Turn 7 of 233
Skip showering again and eat the remaining food in bed. Go to sleep filthy and satisfied.
Lena doesn't get up from the floor right away. The carpet is rough against her bare back and the sweat is cooling in streaks along her sides, pooling in the soft crease beneath her breasts. Her breathing slows by degrees. The living room is dark except for the amber leak of streetlight through the curtain, and her body feels enormous and grounded and warm, a heavy softness spread across the floor like she is slowly sinking into it. After a while she rolls onto her side and the weight of her belly shifts with her, settling against the carpet with a full, rounded pressure that makes her sigh.
She stands when she is ready, which is not soon. The kitchen light is harsh after the dark and she squints, pulling open the fridge to find the second container of sticky rice and the leftover tom kha she couldn't finish. She carries them to the bedroom without a plate, without a napkin, eating the sticky rice with her fingers in small pressed balls dipped in the coconut broth. Crumbs fall onto the sheets when she climbs into bed and she doesn't brush them away. The food is cold and sweet and she eats it slowly on her back, one hand working the rice, the other resting on her belly, feeling it grow rounder and tighter with each mouthful.
The sheets smell like her. Not just tonight — the accumulated musk of two days without showering, the dried sweat, the evidence of last night still faintly on the cotton. She pulls the blanket up and the fabric catches on her damp skin, clinging to the curve of her hip, the swell of her belly. She turns onto her side and her thighs press together, warm and slick and heavy, and the weight of her body settles against the mattress in a way that feels less like lying down and more like being held. Her hair is tangled and unwashed against the pillow. Her teeth are unbrushed. Her feet are still dirty from the sidewalk.
She should feel disgusting. She waits for the feeling — the old Lena's feeling, the one that would have sent her scrambling for the shower, the toothbrush, the clean sheets — and it doesn't come. What comes instead is a deep, bone-level satisfaction that starts in her full belly and radiates outward through every soft new inch of her. She is filthy and full and heavy and strong and the body she is lying in is the most comfortable thing she has ever owned. She presses her palm flat against her stomach, feels the warmth of the food and the muscle beneath the fat beneath the skin, and closes her eyes.
Sleep comes fast and dreamless. Her last conscious thought is the feeling of the sheets against her bare skin, the crumbs digging faintly into her hip, the full round weight of her belly rising and falling with each breath. She smiles without meaning to. The whisper is quiet tonight. It doesn't need to speak. The voice in her head and the voice that started all of this have become the same voice, and they say nothing at all, because there is nothing left to argue about.