Page 157 of The Love Haters

“What’s up?”

I deflected. “What’s up withyou?”

“Not much,” Beanie said—and she wasn’t kidding. As she elaborated, and told me all about the avocado toast she’d just made for breakfast, the marinara stain she could not get out of her favorite shirt, and the crazy dream she’d just had about her high school boyfriend, I listened with an almost painful glow of gratitude in my chest.

“You have got to stop dreaming about that dude,” I said.

“I know, right?”

What an amazing friend/cousin/almost-sister I had. Life hadn’t exactly gifted me with the greatest mom on the planet, and I wouldn’t say I’d won the stepmother lottery, either… but it was all redeemed, I realized right then, because I had Beanie.

Beanie who always picked up. Beanie who always made time to chat. Beanie who knew all my secrets.

And then I remembered I didn’t know one big one of hers.

“I want you to tell me your beauty list,” I said next.

“What? Why?”

Um, because I was curious? Because I hated not knowing things about Beanie? Because I might be about to die?

“I think I’ve waited long enough,” I said.

“That’s probably right.”

“So?” I demanded.

“Well,” Beanie said then. “Okay. It’s just…everything.”

“Everything?” I challenged.

“You know,” Beanie said. “Just… all of it.”

Now this was distracting. “You like everything about your body?Everything?You think you’re just—what? Perfect?”

“I don’t think I’mperfect,” Beanie said, like that idea was preposterous. “I just don’t look at myself the way you do.”

“How do I look at myself?”

“Like you have a template in your head for how things should look—down to the mostminuteminutia—and how you feel about every part of yourself gets graded on the scale of how far it varies from the template.”

Was there any other way to think about it? “Isn’t that what everybody does?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“How do you think about it?”

“It’s just, you know, that… everything gets a pass because it’s mine.”

“Everything gets a pass?”

“Yeah. It’s like, I know what a supermodel is… and I know that I don’t look like that. But I just love all of my… everything… because it’s mine.”

She loved all of her everything because it was hers.

It was such an astonishing idea, I didn’t know what to say.

“Hello?” Beanie said.

---