Turn 9 of 226

Tell Diane the truth — I feel amazing and I don't know why. She is even more confused

Lena shifts in her chair, the vinyl creaking under her weight, and considers the question. She could lie. She has always been good at that — the small social lies that oil the machinery of an office, the I'm fines and the just tireds that she has deployed for years like currency. But the warmth is pulsing in her belly and the truth feels simpler than any fiction she could construct, so she tells it.

"I feel amazing, Diane. I don't really know how to explain it." She gestures at herself — the belly, the bare feet, the crop top that has surrendered all structural integrity — with one hand, the motion loose and easy.

"I know I look like a mess. I know I haven't showered in four days. I know I called in sick yesterday and I probably smell like — I don't even know. But I feel better than I have in my entire life. My body feels like mine for the first time. I can't explain it."

Diane's hand tightens on the back of the guest chair. Her face does something complicated — a sequence of micro-expressions that cycle through concern, disbelief, and something that might be the early stages of professional alarm. She looks at the screen again, at the quarterly summary, and then back at Lena's face, searching for the crack. The place where the mask slips and the real answer lives. She does not find it because there is no mask. Lena is sitting in her own stink with her belly hanging out and she is, as far as she can tell, telling the absolute truth.

"That doesn't —" Diane starts, and stops. She presses her lips together. Her cardigan is buttoned to the throat and she is standing with the rigid posture of someone who has been given a piece of information that does not fit any category she possesses.

"Lena, you called in sick. You're sitting in my office — your office — barefoot. You just burped in my face. You're telling me you feel amazing."

"I know how it sounds," Lena says, and she does. She can hear herself from the outside and she understands that the words are insane, that the picture she presents is a person in crisis, that any reasonable colleague standing in this room would be reaching for an employee wellness number right now. But the understanding is surface-level, floating on top of the warmth like oil on water, and underneath it the truth is solid and unmovable. She feels good. She feels better than good. She feels like she is finally, finally becoming what she is supposed to be.

"I know how it sounds," she repeats, quieter. "But I'm telling you the truth."

Diane stares at her. The silence stretches. Somewhere in the building a phone rings and goes unanswered, and the fluorescent light above Lena's desk flickers once, casting a brief shadow across the food containers and the grease stains and the belly sitting heavy and warm in her lap. Diane's hand releases the chair and she folds her arms across her chest, which is the posture of someone who has decided something, and Lena watches her decide it and wonders what it is.