Turn 6 of 233

Order takeout for dinner on the way home. Strip naked and perform various exercises for the hell of it. Perform the best I ever have. Get turned on

Lena stops at the Thai place on Maple — the one she has walked past a hundred times and never entered because the portions are enormous and she used to care about that. She pushes through the door barefoot and grease-stained, the bell chiming above her, and orders pad see ew with extra tofu, a side of spring rolls, a large tom kha soup, and two orders of sticky rice. The woman behind the counter raises an eyebrow but writes it all down. Lena pays, waits, and carries the bags home with the warm weight of them pressed against her hip, her bare feet sticky against the sidewalk in the late evening heat.

She drops the food on the kitchen counter and strips naked right there in the living room — the tank top over her head, the jeans peeled down her legs with a struggle that leaves red marks on her hips. She doesn't bother with a plate. She eats standing at the counter, chopsticks in one hand, the other resting on the warm swell of her belly. The pad see ew is rich and oily and she eats until the container is empty, then tears through the spring rolls, then drinks the tom kha straight from the tub. She lets out a deep belch that bounces off the kitchen tile. Her stomach is tight and round and full, pushing outward visibly from her frame, and she runs both hands over it with a satisfaction that feels like scratching an itch she didn't know she had.

Then, for no reason she can explain, she drops to the floor and does a push-up. Her belly brushes the carpet on the way down, her breasts press soft against the floor, and she pushes back up — and it's easy. Easier than it should be. She does another, and another, and her arms don't shake. There's a power in them she has never felt, a steadiness, and beneath the softness of her body something is firing. She shifts to squats and her thighs burn but hold, the thick new muscle of them working beneath a layer of fat that cushions without restricting. She does lunges across the living room floor, her bare feet gripping the hardwood, her belly swaying with each step, and her balance is perfect. She holds a plank and her core — the soft, rounded core she has been cradling all week — holds her solid for over a minute without wavering.

She stops, breathing hard, sweat beading on her forehead and along the soft crease beneath her breasts. Her heart is hammering and her skin is flushed and every part of her feels alive in a way that has nothing to do with the exercises and everything to do with the body performing them. She catches her reflection in the dark window — naked, flushed, belly rounded with dinner, thighs thick and shaking faintly with exertion, skin damp — and the warmth that floods through her is immediate and unmistakable. She presses her hand to her stomach and feels the muscle beneath the softness, taut from the plank, and the combination of strength and give under her palm makes her breath catch. She is fatter than she has ever been and stronger than she has ever been and the two truths coexist in her body without contradiction.

Her hands keep moving — across the sweat-slick curve of her belly, over the heavy fullness of her breasts, along the solid warmth of her thighs. She sits on the floor with her back against the couch, legs apart, breathing hard, and the arousal builds with a directness that bypasses thought entirely. She doesn't question it. She lets her hands go where they want, and the climax that follows is sharp and overwhelming, her body shaking against the carpet, her soft stomach contracting with each wave. She lies there afterward in the dark, sweat cooling on her skin, dinner containers still open on the counter, and the thought that floats through her mind is not the whisper's voice anymore. It's hers. It says: I want more of this. All of it.