Turn 17 of 28

Reflect on her life and consider whether this is really what she wants. Conclude yes and submerge further into her hedonism, never to look back.

The apartment is dark when Lena opens her eyes. It is always dark now — she has stopped tracking time by the window and started tracking it by the gaps between meals, the slow rise and fall of the wine bottle, the moment her body decides to sleep. The laptop glows on the cushion beside her. Forty-seven new comments. Twelve new subscribers. A tip notification for fifty dollars from someone called growwithme. She doesn't read them. Not yet. She lies on her back with her belly rising like a hill between her legs and stares at the ceiling and thinks, for the first time in weeks, about the woman who stood in front of the bathroom mirror.

That woman tugged at waistbands. That woman sucked in her stomach in photographs. That woman ate salad for lunch and felt hungry by three and told herself it was discipline. That woman lay in bed at night cataloguing everything wrong with her body — the softness below her navel, the width of her thighs, the way her arms looked in sleeveless tops. That woman was twenty-four years old and had never once felt comfortable in her own skin. Lena remembers her with something close to pity.

She shifts on the couch and her belly shifts with her, heavy and warm, resting against her thighs. The blanket beneath her is soaked and stiff and she can feel the warmth of her own body pooled in it. The smell rises — thick, dense, hers — and she breathes it without flinching. She thinks about the wish. She thinks about the warmth that pulsed through her stomach that night and has never stopped pulsing since. She thinks about the voice that used to whisper *this is better, let it keep going* and how it went quiet because she no longer needed it. She thinks about Priya's face in the coffee shop and Marcus's empty desk and the office she will never return to and the ten billion dollars she has not touched and does not need.

Is this what she wants? The question surfaces slowly, the way a bubble rises through still water. She lets it sit. She turns it over. She feels the weight of her body pressing into the couch, the heaviness of her breasts, the round fullness of her belly, the thickness of her thighs, the hair on her skin, the smell of her own unwashed existence. She feels all of it and waits for the doubt, for the shame, for the part of her that should be screaming. It doesn't come. The warmth pulses, steady and patient, and Lena realizes with a slow, spreading clarity that it isn't the wish anymore. It hasn't been the wish for a long time. The wish started something and her body continued it and her mind followed and now there is no separation between what the wish wants and what she wants because they are the same thing.

Yes. This is what she wants. She reaches for the laptop and opens the delivery app and orders three pizzas, a tray of macaroni and cheese, a bucket of fried chicken, a chocolate cake, two bottles of wine, and a bottle of whiskey. She opens the site and posts a new photo — her belly hanging between her thighs, the mess of the apartment visible, her face soft and calm — with the caption: "no going back. this is me. this is what i want." The comments begin arriving within minutes. She reads the first one — "perfect. never stop" — and feels the warmth settle into something quiet and permanent, like a pilot light that will never go out. She reaches for the whiskey bottle, takes a long drink, and lets out a belch that fills the apartment.