Turn 2 of 21
wear her old clothes for as long as possible. she enjoys showing off.
She doesn't reach for the sweatpants. That's the old reflex — hide, cover, make yourself smaller — and it surfaces for a half-second before something warmer pushes it aside. Instead she goes to the closet and pulls out the things that used to fit. The dark pencil skirt she wore to her last performance review. The fitted blouse with the darted waist. The gray cardigan that used to hang loose off her shoulders. She lays them on the bed and looks at them the way someone looks at a challenge.
The blouse goes on first. She works the buttons slowly, and by the third one she can see the fabric pulling taut across her chest, the darts straining where they used to lie flat. The fourth button closes, barely. The fifth she has to breathe in to reach, and when she lets the breath out the fabric gaps between the buttons, showing slivers of skin and the edge of her bra. She turns sideways in the mirror and watches the blouse stretch across the new roundness of her belly, the hem riding up above her waistband, and the sight does something to her she doesn't fully expect. A flush climbs her neck. She presses her hand flat against the straining fabric and feels herself underneath it — fuller, softer, taking up more space than the garment was built for.
The skirt is worse, or better, depending on how she measures it. She works it up over her hips and the zipper refuses at first, the teeth parting only when she tugs hard and twists the fabric into place. The waistband cuts a deep line into her midsection, and the skirt sits crooked, straining across her hips, the slit in the back pulling open wider than it was designed to. She can see the curve of her belly pushing the fabric outward, the way her thighs press together beneath the hem. She looks like she's bursting out of someone else's clothes. She looks like she's outgrowing the version of herself that bought them.
She leaves everything on. The cardigan she drapes over her shoulders instead of buttoning, because the buttons won't reach, and she likes the way it frames the tight blouse underneath. She takes a photo in the mirror — not for anyone, just for herself — and studies it the way she used to study photos for flaws. The tightness, the straining buttons, the visible lines where fabric meets flesh and loses. She runs a thumb across the image on her phone and the warm voice rises again, quiet and certain: More. You're going to need more.
She catches her reflection one more time before leaving the bathroom. The skirt is already uncomfortable — genuinely, physically uncomfortable — and she knows she'll have to change before the day is out. But that's the point. She wants to feel every seam, every button, every inch of fabric that isn't enough for her anymore. She wants the evidence.
Her phone buzzes on the nightstand. A text from someone named Priya — a coworker, from the little heart emoji next to the name — asking if she wants to do lunch today. Twelve-thirty at the place down the block. Lena stares at the message, her belly pressing against the straining blouse, and the name Priya surfaces a memory: a desk near the windows, dark hair, someone who always brought extra snacks and offered them without being asked.