What We Hide Under Hats

Julia sat across from Mark at the bistro, watching him push his spinach salad around the plate. Three months since she'd seen him—since the diagnosis—and he looked different. Thinner, yes, but something else had changed in his eyes.

'How's the treatment?' she asked, though she'd been tracking every update through his sister.

Mark smiled, that same familiar expression that didn't quite reach his eyes. 'Fine. The vitamins make me tired, but the doctor says I'm responding well.' He adjusted his beanie, pulling it lower over his forehead. Julia noticed the hair that had fallen across his temple was gone now, and the beanie—something he'd never worn before—stayed perpetually on his head indoors.

She wanted to reach across the table, to take his hand like she would have before. But something had shifted between them when he got sick. The easy friendship they'd built over seven years of Thursday dinners and Sunday morning runs had developed edges. She was afraid of saying the wrong thing. He was tired of being asked how he was feeling.

'Those vitamins must be something,' Julia said, gesturing at her own untouched wine. 'Making you skip our wine nights.' She meant it as a joke, but it fell flat between them.

Mark looked up, really looked at her for the first time. 'Julia, I'm sorry I haven't—I should have told you. About the hat.' He pulled off the beanie.

His head was completely bald. Not patchy, not thinning—smooth and bare as a stone.

'I didn't want you to see me like this,' he said softly. 'You always said you loved my hair. Remember? At your sister's wedding, when I hadn't cut it in six months?'

Julia felt tears pressing behind her eyes. 'Mark. That was seven years ago. I was drunk.'

'You still said it.' He put the hat back on. 'I didn't want this to be us now. You looking at me differently because I'm sick.'

Julia reached across and took his hand. 'Mark, I look at you differently because you're my best friend and you're scared.' She squeezed his fingers. 'And because I love you. Not your hair. You.'

He squeezed back, and finally his smile reached his eyes.

'Order the spinach,' he said. 'If we're going to do this, let's do it right.'