Turn 9 of 228
Scroll through the photo's and pick a fav. Its the most recent. Then show off my 237 pound body to the neighbors on the balcony. Don't bother cleaning myself or putting on clothes before. Deal with resulting arousal and pass out on floor.
Lena scrolls through the photos with her thumb, moving backward through the week. The earliest ones are almost unrecognizable — a woman in tight jeans with a belly that's barely there, poking at a soft curve like it's a problem to solve. Then the leggings, the crop top, the market photos where she's smiling and the crowd is blurred behind her. Then the bikini, the bodega, the scale. She scrolls forward again and stops on the last one: herself on the couch, naked, covered in orange dust and chocolate, belly rising between her thighs like a pale sun, crumbs scattered across every surface of her body, eyes half-shut with satisfaction. She stares at it for a long time. That's the one. That's the photo where she finally looks like herself.
She stands up from the couch and her body protests the movement — stiff, heavy, full of food and satisfaction. The crumbs on her belly shift and fall. She walks to the balcony door and opens it without hesitation, without looking down at herself, without checking the mirror one more time. She's naked and she's covered in food residue and she smells like sweat and chocolate and orange soda, and none of that matters. She steps onto the balcony and the warm air hits her bare skin like a wave.
The afternoon sun is directly overhead, flooding the narrow space with light. Her body is on full display — the full round belly hanging soft and heavy, the breasts wide and full, the hips that press against the railing on either side, the thighs thick and dimpled and covered in a dusting of orange crumbs. She can see the building across the street clearly now, and the third-floor balcony where the person was watering their plant this morning. The plant is still there. The person is not. But the kitchen window behind it is lit, and there's a silhouette moving behind the glass. Someone is home. Someone is watching.
She walks to the railing and leans against it, the metal pressing into the soft underside of her belly, and lifts her phone. She takes a photo of herself there — naked, messy, 237 pounds of soft, proud flesh in broad daylight — and the silhouette in the window across the street goes still. She takes another photo, turning so the full width of her hips and backside is visible, and she can feel the eyes on her skin like the sun, like the warm air, like a physical thing. A door opens somewhere below her — her building's hallway, maybe, or the one next door — and she hears footsteps on a sidewalk, then silence. She doesn't move. She stands there and lets herself be seen, and the electric warmth that's been building all day spreads through her belly and her thighs and the space between them.
She goes back inside and the cool air of the apartment hits her damp skin and she shivers once, hard, and then her knees buckle. She doesn't make it to the couch. She sinks to the floor right there in the living room, naked, her back against the side of the couch, and her hands move with the desperate, familiar urgency that the week has taught her body. The orgasm is fast and overwhelming, her belly tightening and then releasing in waves, and she cries out once into the empty apartment — or not empty, the walls are thin and the windows are open and someone across the street might have heard, and that thought pushes her over the edge a second time, a sharp aftershock that makes her bite down on her own lip. Then she slides sideways onto the floor, cheek pressed against the cool hardwood, and the world goes soft and dark and heavy.
She's asleep in under a minute, naked on the living room floor, 237 pounds of soft, satisfied, unapologetic flesh, covered in crumbs and chocolate and evidence of everything she's done today. Her phone is still in her hand. The balcony door is still open. The afternoon light moves across her body as the sun shifts, painting the curve of her belly, the fullness of her hips, the mess on her skin. She doesn't dream. She doesn't need to.