Turn 16 of 226

Diane quickly retreats due to embarrassment at her silly comment. I'm not taller. I laugh. I go home and the routine repeats. Thank god today's friday

Lena laughs. The sound fills the office the way she does — completely, from the bottom of her belly, unrestrained and genuine. It is the kind of laugh that shakes her whole body, the fat on her stomach and the muscle beneath it trembling together, and she does not try to stop it or shape it into something smaller. Diane's face goes pink. Not the flush of anger — the flush of a woman who said something impulsive and professional instinct is already trying to claw it back.

"I'm not taller, Diane. I've been six-six since college. You've just never had to stand next to me while I'm —" She gestures at herself, at the full ridiculous reality of her presence in this small room. "— all of this."

Diane's mouth opens. Closes. She reaches for the door handle behind her without turning around, her fingers finding it by feel, and the flush deepens from pink to something approaching red. She is retreating. Lena can see it happening — the body pulling itself together, the professional posture reassembling piece by piece, the need to escape this room overriding every other instinct. The door opens and Diane steps through it sideways, as if facing Lena directly while leaving would be too much.

"I'll — we can talk on Monday," Diane says, and the words are aimed at the hallway wall, not at Lena. Then she is gone, the door clicking shut behind her, and Lena stands alone in her office smelling like sweat and old food and laughing quietly to herself. The warmth pulses in her belly, amused and content.

The rest of the afternoon passes in a haze of work and eating. Lena finishes the quarterly projections, clears three more tickets, and eats the remaining delivery containers at her desk with her bare feet propped on the wastebasket. She burps freely and does not care who hears through the walls. At five o'clock she saves her files, shuts down the monitor, and walks through the office barefoot with her belly leading the way. A few heads turn. She does not look back. The elevator ride down is quiet and warm, her reflection in the polished doors showing her a woman she barely recognizes — tall and soft and disheveled and utterly at ease.

The evening routine finds her like gravity finds water. She strips the moment she is through her apartment door — the crop top over her head, the shorts down her thighs — and the air hits her bare skin and feels like permission. Push-ups first. Her arms shake on the first rep and hold through seventeen, two more than last night, the muscle firing harder because there is more of it to fire and more weight to move. Squats until her thighs burn deep and trembling. Calf raises against the wall, the pump swelling her legs until they feel like they belong to someone twice her size. The workout ends when her body quits, and she collapses onto the living room floor with her chest heaving and her belly rising and falling and the sweat pooling in the hollows of her collarbones.

The hunger comes next. The fridge is empty — has been empty since two nights ago — so she orders delivery again, tapping through the app with shaking fingers, two large meals this time, and eats them on the floor with her back against the couch. Sauce on her chin, grease on her fingers, her belly spreading across her thighs as she eats. The warmth rewards every bite with a pulse of pleasure that runs through her body like a low hum. When the food is gone she lies back on the carpet and her hands find their way to her belly, to the soft skin and the hard muscle beneath, and the pleasure builds and crests and breaks over her in a wave that leaves her gasping and still and staring at the ceiling. She falls asleep there. The apartment is dark and warm and smells like her. Tomorrow is Saturday. Thank god.