware of their support if I decide I eventually want to be rid of it, but at times, it feels like I’m allowing myself to be me. At others, the self-consciousness gnaws at me like a leech. I think, perhaps, if it wasn’t a societal expectation to be fit and skinny, I’d be perfectly content with how I look.
“A bigger belly means more to love,”Ezra had said once. I stared at myself that night.Yeah,I had admitted. Bigger bellies were pretty damn attractive.
The scar on the right of my stomach, the residual aftermath from the bullet wound, is even more painful to face. I blink and Mara’s there, smiling maliciously with her skull mask cracked over her lips. I blink again and she’s gone—a memory of the distant past.
I know I’ve killed. It wasn’t Mara, but those men at the warehouse. It was in self-defense. I know this, but she still haunts me.
The razor slides down the grain on my cheek. Atlas rematerializes and watches the painstaking process. His grin is sweet and tender.
