“I have all the time in the world.”
“I’m not hungry,” Sam said quickly. “You guys should have lunch together. I’m happy to go…shop or something.”
“You’d probably like Santana Row,” Chloe offered.
“Great. I’m happy to cool my heels there. As you know, shopping options are limited at home.”
Chloe laughed. “Yes, I do know.”
When they got outside, Sam offered Chloe shotgun, even though Chloe protested. Sam watched the ease between Logan and Chloe from her position in the back seat. She knew Logan was a great dad. She’d seen him with Chloe any number of times, and in many different circumstances. But maybe it was just having been with him alone for all these hours and seeing how different he was now in contrast that made her so aware of it.
He wasn’t easy with her. It wasn’t all in her head.
“This is where all the shopping is,” Chloe said, pointing at a row of very nice-looking stores.
“Great, you can dump me out here.”
“There’s tons of food just like two blocks up,” Chloe said. “We can eat here.”
She got out of the car and waved, leaving them to debate that while she headed for the first store. Was she so fragile that she couldn’t handle being around someone whose family was in order? They were a smaller family unit. Not one without tragedy. But they were them, like always, and maybe that was part of why she’d suddenly felt uncomfortable.
She started idly taking clothes off the rack and draping them over her arm. Then she took a bikini off one rack.
She never wore bikinis.
She often made an exercise of looking at all the women on beaches who did. She thought they looked good. Whether they had toned abs, visible ribs, or bellies on proud display, she could see how a bikini worked for them. She tried to apply that same love for her own body and had never been able to manage it.
This was pivotal, she realized, because she could fold in on herself here, die inside over the fact that her body wasn’t enough for her husband. Her body that had given him three children and years of sex, but was somehow not as exciting as the unknown bodies he might find outside their marriage.
Yeah, she could hate her body for that. Easily.
It would be a short sidestep on the trail of uneasy confidence she already walked.
But she’d left him in Oregon.
Her body had gone with her. It always would.
It was hers.
She stood there, feeling wholly undone by that realization. She’d felt part of a couple for so long. They’d given each other easy access to their bodies. She’d trusted him, so it had been easy.
Plus she’d had three kids. They’d come out of this body. She’d fed them from her body. Been pulled on, tugged on, puked on for years.
Now the kids were grown. The husband was gone.
She had herself.
Her body was hers.
Normally she asked Will if he liked what she chose. She took selfies in the dressing room because she wanted him to like it. He wasn’t controlling. It was her. She was so dependent on his approval that she asked him for it when he probably didn’t care what she did at all.
She’d been a child who asked her parents. A teenager who asked her friends.
A woman who asked her husband.
She’d gone straight from her parents’ house to Will’s.
She went into the dressing room and started trying things on and asking herself if she liked them. Which was really hard, and it took a lot of willpower to not at least text things to Elysia and Whitney, but she was trying to marinate in her revelation.
