Heart Bones

“I don’t know.” I do know, but telling her my weight would only give her a goal she doesn’t need to chase after.

She sighs, sounding frustrated. She plops back down onto the bench. “I’m still twenty pounds shy of my summer goal. I just need to try harder,” she says. “What’s your secret?”

My secret?

I laugh while I stare at myself in the mirror again, running a hand over my slightly concave stomach. “I’ve spent most of my life hungry. Not everyone has food in their houses all the time.” I look directly at Sara and she’s staring up at me with an unreadable expression.

Her eyes flitter away before landing on her phone screen. She clears her throat. “Is that true?”

“Yeah.”

She chews on her cheek for a moment and says, “Then why did you barely eat tonight?”

“Because I’ve had the worst twenty-four hours of my life and I was sitting at a dinner table with five people I don’t know, in a house I’ve never been in, in a state I’ve never been to. Even hungry people lose their appetites sometimes.”

Sara doesn’t look at me. I don’t know if I make her uncomfortable with how blunt I am or if she’s grappling with the fact that our lives are so different. I want to bring up what I noticed at dinner earlier—how she only ate when I ate. But I don’t. I feel like I’ve already wounded her enough tonight and we just met.

“Are you hungry?” I ask her. “Because I’m starving.”

She nods with a small smile, and for the first time, I feel like there’s some connection between us. “I am so fucking hungry right now it’s unreal.”

I laugh when she says that. “That makes two of us.”

I walk into the dressing room and change back into my clothes. When I walk out, I grab Sara’s hand and pull her up. “Come on.” I throw the clothes into the cart and turn toward the grocery section.

“Where are we going?”

“To the food section.”

We work our way to the bread aisle. I stop the cart in front of the boxed pastries. “Which is your favorite?”

Sara points to a white bag of mini-chocolate donuts. “Those.”

I grab a bag off the shelf and open it. I take a donut and stick it in my mouth and hand her the bag. “We’re gonna need milk too,” I say with a mouthful.

Sara looks at me like I’m insane, but she follows me to the dairy section regardless. I retrieve two individual chocolate milks and then point to a spot over by the eggs. I move the cart and then I sit down and lean against the long floor cooler that holds all the eggs.

“Sit down,” I say to her.

She looks around us a moment, then she slowly lowers herself to the floor next to me. I hand her one of the chocolate milks.

I open mine and take a big drink of it and then grab another donut.

“You’re crazy,” Sara says quietly, finally taking a donut for herself.

I shrug. “There’s a fine line between hungry and crazy.”

She takes a drink of her chocolate milk and then leans her head against the cooler. “My God. This is heaven.” She stretches her legs out in front of her, and we sit together in silence for a while, eating donuts and watching shoppers give us strange looks.

“I’m sorry if anything I said about your weight offended you,” Sara finally says.

“It didn’t. I just don’t like seeing you compare yourself to me.”

“It’s hard not to. It doesn’t help that I’m spending the summer on the beach. I compare myself to every girl in a bikini.”

“You shouldn’t,” I say. “But I get it. It’s weird, though, isn’t it? Why do people judge other people based on how tightly their skin clings to their bones?” I shove another donut in my mouth to shut myself up.

Sara mutters, “Amen,” right before she takes another swig of her chocolate milk.

A store employee walks by and pauses when he sees us sitting on the floor eating food. “We’re gonna pay for it,” I say, waving a flippant hand at him. He shakes his head and walks away.

Another stretch of silence passes between us, and then Sara says, “I was really nervous to meet you. I was scared you hated me.”

I laugh. “I didn’t even know you existed until today.”

My comment looks like it hurts Sara’s feelings. “Your father never talked about me?”

I shake my head. “Not because he was trying to hide the fact that you existed. We just…we don’t have a relationship. At all. We’ve barely spoken since he got married. I actually forgot he was even married.”

Sara looks like she’s about to say something, but she’s interrupted.

“You two good?” Marcos asks.

We both look up to find Samson and Marcos looking back and forth between us.