Page 92 of The Weight Of It All
He pulled out of me slowly but stayed on top of me. “We should shower.”
I nuzzled his jaw. “Later.”
He pulled the covers over us and snuggled into me. “Maybe we could nap a little.”
“Mmm, nap, shower, order Thai food, and more sex.”
He smiled against my skin. “Perfect.”
Epilogue
I stoodin a sea of other contestants, pumped and excited. I was a little nervous, but I’d trained for six months for this. My co-workers had only trained for about two months, well, since I’d suggested we enter a team in the City2Surf fun run to raise money for kids’ cancer. They didn’t object too much. Well, Melinda did. And I think she could have seriously plotted my death, but she was beside me, ready to run with me.
Reed was on my other side. When I’d said to him that my boss Lillian had been inspired by the Monday morning tea cook along thing and said we should incorporate more team building exercises, he showed me a flyer someone had dropped into the gym for the fun run.
So, not only did the gym have a team entered, but my office did too. I had shirts made that readActuaries Do it Better, and there was eight of us all up running, Lillian included. I had to admit, I was kind of proud of myself.
I was fitter now than I was when I ran my first Bay Run last year. I would never have a body like Reed, and I was happy with that. I still had stretch marks. I was still a little softaround the middle. I would still eat cheesecake if I wanted it, and I would enjoy wine and coffee, because that’s who I am. But I now wore men’s medium sizes. I’d never be a small, but my body shape had completely changed: I was thinner yes, had some muscle definition too. But I was fitter, more flexible, my blood pressure was perfect, my blood sugar levels low, and my cholesterol levels were good. I was healthier than I had ever been.
Happier too.
Let me be clear about something. My contentment did not come from weight loss. It came from accepting myself, and that was something Reed had taught me to differentiate. It came from setting goals and accomplishing them, even when I thought I couldn’t. It came from being able to look in a mirror and being happy with who I saw smiling back at me. I never realised just how invisible I’d been?how invisible I’d wanted to be?when I was at my biggest. How I’d used humour as a shield to defend myself before others could throw hurtful slurs at me. I mean, I was still funny?okay, let’s face it, I’m hilarious, and we all know it?but now my jokes weren’t used as weapons. And the fact Reed fell in love with me when I was at my heaviest, and loved me still, proved to me that he was what I’d thought all along.
Perfect.
Reed and I have been together for a year. He moved in with me two months ago when his lease was up for renewal, and it made sense given he spent so much time there anyway. It didn’t come as a shock to anyone. We slotted into each other’s lives seamlessly: his family loved me, and my mum and sister loved him too. He’s even escorted my mum to the Nespresso café a few times to see if George Clooney ever showed up.
He never has.
We still worked out together. We started doing the BayRun once a month. I could run the full seven Ks now without stopping, and when we’d decided to do the City2Surf, we started doing the Bay Run every second weekend. Going from seven kilometres to fourteen was gonna be hard, but I was up for it.
We weren’t out to break records or to even run competitively. We just wanted to finish and raise some money for sick kids. I doubted I’d be running the whole distance, but the fact I was even doing it at all was a pretty remarkable milestone.
So, while we would run it, most of my colleagues were walking purely for the fun of it, and so we were all starting together at the tail end of the field. Along with eighty thousand other entrants, we waited. And when the starting gun fired, Reed took my face in his hands and planted a kiss on my lips. “We got this.”
And so we ran.
For fourteen fucking kilometres.
Well, I walked up Heartbreak Hill, because never in history has a hill been so aptly named. Then again, Kilimanjaro does start withkill a man...
“Come on, you can jog this,” Reed urged.
I made it to the top of the hill and gripped my side, fending off a stitch. I’d just run almost seven kilometres already. The Bay Run is flat; the City2Surf is not. “No I can’t. I left my Supergirl cape at home,” I panted, and some guy behind me snorted. I shrugged. Reed was my Superman; I was his Supergirl. I had no problem with that.
“I hate hills. All of them,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Whose ridiculous idea was it to put hills here?”
Reed chuckled. “I don’t know, but they should be fired.”
“Exactly.”
“You wanna walk for a bit?”
I took another breath and felt rested enough to continue. “Nah. Let’s keep going.”
The second half was slower than the first, and Reed kept a check on the latest Fitbit I’d given him for Christmas. “If you wanna keep going for time, you can,” I said to him. I was slowing him down, and no doubt the guys he worked with were probably already finished by now.
“No way,” he said as he ran. “We start together, we finish together.”
