Turn 6 of 228
Take new photos in the bikini, inside and out. Step onto the balcony in the bikini and let the neighbors see. The walk to the bodega barefoot in the bikini for food. Indulge at the bodega.
Lena pulls out her phone and stands in front of the full-length mirror. The bikini is a joke on her body — two triangles of fabric struggling to cover nipples that are barely hidden, the string cutting across the full width of her chest so her breasts press outward above and below the thin material. She lifts the phone and takes the photo straight-on, then turns sideways. The profile is absurd: the belly pushing forward in a smooth round curve that the bikini bottoms barely reach beneath, the string at her hip disappearing into the soft flesh of her thigh. She takes five photos in quick succession, each angle more revealing than the last, and saves them all.
She opens the balcony door and steps outside. The air is warm against her bare skin and the concrete is cool under her feet. Her building faces another residential tower across the narrow street, maybe thirty feet away, and she can see movement in the windows — someone watering a plant on a third-floor balcony, a figure in a fourth-floor kitchen. She walks to the railing and leans against it, the metal pressing into the soft underside of her belly, and lifts her phone for a photo. The sunlight catches the curve of her body and the thin fabric of the bikini and the strings digging into her hips. She can see the person on the third-floor balcony across the way stop watering their plant and go still. She takes the photo anyway, then another, angling her body so the width of her hips and the fullness of her belly are visible against the railing. She holds the pose for a long moment, knowing she's being watched, and the electric warmth spreads through her lower belly.
She goes back inside and grabs her keys. No shoes. No cover-up. Just the bikini and her phone and her bare feet on the cool hallway floor. She takes the stairs down and pushes through the front door onto the sidewalk. The bodega is half a block away and she walks there slowly, feeling the pavement under her soles, feeling the strings shift against her hips with each step, feeling her belly sway. A man getting into a parked car does a full double-take. A woman with a stroller looks away quickly. Lena feels their eyes on her skin like heat and walks into the bodega and the bell above the door rings.
The guy behind the counter is maybe her age, dark-eyed, and he stares at her with the unfiltered shock of someone who was not expecting a half-naked fat woman to walk into his store on a Sunday morning. Lena doesn't acknowledge the stare. She walks to the back of the store, bare feet on the tile floor, and opens the refrigerator case. Her belly presses against the cool glass as she reaches for a pint of ice cream, and she feels the condensation on her skin. She takes the ice cream, then a bag of chips, then a package of cream-filled cookies, then a second pint of ice cream. Her arms are full and the bikini top shifts with the motion, the triangles of fabric sliding sideways. She doesn't fix it.
She brings everything to the counter and the guy rings it up in silence, his eyes moving between her face and the shelf of her belly resting against the counter edge. She pays in cash, takes the bag, and as she turns to leave she catches her reflection in the glass door — barefoot, nearly naked, the bikini barely holding, her body wide and soft and on display in the fluorescent light. She pushes the door open and walks back into the sunlight, and the electric warmth pulses between her thighs with every barefoot step on the warm sidewalk.