And the knowledge that when I was finished, I could set it down.
Ruth started training me after my shifts. At first, I assumed she felt sorry for me. Then I understood Ruth did not feel sorry for anyone. In her mind, pity was only laziness dressed up in perfume.
“You’re not broken,” she told me one morning while I struggled through squats. “You’re undertrained.”
“I lost everything.”
“No,” she said. “You lost people who liked you weak.”
Those words followed me all the way home.
At the beginning, my body resisted everything. I was softened by stress, drained by grief, emptied out by months of hormones and heartbreak. But slowly, almost in spite of myself, I began to change. My shoulders lifted straighter. My legs grew steadier. My face became sharper. I slept more deeply. I stopped checking Ashley’s social media every night, then every week, then completely.
Two months after Joseph left, he came to the apartment to collect the final box of his belongings.
Ashley came with him.
Of course she did.
She had on white leggings and a cropped hoodie, her hair pulled into a flawless ponytail, her engagement ring already glittering on her finger even though the divorce paperwork was barely moving forward.
“You’re sweaty,” she said when I stepped inside after work.
Joseph gave a quiet laugh.
Ashley wrinkled her nose. “Stairs must be hard for certain people.”
For one reckless second, I imagined grabbing that ponytail and pulling her down the very stairs she found so funny. Instead, I moved past them, opened the refrigerator, and drank water straight from the bottle.
Joseph looked at my arms.
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