Turn 15 of 233

Celebrate with the biggest and richest dinner I've ever made for myself. Then wake up Saturday and push my body harder than ever before, both in terms of food eaten and in terms of exercise. Also start masturbating more when at home

She stops at the grocery store on the way home and fills two carts. She doesn't plan the meal — she walks the aisles and grabs what calls to her, what her body wants, what smells right when she holds it close. Two ribeye steaks, a pound of bacon, a block of sharp Gruyère, heavy cream, a dozen eggs, two bags of Yukon Gold potatoes, a jar of truffle butter she's never bought before because it cost eighteen dollars and she always told herself she didn't need it. She grabs garlic, rosemary, a bottle of red wine for cooking and one for drinking, a pint of heavy ice cream, a bag of sourdough rolls, and a chocolate cake from the bakery section that is dense and dark and weighs three pounds. The cashier looks at the total and then at Lena's bare feet and says nothing.

She cooks naked in her kitchen with the windows open and the evening air warm on her skin. The steaks go in a cast-iron pan with the truffle butter, searing until the fat renders and the kitchen smells like something animal and rich. She roasts the potatoes with rosemary and garlic and half a stick of butter, mashes them rough with the cream and Gruyère until they're a dense, golden mass. She fries the bacon until it's crisp, crumbles it over the potatoes, makes a pan sauce from the steak drippings and red wine that she reduces until it coats the spoon. She eats standing at the counter, cutting the steak with the side of her fork, the juice running pink across the plate and down her chin. She eats the potatoes in enormous spoonfuls, the cheese pulling in long strings, the bacon salty and sharp against the cream. She tears the sourdough rolls open and drags them through the sauce. She eats until her belly is distended and tight, the curve of it pushing outward visibly, and then she cuts herself a slab of cake and eats it with a glass of whole milk, and the sweetness of the chocolate against the salt on her tongue makes her close her eyes.

She doesn't clean the kitchen. She leaves the pans on the stove and the plates in the sink and walks to the living room with the rest of the cake and drops to the floor. Her body is full and heavy and warm and she moves it harder than she ever has — push-ups until her arms shake, then ten more past the shaking. Squats with her back against the wall, lowering until her thighs are parallel and her belly rests heavy on her spread knees, holding for ten seconds, rising, again. She does lunges across the floor and back, bear crawls that make her shoulders burn, plank holds until her core trembles and sweat drips from her nose onto the hardwood. She tries something new — she deadlifts the cast-iron pan with the leftover potatoes still in it, feeling the weight in her forearms and her lower back, the softness of her belly compressing as she bends. She does it fifteen times. She is drenched. She is shaking. She feels like an engine running at full throttle.

She lies on the floor afterward with her arms spread and her belly rising and falling, the sweat cooling on her skin, and the arousal comes before the thought does — a pulse between her thighs that matches her heartbeat, warm and immediate. She runs her hands over her body slowly, feeling the sweat pool in the soft channel of her stomach, the heaviness of her breasts, the solid muscle beneath the softness of her thighs. She comes twice on the living room floor, the second time with her back arched and her belly lifted and her hands gripping the hardwood, and afterward she lies there breathing and doesn't move for ten minutes.

Saturday morning she wakes at six without an alarm, her body pulling her upright with the same readiness it had on Monday morning before the construction site. She is hungry in a way that feels bottomless. She makes eight eggs scrambled with cheese and bacon and salsa, four slices of toast with butter and peanut butter, a bowl of oatmeal with cream and brown sugar and a banana sliced on top, and a glass of whole milk. She eats it all standing at the counter, letting out a long, deep belch that vibrates in her chest, and follows it with a fart that echoes off the tile and makes her grin. She is 183 pounds and six feet three inches and her body feels like a machine that runs on food and effort and pleasure, and all three are endless.

The workout is longer and harder than Friday's. She exercises for ninety minutes — push-ups, squats, lunges, planks, bear crawls, handstand holds against the wall, and a set of movements she invents on the spot that involve lifting the coffee table over her head. Her muscles burn and the sweat pours and her belly sways with each movement, heavy and full, and she doesn't stop. She farts during a squat and grunts through it and keeps going. She burps between push-up sets and doesn't break rhythm. She masturbates on the floor after, then again in the shower she finally takes because the sweat is in her eyes, then again in bed with the afternoon light striping through the blinds and her hands moving slow and deliberate over every inch of her changed body. She falls asleep at three in the afternoon with the sheets twisted around her thick legs and her belly full and her body spent and a smile on her face that is so wide it pushes into the pillow.