Outside the window the light is flat and grey, the kind of March morning that hasn't decided what it wants to do yet. I kick the sheets off. The air in the bedroom is cool but my thighs feel damp, sticky almost, the boxers bunching up between my legs like they're caught on something. I press my palms into the mattress and push myself up, legs swinging over the edge - except my balance is wrong. Not dizzy. Just off, like my center of gravity shifted an inch or two south while I was sleeping. There's a faint, slick pressure between my thighs, the boxer fabric riding up in a way that makes no sense. Cool air brushes skin that shouldn't be exposed.
Standing sends a jolt through me. My hips tilt forward instinctively, weighted differently. I take a step and nearly stumble - my stride is shorter, my knees brushing together in a gait that isn't mine. The bathroom door feels miles away. One hand catches the dresser, fingers digging into the wood, and I glance back at Emily. Still asleep. Good.
I get to the bathroom and flick the light on with a shaking hand. The mirror shows my face - same stubble, same tired eyes - but something about the hang of the boxers is wrong. I yank them down.
The pubic hair is softer, curlier, sitting higher and stopping sooner than it should. Below it, flatness. A mound. I look up at the mirror to check what I'm seeing and the reflection confirms it - the outline of the lips just visible through the hair, the whole area unmistakably wrong. I stand there looking. My palm presses against it instinctively, the way you'd test a wound. The tissue yields under my palm, every nerve ending close to the surface. My hand jerks back.
I know it won't work. I stand over the toilet anyway, reach down out of habit - and my hand finds nothing. For a second my hand hangs in the air. Then I tilt my hips forward to aim anyway, and the second I relax, warmth goes in completely the wrong directions - spreading through unfamiliar folds, trickling down the inside of my thighs. I hiss and grab a wad of toilet paper, swiping at my legs. The paper comes away damp. My hands are shaking. I drop it in the toilet and flush, then turn back to the mirror, gripping the sink.
My hips are wider, the pelvis broader and rounder than it was yesterday. My ass has filled out. I run my hands over my legs slowly - they taper differently now, a softness to the thighs I've never had. The skin unmarked by the hair that used to be there.
I have to look away for a second. I stare at the faucet. Then I look back.
From the waist up it's still my body - same chest, same shoulders, same forearms, the same hair on them. Same crow's feet. Same salt-and-pepper stubble. But when I lift my shirt, my stomach looks softer, the skin smoother, body hair stopping a few inches above my belly button where it used to run all the way down. I press my fingers into my abdomen, half-expecting to feel something alien beneath the surface. Nothing. Just flesh. My fingers drift lower, brushing the waistband of my boxers. I cup a hand over the outside, trace the external contours with trembling fingertips. The sensation is too much. I pull my hand away.
Emily's voice from the bedroom, sleepy and muffled. "You okay in there?"
"Yeah." Too loud. "Just taking a leak."
She murmurs something unintelligible, rolls over. I pull the boxers back up, the fabric catching against the new anatomy, the elastic waistband digging into the hips. I flex my toes against the cold tile. My feet seem smaller, the arches higher. My sneakers won't fit like this.
I walk over to the closet and my hip catches the doorframe hard. I rub the bone, waiting for the throb to pass, then dig through the dresser for PJ bottoms. I pull them on over my boxers and glance over my shoulder at the mirror. Baggy. Not noticeably feminine. Fine.
The hardwood floor creaks as I step into the hallway. The PJs brush against sensitive skin. My hips shift to compensate for a center of gravity that isn't where I left it. I take the stairs carefully, my pelvis dropping slightly with each step in a tilt I'm not directing, the movement coming from somewhere below conscious control. I grip the banister too tight. The smell of coffee and bacon drifts up from the kitchen. Emily's humming something off-key. I focus on that.
Emily's standing at the counter when I walk in, nursing her coffee. She glances up, and for a wild second I think she knows. But she just smiles, still half-asleep. "You're walking funny. Pull something at the gym yesterday?"
My face burns. "Yeah, hurts."
She hums, taking a sip. "Want ibuprofen?"
"I'm good." I grab a coffee mug, my hands steadier now. Pour, stir, sip. I stand next to her and drink, still the same height. She leans over and puts her head on my shoulder, then pulls back slightly and sniffs at my collar, crinkles her nose.
I step away and sit down, and the chair reminds me immediately - hard wood against soft flesh, direct and unmediated, nothing between me and the seat like there used to be. I shift forward onto my thighs. Better. Marginally.
Emily's watching me over the rim of her mug. "You're being weird."
"Just tired."
She sets her cup down. Her eyes drop to my PJs, then come back up. "Did you - " A pause. "Did you lose weight?"
I nearly choke on my coffee. "What?"
"Your clothes look different on you."
"Haven't worn this pair in a while."
She shrugs, but her gaze lingers.
Back in the bathroom with the door locked this time. I exhale through my nose and lean against the sink. My reflection stares back, unchanged from the chin up.
I grab my toothbrush, squeeze paste onto the bristles. The mint is sharp and familiar. I spit into the sink and watch the foam swirl down the drain, reach for a floss pick out of habit.
Sitting on the toilet is different. Not just the absence of what was there before, but the way my hips settle as I sit down, the curve of my ass pressing into the seat. Fuller. Wider. I work the floss pick between my teeth. The sounds are wrong - softer, closer, a quiet trickle instead of a direct stream, warmth spreading in the wrong directions. The coffee stirs in my gut and I bear down and do my business, which at least works the same way it always has.
I toss the floss pick in the trash, then grab a wad of toilet paper. Muscle memory takes over - leg hiked up, hand reaching back behind me - but the geometry is wrong from the start. No coarse hair, no familiar contours. Just smooth skin and a cleft I don't know. I wipe back toward myself the way I always have and the paper drags through soft folds I didn't ask for and a jolt goes up my spine. I yank my hand away and drop the toilet paper in the bowl and sit there a moment. Then I get in the shower.
I turn the water as hot as it'll go. Steam fills the shower fast and something comes with it - faint, slightly sour, organic - and it takes me a moment to realize it's coming from me. Not unpleasant. Just not mine.
The water hits my shoulders and runs down my back. I soap up - arms first, then chest - and work my way down. I go for my legs next, skipping the middle without deciding to. My hand moves between my legs for basic purposes when I finally get there, no more than that, and the moment my fingers make contact something fires straight up through me and I pull my hand back and stand there for a second. I try again, efficiently, and the same thing happens, less sharp but still present. I do what I need to do and move on. I scrub harder at my thighs, like the soap might take something with it.
I crank the water cold. Something contracts - not just skin tightening but a drawing inward, a closing that I feel before I can name where. It releases slowly. I stand in it, breathing.
I step out and run the towel over my hair, my face, my shoulders. The same sequence, the same motions. Arms, chest - still mine. My legs feel different under the cloth, the skin registering the towel's texture in a way it used to take for granted, but I keep moving. When I get to my crotch I do what I always do, passing the towel close and roughly with one hand, and the fabric catches on soft folds and friction flares where there shouldn't be any. I yank the towel back. Try again, gentler. Still wrong. I end up patting, clumsily, like I'm drying something that might break.
I ball up the towel and drop it in the hamper, then yank open the drawer for clean boxers. I step into them, tugging the waistband up over wider hips. The fabric sags, bunching between my legs in a way that makes my skin crawl. My jeans are worse - the zipper closes fine but the button won't follow, and when I force it the denim strains across my hips and the seams ride up with every shift of my weight, chafing where nothing used to chafe.
My sneakers won't hold my feet. I tighten the laces until the eyelets nearly touch but my feet - smaller now, narrower - still slide around inside. The socks bunch at the toes. I pull on an extra pair and it barely helps.
I button my dress shirt and tuck it in by muscle memory. Then I look at the mirror.
The shirt follows the waist, which follows the hips, which are wider than they have any right to be under a dress shirt. The taper is wrong - fabric pulling across the seat, the whole silhouette below the waist announcing something I can't afford to announce at the office. I pull the shirt out and let it hang. The hem falls over the hips and the problem mostly disappears. Not perfectly. Enough.
Untucked, then. That's today's solution.
The coffee turns in my gut on the drive to work. The mirrors are slightly off - I don't touch them. Every pothole drives the seat seam upward into soft tissue through my boxers, the road delivering small concentrated reminders with every bad patch of asphalt. At a red light I press my thighs together out of reflex and immediately there's a pulse, a warmth, a dampness I have no category for. I release them and fix my eyes on the road.
I run through the Aldermere deck in my head. The eleven o'clock. The two-thirty with Dave. Normal things that need doing, learned habits after five years at Harmon & Associates. I think about those.
Parking's worse. Same spot I always take, same gap between the same two SUVs. I open the door, swing my legs out, push myself up and through - and my ass doesn't clear. The door frame catches me solid, stops me mid-exit. I have to turn, compress, work myself through. I stand on the asphalt for a second. "Fuck," I mutter, and go inside.
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