Second Helpings, All Summer
Three summers. She stopped saying no in advance.
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"I'm not doing the whole thing again."
She said that with the blanket already down and both hands already busy, which is the shape most of her refusals took by then. He did not argue. Arguing gives someone something to push back on.
"Nobody said you had to."
"…Right."
She did the whole thing again.
First it was that she had not eaten since breakfast.
Then it was that she had earned it. Because of the walk, because of the week, because of a reason that arrived reliably and was never the same one twice. Then it was that he had already opened it. Then it stopped being reasons.
"Why do you keep handing me things."
"Because you keep taking them."
She took the next one while she was still deciding whether that had been an insult.
By the third summer she had stopped saying no in advance.
That was the change. Not the size of her, which was obvious, and which strangers on the grass measured with their eyes before looking away. The change was that the sentence *I shouldn't* had gone out of her mouth entirely, and she had not noticed it leaving, and he had.
"Are you going to eat that or hold it."
"I'm — give me a second. I'm — " She breathed out. Started again. "Fine. Give it here."
Crack.
"That's the strap."
"I know what it is."
She did not fix the strap. She held her hand out flat, palm up, waiting, without looking to see what was going to be put in it.
"More?"
"Obviously."
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