“Cover yourself.”
My husband dropped a folded white towel onto the table beside my lunch.
I looked up at him.
We were sitting under the shaded café area at Splash Cove, the huge water park just off the interstate. Paige sat in a wooden high chair on my left, happily crushing a strawberry between her tiny fists while red juice ran down her wrists. Her twin sister, Piper, sat on my right, determined to pull my sunglasses off the top of my head.
Families surrounded us beneath bright blue umbrellas, eating fries and chicken strips. Somewhere nearby, a child was crying over a missing flip-flop. A lifeguard’s whistle echoed across the park.
“Excuse me?”
Daniel pushed the towel closer.
“Put it around you.”
“Why?”
His eyes flicked toward the next table.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
Jane was sitting beside Daniel’s younger brother, Elliot. She wore a black bikini, sunglasses, and was eating a salad.
And suddenly, I understood.
“Are you embarrassed by me?”
Daniel lowered his voice and leaned closer.
“Mona, don’t make this worse.”
For ten months, I had been doing everything possible not to make things worse.
Ten months of trying to need less.
Complain less.
Look less exhausted.
Take up less room.
Ten months of trying not to look like a woman who had grown two babies at the same time.
That afternoon, sitting at a water-park café with strawberry juice on my arm and a towel beside my plate, something inside me finally stopped cooperating.
I didn’t know it yet, but Daniel had chosen the worst possible place to say those words.
His entire family was sitting nearby.
Listening.
And within minutes, his father would ask to see a photograph.
One photograph that would change the entire afternoon.
Three days earlier, my kitchen looked like a banana had exploded.
It was Wednesday morning, around seven-fifteen.
Paige sat in her high chair, smearing mashed banana across the tray like finger paint. Somehow she had banana in her eyebrows and even inside one ear.
Piper had pulled off one of her little pink socks with ducks printed on it.
She was chewing on it.
Again.
“Please stop eating your clothes, Piper.”
She looked straight at me and grinned around the sock, showing exactly two tiny teeth.
I laughed and reached for my phone.
The twins were ten months old, and most days had started blending together.
That was the part nobody warned me about with twins.
There were no clean beginnings or endings to days.
Just bottles, diapers, crying, naps that never lined up, more bottles, more diapers, and sometimes both babies screaming while I had to decide who to pick up first.
I hadn’t slept longer than three uninterrupted hours since they were born.
But every once in a while, there was a tiny moment worth keeping.
Like Piper grinning with a sock in her mouth.
Or Paige somehow getting banana into her ear.
So I took a picture.
Then Daniel walked into the kitchen.
He was already dressed for work.
Blue button-down shirt.
Hair neatly combed.
Coffee in hand.
Cologne.
Rested.
He looked like someone from a commercial.
I looked like I hadn’t slept since Tuesday.
Old gray college T-shirt.
Baby cereal dried onto one shoulder.
Messy bun.
Stretchy black pants I had been wearing for days.
“Can you take one with me in it?”
I handed him my phone.
Daniel looked around the kitchen.
At the banana.
The high chairs.
The mess.
“Now?”
“Unless you know how to keep babies this age until tomorrow.”
He sighed.
It was a small sigh.
But I heard it.
He took the phone.
I crouched between the twins’ chairs.
Paige immediately grabbed my hair with her banana-covered hand.
I laughed.
Daniel snapped the photo.
Then his expression changed.
“I’ll take another one.”
“Why?”
“You’re not going to like that one.”
“Let me see.”
“Mona—”
“Daniel. Give me the phone.”
He handed it over.
My hair was a mess.
There was banana in it now.
My eyes looked tired.
My face looked exhausted.
But Paige was laughing so hard her whole face had scrunched up.
Piper was waving her little duck sock in the air like a victory flag.
And I was sitting between them smiling.
“I like it.”
Daniel stared at me.
“Your face looks really puffy.”
My smile disappeared.
“Puffy?”
“And that shirt isn’t helping.”
He walked over to the refrigerator and opened it.
“When are you finally going back to the gym, Mona?”
He said it while staring into the refrigerator instead of looking at me.
“Maybe when I’m not surviving on broken sleep.”
“They’re ten months old now.”
“I know how old our daughters are.”
He closed the fridge and turned around with a yogurt.
“You can’t use pregnancy as an excuse forever.”
My jaw tightened.
“I carried twins, Daniel. Two babies. At the same time. For thirty-five weeks. I had a C-section that went wrong, then another surgery the same day. I lost a lot of blood. I spent eight days in the hospital.”
He peeled back the yogurt lid.
“And for ten months, I’ve been waking up for feedings. Two times a night. Sometimes three. Sometimes four. You sleep in the guest room because you need rest for work.”
“That was your idea.”
“Because you asked whether I minded, and I didn’t want another argument.”
I took a breath.
“And somehow the thing you’re worried about is the gym? You’re acting like my body has some deadline.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Daniel nodded toward my phone.
“Just delete that picture. We can take a better one later. After you shower.”
A minute earlier, I had looked at that photograph and seen my daughters.
Paige laughing.
Piper holding a sock.
Banana everywhere.
Now all I saw was myself.
My cheeks.
My arms.
My stomach pushing against the shirt.
The dark circles.
Puffy.
I pressed delete.
Daniel picked up his coffee.
“Oh, by the way, Dad called last night. He and Mom are taking everybody to the water park Saturday for their anniversary.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Elliot and Jane are coming.”
My hand paused.
Elliot was Daniel’s twenty-eight-year-old younger brother.
The fun one.
He sold boats and wore sunglasses on his head even indoors.
Jane was his girlfriend.
Twenty-five.
A personal trainer at an expensive gym downtown.
I had met her only twice.
She had always been perfectly nice to me.
But I had heard Daniel talk about her.
Jane runs half marathons.
Jane can do fifty push-ups.
Jane looks amazing on Instagram.
Jane can wear anything.
I had tried not to care.
“Okay.”
Daniel looked me up and down.
Messy bun.
Old shirt.
Bare feet.
Stretchy pants.
“Just think carefully about what you wear.”
“To a water park?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. Say what you mean.”
He grabbed his keys.
“Wear something long over your swimsuit.”
“It’s July.”
“Then you’ll be warm.”
And he walked out.
I stood there holding a wet washcloth.
Paige slapped both palms against her clean tray, as if demanding more banana.
Piper put the sock back into her mouth.
I picked up my phone.
Opened my photo gallery.
Scrolled to where the picture had been.
There was now a gap.
And suddenly I realized something.
Daniel hadn’t deleted that photograph.
I had.
I wish I could say everything started with the water park.
It didn’t.
Before the twins, I had been a swimmer.
A real swimmer.
I competed in college.
Two-hundred-meter butterfly.
I wasn’t Olympic-level, but I was good.
I still had medals packed away in a shoebox.
When Daniel first met me, I was twenty-six and swimming laps at the YMCA three mornings every week.
Sometimes he would sit in the bleachers drinking coffee and cheer when I hit a flip turn.
“You look like a mermaid,” he once told me. “A really fast, really angry mermaid.”
I laughed so hard I swallowed pool water.
