Free Next to You by Julia Gabriel

great beauty—much to her mother’s disappointment. Her nose had been a little too big for her face, with a snub tip. Her cheekbones had been invisible, her lips not exactly full and soft. The plastic surgeon had asked her what she hadn’t liked about the way she looked before—and it had been all of those things. With his help, she’d fixed all the things about her old face she didn’t like.
    Objectively speaking, her new face was better. Her nose was pert and petite. She had high cheekbones for the first time in her life, cheekbones that were made for blusher and highlighter. Lipstick no longer looked like a slash of color scrawled on her chin.
    She wasn’t used to this new face yet, that’s what she kept telling herself. In the morning, when she looked in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, she turned her head this way and that, marveling at its perfection. And it was perfect, as far as Phlox could tell, except for the scar that trailed out from the corner of her left eye and the long thin line that followed the curve of her face from her ear to her chin. Covered up with the foundation she had created, though, the face was perfect. Gorgeously, stunningly perfect.
    She would never be so ungrateful as to complain about it. It just wasn’t hers, and she wasn’t sure how to behave in it. Men talked to her on the subway, in coffee shops, standing in line for whatever. They never used to do that, so Phlox wasn’t good at making that kind of small talk or deflecting over-aggressive interest. Zee knew how to do it. Phlox had seen her in action. Zee could give her advice in that area, but so far, Phlox had been too embarrassed to ask.
    She flipped the page. There was only one photo on this page, her lying in a hospital bed, her face, neck and torso wrapped in bandages, an oxygen mask over her mouth, wires and tubes going in and out of her every which way. This was her between faces, the old one burned off, the new one not yet designed.
    She flipped through more pages and more photos of her as she gradually healed and the dozens of operations began. These were the faces people stared at on the street, looked away from on the elevator. She had avoided the subway during that period, but try catching a cab looking like that. Finally, Zee had insisted on a car service to get her around the city. That had made Phlox feel silly and even more conspicuous, so she’d ended up just staying in her apartment as much as possible. That was simpler for everyone concerned—herself and the entire population of Manhattan.
    Then the photos got better. Skin grafts smoothed out her face. Her nose and lips were rebuilt. What was left of her eyebrows were filled in with tattoos. Page by page, she began to look recognizably human again. Then came the section for her breasts. More skin grafts. No implants.
    After every new operation came yet another moment of truth when the bandages were finally removed and Phlox would see who was underneath. She had never really thought about how attached she was to her old self until she wasn’t sure that old self still existed.
    The memory of Jared stalking off the other day still stung. “People like you fucking well do not understand what it’s like,” he had said to her. Yeah, I do fucking well understand what it’s like.
    She wondered what had happened to Jared. Whatever it was, she hoped he hadn’t done it to himself like she had. Some days that was the hardest part of it, retracing her steps of that day, wishing she had done something else instead. Gone outside to garden or driven to the grocery store to shop or taken a nap or gone swimming. Anything but decide she just absolutely had to work on a new product in the kitchen.
    It had been her own stupid-ass fault and it always would be. She owned that. But she wasn’t letting anyone tell her she fucking well did not understand, because she did.
    She took one last look at the photographs, then closed the album and stood up. No, you Jared Connor do