Weekend at Bare Necessities: Measuring Up, A Pre-Game Confession
Sometimes the hardest weight to lift is the one no one else can see.
Alex sat on the edge of the bed, phone lighting the dark. Twenty minutes of scrolling. David and Chloe again. Lake at sunrise. The caption read, "Sometimes you need to disconnect." He had seen the geotag before it vanished. Sunrise Shores. A nudist resort.
Envy felt wrong in his mouth, but there it was. David, the guy who needed a spot at 250, had done something Alex could not name without choking on it.
"You coming to bed?" Lena's voice cut through.
He killed the screen. The room went soft again.
"I was thinking," he said, "we should try something different."
"Like what."
"There's a place. Bare Necessities."
"What kind of place."
"A nudist resort."
The quiet that followed had shape.
"You want me naked in front of strangers," Lena said.
"I want us to be brave."
"Whose idea of brave. Yours, or David's."
He flinched. She saw it. She always did.
"Where is this coming from," Lena said, sitting up now.
"I just read about it. Online. People say it's good for connection. For couples."
"Since when do you care about connection. You barely want couples' yoga."
"This is different."
"Different how." She crossed her arms. "Be honest. Do you want other men looking at my body."
"What? No."
"Then what is it." Her voice was rising. "We've been together eight years. You've never once suggested anything like this. And suddenly you want to spend a weekend surrounded by naked strangers."
Alex felt the walls closing in. He could not say that David had the guts to do it and he needed to prove he was not less than him. He could not admit this was not about her or them. It was about the weight he could not lift, the standard he could not meet, the constant feeling that everyone else had figured out how to be comfortable in their own skin while he was still pretending.
"I feel like we're stuck," he said. "Like we're going through the motions. Maybe if we did something completely outside our comfort zone, something that forced us to really see each other..."
"I see you every day," Lena said quietly. "What am I missing."
Alex looked at her and realized he had no idea how to answer that.
Lena unlocked her phone, typed fast, then read without looking at him. "Guests report less body anxiety and more intimacy after a weekend." She looked up. "Is this your angle. A shortcut to feelings."
"It's not a shortcut," he said, and knew he was lying. It was an escape hatch from being ordinary.
"I don't want to see nude people," Lena said, her voice smaller now. "I don't want strangers seeing me. I don't want to spend a weekend feeling self-conscious about every part of my body while you..." She stopped. "While you what, Alex. What are you actually looking for."
"I don't know," Alex admitted. "I just feel like everyone else is figuring things out. Being brave. Taking risks. And we're just here. Safe. Boring."
"So this is about you feeling boring."
"Maybe."
"And your solution is to get naked with strangers."
Alex rubbed his face. "Maybe I'm just... I see other people doing these things, living these lives, and I wonder if we're missing something."
"What people. Who are you comparing us to."
Alex could not answer. Would not answer.
Lena watched him struggle. She looked past him, toward the window where the streetlight cast shadows across their bedroom wall. The same bedroom. The same shadows. The same silence that had been filling the space between them for months now.
She thought about her sister's wedding last month. How she had watched couple after couple dance, laugh, touch each other like they still remembered why they chose each other. And she had looked at Alex, standing by the bar with his phone, and felt nothing. Not anger. Not sadness. Just nothing.
Maybe that was worse.
"You're not going to tell me," she said finally. "Whatever this is really about."
Alex stayed silent.
Lena sighed. "Fine. We go. One look that's not for me and we're done. If I hate it, we leave. No debate."
"Okay."
"And you owe me an explanation. Eventually. You owe me the truth about why you really want this."
She turned off her bedside lamp and lay back down, her back to him. "I need to know if we're actually stuck," she said into the darkness, "or if we're just scared. So fine. We'll go. Maybe I'll figure it out when we're there. Maybe we both will."
Alex lay down beside her. He had won. They were going.
But all he could think about was David's failed squat. The way he had needed help. The way Alex had felt superior in that moment.
And now he was going to show up at the same kind of place David had been brave enough to try, for all the wrong reasons, with a wife who did not trust him.
Across town, David could not sleep.
2:47 AM. He lay next to Chloe, listening to her breathing.
"You're doing it again," Chloe said without opening her eyes.
"Doing what."
"Pretending you're asleep."
David exhaled. "Do you ever regret it. Going to Sunrise Shores."
"No. Do you."
"No. I just..." He paused. "I keep thinking about Alex. About what he'd say if he knew."
"Why does it matter what Alex thinks."
"It doesn't. It shouldn't." David stared at the ceiling. "But I can't stop imagining him finding out. Laughing about it at the gym. Telling the other guys."
"David." Chloe's voice was sharp. "Alex is your friend."
"Is he though. Or is he just the guy who spots me when I can't finish a set. The guy who's always just a little bit better, a little bit stronger, a little bit more sure of himself."
Chloe propped herself up. "You know what I remember about Sunrise Shores. That first morning when we walked down to the lake and you were terrified someone would see your scars from that surgery. That older couple from Vermont, they saw them and said good morning like you were wearing a tux." She touched his face. "That's what you paid for. Not their eyes. Your breath back."
David pulled her close. She was right. She was always right.
But he still could not shake the feeling that Alex, somehow, some way, would find out. And when he did, everything David had felt at Sunrise Shores, all that freedom and acceptance and peace, would shrink down to nothing but a punchline.
"I love you," he said into her hair.
"I love you too. Now go to sleep."
But David did not sleep. He lay there wondering if courage was something you earned once or something you had to keep proving over and over again.
Three days later.
The gym. David set up for squats. Two hundred and fifty pounds. The same weight as last time.
"You got this," Alex said, taking his position.
David gripped the bar. His hands shook on the knurling. He lifted the bar off the rack, stepped back, descended. Halfway down the bar went heavy. Alex moved in, lifted with him.
"Damn it," David muttered, racking the weight.
"Hey, no worries. We'll drop the weight, work back up."
"Time," Alex said, too bright.
"Maybe," David said, eyes raw.
David looked at him. Something unguarded flickered across his face. "You ever feel like you're not cut out for this. The heavy lifting. The gym bro stuff. All of it."
Alex felt something twist in his chest. Here it was. The perfect moment to say something real. To admit he stalked David's Instagram, that he knew about Sunrise Shores, that he was going to Bare Necessities because he could not stand feeling like David had figured out how to be brave while he was still faking it.
"You're doing fine, man," Alex said. "Just takes time."
David nodded slowly. "Yeah. Time."
They finished in relative silence. At the door David paused.
"Weekend plans."
Alex's stomach dropped. "Little getaway."
"Where."
"A resort."
David smiled without teeth. "Cool."
In the lot, Alex sat with the engine off. Text from Lena blinking. Did you book it.
He typed yes and stared at the send arrow like it was a trigger. He pressed it.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
"Okay."
Just one word. But Alex heard everything she was not saying.
He looked up. In the rearview, David walked to his car, shoulders rounded, the bar without plates across his back, an empty balance beam.
Alex gripped the wheel. For the first time all week he could feel the weight he could not rack.
It was his.
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