Turn 23 of 233

Go to the site early and get a head start on Thursday prep while eating a second breakfast. I also wear smaller shorts than I have been in order to increase my tan. Still go topless

Lena eats a second breakfast on the walk to the site — two peanut butter sandwiches she made with her fingers, the bread already softening in the heat of her hands, and a banana she eats in four bites, dropping the peel on the sidewalk without breaking stride. Her belly is full and warm and swaying with each step, the weight of it shifting against the waistband of the shorts she pulled on this morning. They're the smallest pair she owns — a pair of cotton running shorts she bought two years ago and never wore because they were too short, too tight, too revealing. Now they ride low on her hips, the waistband cutting into the soft flesh below her belly, the leg openings stretched tight around the full width of her thighs, the fabric riding up into the crease where her ass meets the backs of her legs. She didn't bother with the tank top. She left it on the floor. Her bare breasts hang heavy and full in the open air, the tan dark across their tops, the pale undersides visible when she moves, and the morning sun is on her belly and her chest and her shoulders and the skin drinks it in.

The site is empty when she arrives — not quite six, the sun barely over the rooftops, the dirt lot still cool and damp. She walks the perimeter first, checking the framing with a practiced eye, running her callused fingers along the studs. The west wall is square. The east wall is square. The second story is closed in and sheeted. She grabs a broom and starts sweeping the interior, clearing sawdust and scrap wood and the debris of two days of work, and the movement makes her body swing — her belly forward and back, her breasts swaying, her bare feet kicking up dust that settles on her shins. She eats another sandwich while she works, holding it in one hand and sweeping with the other, crumbs falling into the sawdust. She checks the measurements against the prints Walt left on the tailgate, verifies the spacing on every window opening, and marks two studs with a pencil where the framing is off by an eighth of an inch. She fixes them with three hammer strokes each.

The crew arrives at seven and Walt is first, as always. He steps out of his truck and sees Lena shirtless in the frame, her enormous tanned body already dusty from an hour of work, the tiny shorts stretched to their limit across her hips and thighs, and his expression does the thing it always does — the brief assessment, the acceptance, the moving on. He grunts.

"You've been here a while."

"Since five-forty. Everything's swept and checked. Two studs were off, I fixed them." Walt looks at the pencil marks, runs his tape measure along the opening, and the corner of his mouth shifts in the way that means he's satisfied. He doesn't say anything else. He pulls on his gloves and starts working. The rest of the crew files in — Marco already talking, Tuki quiet, Frank and Daryl and Ray moving to their stations. Nobody comments on Lena's shorts or her bare chest. The morning builds around her like a house.

By noon the temperature is climbing again and the site is a hive of noise — hammers, saws, the compressor running, Marco's voice carrying over everything. Lena works with her body wide open to the sun, the tiny shorts riding up with every squat and lunge, her bare belly and breasts and shoulders darkening in the light. The tan is deepening, she can feel it — the warm tightness across the tops of her thighs where the shorts don't cover, the skin turning a deeper gold with every hour. She hauls lumber up the ladder, her belly brushing each rung, her breasts swinging free, and the sweat runs down the channel between them and pools in the crease beneath. She eats a third sandwich on the second floor, sitting on a stack of plywood with her legs hanging over the edge, sawdust in the sweat on her thighs, and looks down at the full landscape of herself — the golden skin, the dark body hair, the huge soft belly, the tiny shorts buried beneath the weight of her — and the pride is there, steady and sure, the ground she stands on. Thursday's inspector is tomorrow. The house is ready. She is ready.