Turn 3 of 8

Go to the bar early and order everything on the menu. Get wasted and overindulge on food. Fart and burp proudly. Arrive home, strip naked and pass out drunk and content.

Lena arrives at the bar forty minutes early, which is not like her, and she knows it is not like her, and she goes anyway. The place is one of those low-lit corner spots with mismatched chairs and a chalkboard menu, half-empty at six, and she takes the round table by the window where the light will fall directly on her. The shorts have already ridden up in the taxi. Her top has already given up. She sits down and feels the chair take all of her, the wood creaking once in a way that six weeks ago would have made her want to die, and instead she settles in and props her elbows on the table like she owns it.

"Can I see the food menu?" she asks the waiter, and then, when he hands it over, she does not read it so much as decide it. Loaded fries. The halloumi. The chicken thing with the sticky glaze. Bread and oil, two of them, because one is never enough and she is tired of pretending otherwise. A glass of the house red to start, and when he raises an eyebrow at the length of the order she smiles at him with a warmth that surprises them both.

"It's a big night," she says. "I'm celebrating something. I'll explain it when I work out what it is."

The food comes in waves and Lena eats like someone who has stopped apologising for having a body. She goes past full early and keeps going, and the pressure builds under her ribs into that dense glowing ache she has started to look forward to, her stomach pushing out over the waistband of the shorts until the denim is doing nothing but drawing a line under it. She wipes oil off her fingers, drains the wine, orders another, and lets a slow satisfied breath out through her nose. The window beside her has gone dark enough to reflect: a round-shouldered soft woman glowing under a pendant lamp, cheeks pink, taking up her whole side of the table.

*There,* the voice says, when she leans back and lays a hand across the tight curve of herself. *Comfortable. That's all you asked for.*

That is when the door swings and Lena knows without turning, because Priya has always come into rooms like she is running slightly late for something better. She stops three steps in. Her eyes go to Lena's face, then down, then back up, and Lena watches the whole calculation happen in about two seconds flat, and does not cover herself, does not reach for anything to hold in front of her.

"Park," Priya says, dropping her bag on the chair opposite. "You look completely different. Also — since when do you eat carbs in public?"