Chapter 19: Before and After

The villa gym had a mirror along one whole wall, and Jude had avoided it for five months.

He had run on the treadmill facing the window.

He had done his planks with his eyes shut.

On the first Tuesday after Millbrook, the doctor's office sent the numbers by text.

He stood in the gym doorway and read them twice.

The number was in the normal range.

He read the word "normal" a third time.

Nobody had told him to do it.

He had started jogging because he got winded on the stairs behind Ken.

He had kept going because the mornings were quiet.

He had stopped eating George's junk food because he was finally the one deciding what went in the cart.

Now the number was just a number, and it didn't feel like a prize.

He put the phone on the bench and made himself look at the mirror.

A man looked back.

He was still broad, and still soft in the middle, with a round face and wide shoulders.

But the shoulders looked different, and the legs, and the way he stood.

He lifted his shirt and looked at his stomach.

"Hey," Ken said from the doorway.

Jude dropped the shirt.

"How long have you been there?"

"A minute." Ken leaned on the frame in his gray tee, with a towel around his neck. "You okay?"

"The doctor says I'm in the normal range."

"That's good."

"Is it?" Jude turned. "I keep waiting to feel something. I thought I'd feel different."

Ken crossed the room.

He stopped behind Jude, close enough that Jude could see him in the glass.

He was taller by half a head, with his hands loose at his sides.

"Can I say something?"

"Always."

"I wanted you in the tent."

Jude's chest tightened.

"You were wet and furious and eating a granola bar, and I wanted you."

"I wanted you at the lake. I wanted you in the kitchen with flour on your face."

"Ken."

"I wanted you before the jogging and I want you after."

"I'd have wanted you at any weight you'd ever been. I need you to hear that."

"I think George taught you something, and I'd like to un-teach it."

Jude was staring at their reflections.

His eyes had gone bright.

"I didn't do it for you," he said, a little hoarsely.

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