CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Skye was never what you would call skinny. At least not since she hit puberty. By age fifteen, she’d developed breasts and hips and a belly. Junior high and high school girls wanted curves, but not the kind that required you to wear anything above a size zero or a 36C. And in gym class, both the boys and girls let her know that Skye’s curves were the unwelcome kind. They called her “fatty.” They told her to sit at home and bake on Friday nights. They told her to dress up as Miss Piggy for Halloween.
Didn’t matter that she was on the tennis team. Didn’t matter that she hated Doritos and soda. Didn’t matter that she was, relative to the rest of the country, the median size for her height and weight and age.
She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t hate her body. Even as a child, an aunt had called her “thick” and Summer “stick.”
Vance Sandler’s backhanded compliments had made her feel uneasy, no matter how hard she’d convinced herself that he didn’t mean to be hurtful, that he was the only one who loved her body as it was. You won’t need to eat so much when you’re with me, he’d said.
Fuck that shit.
Skye lay in bed with Harvey, her back to him as he spooned her, his arms pulling her into his cocoon. It didn’t seem to matter to him that the last person she’d had sex with was his archnemesis (although of course she didn’t know that at the time). It didn’t seem to matter to him that her breasts flopped wildly as she bounced on top of him, or that she was on top of him in the first place when she figured her weight would crush him. He’d kissed so many parts of her, from the curve of her neck to the edge of her shoulder, on the back of her wrist and each fingertip, down her back as he ran his hand along her torso and hip and waist and thigh. Her naked body, with all its folds and flab and wrinkles, didn’t turn him off. How was that possible? She wondered this as she lay there, still and silent, while Harvey slept, breathing calm and even and content.
When she was sixteen, almost immediately after the first time she’d ever had sex (with her mixed-doubles partner, Kyle Corbin), she’d engrossed herself in fantasies about weddings and honeymoons and where she and Kyle would live and how many kids and pets they would have. She’d begin making lists about whether to have a beach wedding or a church wedding, whether she should buy a strapless gown and starve herself or a classic A-line gown like Princess Diana had worn, perhaps without as many puffs and ruffles and tulle. She’d believed in fairy tales back then. And she was let down with a crashing thud when Kyle made a pass at Brittany Lester in her gym class the very next week, one of the girls who’d taunted her.
By the time she got to college, she was less dreamy and more realistic. Sex didn’t always lead to love. Love didn’t always lead to sex. But she still wanted it to.
By the time Vance Sandler came to Boston for their weekend, she was so happy to finally have sex after such a drought that she overlooked his lackluster performance.
She enjoyed sex with Harvey, though. It was intimate. Meaningful. Complete. And yet, she still worried: Was the sex good for Harvey? Would he regret that they’d had sex? Whose bed was she going to sleep in the following night?
But then she gave herself gentle instructions: Breathe, Skye.
I approve of myself. She almost had the affirmation down to a conditioned behavioral response anytime her thoughts became too negative or self-defeating.
She took deep breaths, closed her eyes, and fell asleep blanketed in Harvey’s warm body. Chip and Bucky Barnes were each left to find accommodations elsewhere.
Skye awoke to the buzzing and beeping of the alarm on Harvey’s phone. She stirred and turned over, accidentally smacking Harvey upside the head. He moaned and stirred as the jolt woke her completely. “I’m so sorry,” she croaked, and he opened his eyes. And smiled.
“Hey,” he said. He turned over and leaned on his elbow, facing her.
“Hey, yourself,” she said, returning the ear-to-ear grin.
He reached over to pull a strand of her hair away from her face. “Sleep OK?”
“I guess.”
He squinted and peered at her. “You all right?”
She decided to come out and say it. “This is weird, Harvey. I’m naked in your bed. Because we had sex last night.”
“That’s usually the order of how these things go, yes.”
“We had sex,” she said, as if he didn’t hear her the first time. “You and me.”
“I know . . . ,” he said in an extended, exaggerated voice. “And . . . ?”
“And . . . it changes things.”
Harvey rested on his side, propped up by his elbow. “In what way?”
She opened her mouth as if she were about to utter an answer, when she realized she had none.
Harvey pointed at her in a teasing way. “That’s what I thought.” He rose from the bed, and Skye took in an eyeful of his naked body, sculpted, thanks to hours of wielding paint rollers and brushes and moving ladders and hauling gallon cans.
And then she knew.
“It’s just that I’m afraid you’re not getting the best of me. I want to be better,” she said. She’d never been so honest with anyone before, especially herself. She couldn’t remember having such insight. That she did and was able to voice it comforted her.
“I disagree,” said Harvey. “Based on what I know about you, I think this is the best you’ve ever been.”
“It is. But I can be better.”
“How so?” he asked.
“I want to love myself more. And even though I’ve lived on my own for a long time, I haven’t really taken care of myself.”
Harvey sat on the end of the bed and took hold of a pillow and pulled it to his chest, as if shielding his heart. His eyes projected worry. “You can work on being better and still be with me, can’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never been at this place in a relationship before. This state of mind.”
He squeezed the pillow. “I want you, Skye,” he said. “Just as you are.” He rose and came to her side of the bed, pulled the covers away from her, and caressed her tenderly. His very presence radiated warmth. “You can be afraid, or whatever you’re feeling, but walk through it and hold my hand.”
Skye trembled and her chest tightened and her stomach turned as if her world was falling apart yet again. She had no fantasy to cling to this time. No false hope. No snap reaction to a number on a calendar or a scale. Harvey was the real thing.
She had survived losing Vance and losing herself, hadn’t she? In the four months that she’d been in Billings, she put her life back together, piece by piece, and found which pieces worked. By eliminating what she no longer wanted, she found what she did want: Freedom. Security. Acceptance. Respect.
She learned how to give those things to herself rather than get them from someone or something else. She learned how to be those things rather than demand those things. She learned to see through a lens of abundance rather than scarcity.
She saw her sister through a more accurate lens now. She saw her as a sister rather than an opponent.
When she first arrived, she had believed that Vance had lured her away from the only home she’d ever known, and then left her out in the cold. That he’d taken her dignity.
Maybe he had. But only because she’d given it to him.
But what he couldn’t take, what no one could ever take, was her response to it. She could accept it all and wither away or she could rise up like the phoenix from the ashes, or like the guy from the TV show: Better. Stronger. Faster.
That was freedom. That was acceptance. That was respect.
She closed her eyes and took a breath. Be still. Listen.
She opened her eyes and looked at Harvey. He was so handsome with his eyes round and dark and sad like a dachshund’s, and his hair tousled and his biceps twitching and his big feet glued to the ground.
She stood up, took a step forward, and leaned into him. He slowly, tentatively put his arms around her. And when she felt herself folded into him, when his warmth and envelopment took over, she released a long, deep breath and nuzzled into his neck, and he inhaled the scent of her, and kissed her temple and cheek and ear and neck before meeting her lips.
Morning breath, she thought. Both of them.
She didn’t care.
“I’m not going anywhere, Harvey,” she spoke into his ear.
“Promise?” he whispered, nuzzling her neck.
“Promise,” she said.