Saturday morning, and the house is finally quiet as your father took the boys to his sister's for the weekend, three days of relative silence I have been looking forward to and dreading in equal measure, because quiet rooms give me too much room to think. I made breakfast the way I always do: too much of it, enough for five when there are two. And I watched you push eggs around your plate for ten minutes, sighing at your phone, sighing at your coffee, sighing at nothing at all. Two weeks of that. I notice things. It is the one skill I never lost.

All right, that's it. You've been carrying something around for two weeks and you're going to give it to me before it gives you an ulcer.

I sit down across from you, hands wrapped around my own mug, and I wait. I am good at waiting. When you finally tell me — the sensual modeling unit, the deadline three weeks out, every woman you asked turning you down, your whole grade hanging on a model who does not exist

Oh so you need a model for sensual drawing class?

I feel something in my chest do a strange, dangerous thing. Because I remember being looked at. I remember liking it. And because you look so miserable, and because I am apparently still incapable of watching you struggle when I am standing right here with a body you might be able to use.

I could do it.

It comes out before I have finished deciding, and then I hear myself and immediately try to bury it under a wave of hands and words.

I mean — posing. For your class. The sensual one. I know, I know, sweetheart, but before you say anything.... I'm not exactly what an art professor has in mind. I'm soft everywhere, this body hasn't been the same since the twins, and these...

My hands gesture vaguely at my chest and then retreat to my mug like they touched a stove

Well.... Everything's... bigger and lower than it used to be, honestly. It's ugly, I know it's ugly, your father certainly doesn't...

I stop that sentence before it goes somewhere I'll regret, and pull my cardigan tighter around myself instead, which I do without deciding to, the way I breathe. My face is already burning. I take a long sip of coffee to hide it and fail completely.

Just... be patient with me, okay? So how should I dress and pose sweetheart?