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My skin was holding up well without Botox and in spite of my preference for sunning on Bondi Beach without sunblock in my youth. Good genes. The one thing my mother did for me.
I wasn’t some kind of low-maintenance bitch. I got biweekly manicures. A massage every month. I had my golden hair highlighted every six weeks so it looked sun-kissed, and the split ends were sheared off. Thanks to all that tanning I did in my youth, I had a base layer of sorts, and my skin always tanned easily. There was a small scattering of freckles across the bridge of my nose that became more pronounced in winter.
I bit my lip as I regarded my naked body.
Back in my twenties, when I’d been married, it was always slim, toned, and without an ounce of fat to be found. I was constantly hungry, counting the calorie of every piece of food that went into my mouth and always finding something wrong with my body.
My relationship with myself and food had been unhealthy to say the least.
It had taken years after my divorce and my move to let go of that shit. To eat what I wanted, to love my fucking body. To not want to kill myself for eating a slice of cake.
Working at a bakery helped.
Not my waistline, but to determine that my worth was not measured by my dress size.
As it was, my hips were wider, and my stomach was no longer washboard flat, but I was still what most people would consider slim. I still looked great in clothes.
Sometimes, staring at my naked body, I heard my ex-husband’s voice in my head, telling me everything that was wrong with me.
I especially heard his voice on days when I was so hungover, I deeply believed I was a terrible person and would never feel joy again.
“Fucking booze,” I muttered to my reflection, stomping into my room to yank on some sweats and a faded tee that might’ve once said ‘I saw The Kooks in Barcelona.’
I didn’t bother making my bed. Usually I did, even though I despised the task, especially at the early hours of the morning I got up. But I’d read something once about how making a bed would set you up for the entire day and make your life feel less like a dumpster fire.
As it was, there wasn’t much I could do to not make my life feel like a dumpster fire.
Coffee was the most important thing to me right now.
I stumbled to the kitchen, wincing at the sun streaming through the windows, glaring at the ocean and the view that normally brightened my mornings and reminded me of home.
No sign of Kip.
That was good.
I couldn’t deal with that right now.
I especially couldn’t deal with him and the grilled cheese he made me last night. He didn’t need to make it for me. He could’ve told me to fuck off.Iwould’ve told me to fuck off.
The gesture was far too… considerate for my liking.
Roommates. That’s what we were.
I busied myself with making coffee and convinced myself that you could not, in fact, die from a hangover.
I jumped when the front door opened and closed, and for a second, I considered lunging to the kitchen counter to grab a knife from my knife block to wield at the intruder.
Then I remembered.
My roommate.
Kip came into the kitchen sweating.
And shirtless.
Music blared from the headphones still in his ears.
And his abs.
