“You could kill yourself,” the doctor said, and I felt my brain go static. The rest reached me like a far-off channel, voices through the snow. Early osteoporosis, infertility, heart problems.

“By thirty, you could be a hunchback,” she said.

Jake’s shower stopped. I put my phone on the bedside table, pulled the sheet off my naked body and arranged it to drape around me the way women in paintings and movies and magazine spreads were always draped, their breasts and bushes barely covered. My bush was stripped bare, anyway, barely recovered from the raw aftermath of my first wax, first act of self-care, self-directed violence. I shut my eyes, pretended to sleep.

With Marcus, I’d left a first-time gash on his bedspread, his parents out of town for the night. The next day he told me he’d had to douse the stain in bleach before his mother came home. I told him, whatever. “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience,” I said, sarcastic. My mom had taught me not to be ashamed.

“The trick is to work up a good foam,” she said the first time I awoke to rusty goop. For some reason, with her, it embarrassed me. Her soapy fingers in my blood.

“Oh honey,” she said, “your body’s just doing its job.” Her face was calm, certain as she scrubbed. She seemed comforted by my body at work, recovering from colds and hay fevers; my body growth-spurting, bleeding, healing. I was different from her, I was healthy. We both wanted to believe that. But I couldn’t seem to separate love from sameness. I was different, so I had to leave.

Jake said, “Hey baby.” I opened my eyes. He said, “I want to be out in the world with you,” and took me to a coffee shop full of girls. Girls on their phones while they waited on their orders, girls whose hungover beauty was careless and slouched, girls with their arms and legs flung wide, their mouths yawning. I tightened against them.

“What kind of milk you like, babe?” Jake said.

“Almond, please.”

He kissed my nose, mimicked my voice—almond, please—and ordered for us both. When we left he held the door for me. For all the girls to see.