Chapter 5: The Numbers on His Lips
The numbers hung in the air between them, a blueprint etched in desire.110 pounds.A 21-inch waist. His hands were still on her ribs, counting them like the rungs of a ladder he intended to climb. Louise felt the hard pressure of his arousal against her thigh, a stark, physical translation of his words.This wasn’t about health.It was about aesthetics.It was about possession.
She slid off his lap, her legs unsteady.The room seemed to tilt. “I should study,” she said, her voice thin.
“Okay,” he said, not moving from the edge of the bed, his eyes following her. There was a new warmth in his gaze, an approval that felt like a spotlight. “Don’t stay up too late.”
In the bathroom, she locked the door and leaned against it, her heart hammering against her ribs. She could still feel the ghost of his fingertips.Razor blade collarbones.A ladder of knots. She walked to the mirror and lifted her shirt. She turned, craning her neck to see the vague shadows of vertebrae in the poor light.Not a ladder.Not yet. She pressed her thumb and forefinger around her waist, squeezing, imagining the tape measure cinching tighter.Twenty pounds. It was a mathematical problem with a solution that was nothing but subtraction.
The next morning, the apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator.Ilia had left for an early shift. On the kitchen counter, next to the empty coffee pot, he’d left a note. Grocery delivery coming at 11.Got you the zero-sugar yogurts and the kelp noodles.Xo.
She stared at the note.The ‘xo’ was a relic, a habit from before. It felt incongruous now, like a Valentine’s card left on a battlefield. The specificity of the groceries was a command.She opened the fridge. His side was stocked: eggs, chicken breast, whey protein, a six-pack of craft beer. Her side was a curated landscape of absence: bottled water, a tub of greens already wilting, the new yogurts.
Her stomach growled, a deep, twisting sound.She drank a glass of water so cold it made her teeth ache. The scale in the bedroom waited.She stepped onto it naked, as she did every day now. The digital numbers blinked, settled.A drop.Another two pounds gone. She took a picture with her phone, the cool screen reflecting her pale face in its black surface.She sent it to him. No caption.Her phone buzzed two minutes later.A single emoji: a fire. 🔥
Then a follow-up text: See?Told you skipping that pasta night would pay off. What’s the total now?She typed the number. His response was immediate: So close to the first milestone.You’re incredible.
Louise dressed in loose workout clothes and spent forty-five minutes on the stationary bike in the corner of the living room, a podcast about macroeconomic theory drowning in her ears. She pedaled until her vision spotted at the edges and her throat burned with the need for water she wouldn’t allow herself yet.The pain was a cleansing fire. It felt like progress.
That afternoon, she met her friend Maya on campus for what was supposed to be a study session.Maya had brought muffins, homemade ones studded with fat blueberries. The smell was obscene.“You have to try one,” Maya said, pushing the paper-lined basket toward her. “I used, like, half the sugar.”
“I just ate,” Louise lied, pulling her textbook closer.The lie was automatic now.Maya studied her, her cheer dimming. “Lou, you look… really thin. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” Louise said, too quickly.“Just stressed.You know how Ilia is about nutrition. He’s got us on this whole clean-eating kick.” She used his name as a shield, an authority figure to blame.“Right,” Maya said slowly, picking at her own muffin. “But, like, he’s not your trainer. You’re allowed to eat a muffin.”
The words allowed to sparked a sudden, violent anger in Louise’s chest.She didn’t want permission. Permission was for children.She was on a mission. “I don’t want a muffin,” she said, her voice sharper than she intended. “I want a 3.8 GPA this semester.Can we focus?”
Maya retreated, her face closing off. The study session proceeded in a stiff, polite silence.When they parted, Maya’s hug was brief. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
Louise walked home, the cold autumn air biting through her jacket. Take care of yourself.The phrase was meaningless. Taking care of herself was what had made her soft, had made Ilia pull away.This new regime, this precise hunger, was the opposite of care. It was demolition.Ilia was home when she arrived, cooking chicken in a cast-iron skillet. The apartment was filled with the savory, safe smell of protein. “How was Maya?” he asked, flipping the chicken with a confident spatula.“Fine. She brought muffins.”
He made a faint, dismissive tsk sound with his tongue.“Of course she did. Sweet enablers, all of them.” He said it lightly, almost fondly, as if her friends were charmingly naive children. “Plate’s here for you when you’re ready.”
Her plate held a single chicken breast, a mountain of steamed broccoli, and half a sweet potato. It was a perfect, measured portion of fuel.His plate held double the amount, plus a side of rice. They ate at the breakfast bar.He talked about work, a problem with a supplier. She listened, pushing the broccoli around.“You’re quiet,” he said finally.
“Just tired.”
He finished his last bite, watching her.“You’re almost there, you know. To the first goal. I can see it.” He reached over and ran a single finger along the line of her jaw.“It’s getting so defined.”
That night in bed, his touch was different. It wasn’t the hesitant, confused grazing of a few months ago, nor was it the passionate claiming of their early days.It was studious.Appreciative. His palms slid over her hips, his thumbs pressing into the hollows that were deepening daily. He kissed her collarbone, then the space between her ribs.“I can feel them more,” he murmured against her skin.
His arousal was immediate, undeniable. As he moved on top of her, his hands gripping her narrow waist, Louise felt a profound dissociation.She was both there and not there. Her mind floated to the ceiling, looking down at the scene: a thin, pliable girl and a man worshipping the absence he had curated.His pleasure was tied to the metrics. Every gasp was a tribute to the vanishing pounds. She closed her eyes and thought of the blueberry muffins, the smell of the pasta restaurant she’d skipped, the phantom warmth of Maya’s concerned hug. She stored the hunger pangs that still gnawed at her, saving them as further proof of her commitment.
Afterward, he held her, his body spooning her back. His hand splayed possessively over her flat stomach.“My perfect girl,” he whispered into her hair, already slurring with sleep. “You’re doing so good.”
The words coiled in her chest, cold and heavy. My.Good.She lay awake, listening to his breathing even out. The moon cast a silver stripe across the floor, illuminating the dresser, and the scale upon it. In the flat, eerie light, it looked like a monolith.A week later, she stood before it again. The house was silent. Ilia was at the gym, pushing his own body to a different standard of expansion.She had fasted for twenty hours.Her head was light, a balloon on a string. She stepped on.The numbers flickered.Held.It was the first milestone.
A strange, electric numbness buzzed through her.No triumph, no joy.Just a vacant sense of arrival. She took the picture and sent it.
The phone rang sixty seconds later, a jarring sound in the quiet.It was him.“You did it.” His voice was breathless, excited. “Baby, you fucking did it. I knew you could.”
“Yeah,” she said, staring at her reflection in the dark window.Her eyes were huge in her face.
“This calls for a celebration.I’m bringing dinner home.The good place, with the wild salmon and asparagus. No sauces. We’ll do it right.”
“Okay.”
“I’m so proud of you,” he said, and the warmth in his voice was like a drug, flooding the empty places. “Wait until I get home.I want to see you. I want to hold you.”
When he arrived, he carried the paper bag of food like a trophy. He set it down and came to her first, his hands cradling her face, his eyes searching her features with an intensity that bordered on religious.“Look at you,” he breathed.He kissed her, hard. “My achievement.”
They ate at the couch this time, the carton of salmon and greens on the coffee table.He toasted her with his water glass.“To the first twenty. To the discipline.”
She clinked her glass against his.The fish was dry, the asparagus stringy. It tasted like victory.
“Only fifteen more to go,” he said, his tone conversational, as if discussing the weather.“Then we reassess.The waist measurement is next.I ordered a proper tape measure. It arrives tomorrow.”
Louise nodded, chewing slowly.Fifteen more pounds. She saw the numbers in her head, a countdown to zero. She saw the tape measure, a silver serpent waiting to constrict.She saw his eyes, bright with a love that was conditional on her continued disappearance.
Later, as he slept, she stole into the bathroom.She didn’t turn on the light. In the glow of the streetlight filtering through the small window, she lifted her shirt and faced the mirror.She tried to see what he saw.The achievement.The victory. All she saw was a stranger, a collection of angles and shadows, a monument to his want. She pressed her fingers to her collarbone, feeling its sharp ridge.Razor blade, she thought.
The hunger was a constant now, a silent companion more intimate than he had become. It was the only thing that felt truly hers.She went back to bed, sliding in beside his warm, sleeping form. He turned and draped an arm over her waist, his hand settling on the pronounced curve of her hip bone. He sighed in his sleep, content.
Louise stared at the ceiling, counting the cracks she knew by heart.The next milestone awaited.The tape measure was coming. The emptiness inside her was no longer a void; it was a blueprint, and she was the construction site. And the project, she understood with a calm, cold clarity, was far from over.