My cheekbones. I stared at them for a beat too long—the way you stare at something you haven’t figured out how to feel about yet.
It was never just about the scale. The numbers were confirmation but the obsession lived in what couldn’t be measured—the satisfying hollow beneath my cheekbones when I traced them with my fingertips. The collarbones that cut sharp lines beneath my skin, visible proof of discipline. The knobs of my spine I could count in the shower like a private ritual. The iliac crests rising above my waistband, twin monuments to everything I’d denied myself.
My cheekbones had been the crown jewel.Sharp enough to cut glass, someone had commented once. I’d carried that phrase around like a trophy.
Five months ago, I could see every edge. Now they had softened. The sharp architecture that had stared back at me fromcompetition photos—that particular gauntness that was all the rage in the 90s—had filled in. The edges blurred. My face looked rounder. Fuller.
For better or worse.
My logical brain knew the answer to that. Had always known, technically, the way you can know something completely and feel something else entirely about it at the same time. My therapist had a name for that too. Most things had names, I had learned. That didn’t make them smaller.
I looked at myself for another moment. Dark circles, pale skin, blue black hair, cheekbones that were returning to something a nutritionist would call healthy and that some part of me still hadn’t made peace with.
Present tense,my therapist would say.What do you see right now.
I see Théo Beaubien, I thought.Twenty-one years old. Standing in a stranger’s bathroom in Chicago wearing a towel, having accomplished nothing today except walking a dog and eating a salad and doing box jumps alone in an empty gym.
Riveting. Someone should write a biography.
I reached up and wiped the steam from the mirror’s edge. Then I got dressed, went to check on Aspen, and didn’t look at the mirror again.
13. Derek
We beat Detroit in Detroit.
I came home drained but still buzzing from the excitement of a win. The apartment was dark except for the blue flicker of the TV.
Théo was asleep on the couch.
He had pulled the throw blanket from the back of the cushions and draped it over himself, his skate bag and backpack still by the front door where he’d dropped them. Aspen was curled at his feet like he’d been there all evening, which knowing Aspen, he had. The TV was playing some reality baking competition at low volume, the judges speaking in hushed tones that had apparently not been enough to keep Théo awake.
I stood in the doorway for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.
He looked different asleep. Peaceful. The walls he kept up during waking hours were gone, and without them he looked younger. Softer. Hand pillowed under his cheek, lashes dark against his skin. His mouth still curved slightly downward—even unconscious, apparently, he had opinions.
There was something almost unbearably young about him. Something that made me want to—
Aspen lifted his head. Assessed the situation. Decided it required a full body shake that rattled his tags loud enough to wake the dead.
Théo startled upright, blinking, the blanket sliding off his shoulder. His hair was pushed to one side and his eyes were unfocused and his voice, when he spoke, was even raspier with sleep than usual.
“Shit. What time is it?” He looked around the room. “Did you just get back?”
“It’s one in the morning. Go back to sleep.” I set my bag down quietly. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
He sat up further, rubbing his face with the back of his hand, the throw blanket falling away entirely. Long sleeved t-shirt despite the late summer humidity. Pajama pants. He had his sleeves pulled over his hands again in that habitual way, fingers curled into the fabric.
He looked smaller like this. Unguarded. Sleep soft. Without the silences and deflections, something almost fragile. I wondered if he was cold. If the AC had been running too high.
And then, unbidden, with absolutely no input from the rational part of my brain:you should go keep him warm.
I cleared my throat.
“I’m going to crash,” I said. “You’re welcome to stay. But if you want to head home, let me call you an Uber first. I don’t like the idea of you on the train at this hour.”
He was still mostly asleep, processing on a slight delay. He looked at me for a moment with those dark, unfocused eyes, and then nodded and settled back against the cushions. Aspen, who had apparently fulfilled his duty by waking everyone up, resettled himself at Théo’s feet with elaborate ceremony and put his chin back down.
I turned off the TV. The apartment went darker.
