Chapter 1: Dressing in Denial
The lightbulb in Jessica’s bedroom ceiling flickered, a tired pulse that made the shadows of her mismatched furniture jerk and sway. She stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror propped against the wall, a poster for a local band half-peeling away behind it. The crisp white dress shirt she’d worn to last year’s cousin’s wedding felt like it belonged to someone else.
Her fingers, clumsy, worked at the buttons. The third one strained against the fabric.
“Come on,” she muttered, her voice a rasp that still surprised her. Late nights and bad coffee, she’d figured. She sucked in her stomach, pulled the sides together. The fourth button refused.
The fabric pulled taut across her shoulders and back. Not tight from weight gain—she still had the same narrow waist, the same lean frame—but from a new, bullish breadth in her upper body that made the seams whisper threats of tear. The cuffs, which used to fall elegantly past her wrists, now stopped short, exposing her forearms. The skin there looked different, too. Rougher. The fine blonde hairs seemed darker.
She gave up, letting the shirt gape open over her tank top. “Matt, you almost ready? We’re gonna be late for the taproom.”
From the other side of the bedroom door, a muffled curse. “My jeans are giving me a complex.”
Jessica shoved her feet into worn combat boots, not bothering to tie them. She grabbed her denim jacket, the leather patches on the elbows soft with age. It felt reassuringly familiar. “Just wear the black ones.”
“I am wearing the black ones.”
She pushed the door open. Matt was standing in the middle of the living area, staring down at himself. The faded band tee was the same, but the jeans below were indeed the sleek black ones he usually swam in. Now, they clung to his thighs and, unmistakably, to the curve of his hips. He tugged at the waistband, his movements uncharacteristically sharp, frustrated.
“They must have shrunk in the wash,” he said, not looking at her.
“Yeah,” Jessica said, the word sticking in her throat. “Mine too.”
Their eyes met for a second in the gloom. The flickering light cast his face in stuttering frames. His jawline seemed softer. His hair, always kept neat and short, was tousled, dark strands falling across his forehead with a weird, floppy insistence. It looked… fuller.
“You look different,” he said finally.
“You too. Tired.”
“Aren’t we all?”
They were experts at this now. The non-answers. The plausible deniability. Jessica’s hands ached sometimes, a deep bone-ache she blamed on grinding coffee beans and practicing too many barre chords. Matt had cried at a dog food commercial last week, then slammed his bedroom door so hard the picture of the space needle rattled. They’d blamed it on work stress and a hidden pollen allergy, respectively.
“Let’s just go,” Matt said, grabbing a hoodie from the couch. He tried to zip it up, but it caught halfway, bunched over his chest. He left it open.
The walk to the brewery was five blocks of deepening twilight. Jessica felt acutely aware of her own body. The way her stride ate up the pavement, her shoulders feeling broad and solid against the fabric of her jacket. She caught their reflection in a dark pharmacy window: two shifting, stretched silhouettes. Matt walked with his arms slightly held out from his body, as if his clothes were whispering things against his skin.
The brewer’s taproom was crowded, humid with the smell of yeast and fried food. They snagged their usual high-top table in the corner.
“Pint of the hazy and a pork belly poutine,” Jessica told the server, her voice dropping to a register that felt like gravel in her chest.
“Just a kolsch for me,” Matt said. His voice hadn’t changed. It was the same quiet, even tone. But his hands, resting on the sticky table, flitted nervously, tapping a silent rhythm.
The beers arrived. Jessica drained half of hers in three long pulls, the hoppy bitterness a welcome anchor. The hunger, a constant hollow grinding in her gut lately, quieted for a moment. Matt sipped his, watching the crowd. A group of guys laughed loudly by the bar, and Jessica felt a reactive, unfamiliar knot of aggression in her shoulders. She forced it down.
“We should get that light fixed,” Matt said, tracing a pattern in the condensation on his glass.
“Landlord’s problem.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
The poutine arrived, a glorious, greasy mess. Jessica dug in, the salt and fat hitting her system like a drug. She felt Matt watching her. “What? I skipped lunch.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
She pushed the plate toward him. “Have some.”
He picked at a single fry, then put it down. “Not hungry.”
They lapsed into silence. The noise of the bar swelled around them—a bubble of meaningless sound. Jessica finished the poutine, the plate cleared, and the restless hunger was back, sharper. She needed another beer. She needed to move.
“Wanna play some pool?” she asked, standing up. The motion was too quick, her chair scraping loudly.
Matt looked up, and in the jaundiced bar light, his face seemed genuinely strained. “I think I’m just gonna head back. I’ve got a headache.”
“Since when do you get headaches?”
“Since now, Jess.” He stood, pulling the hoodie around himself. The failed zipper was a glaring detail. “I’ll see you at home.”
She watched him weave through the tables, his posture hunched, the suddenly-too-tight jeans making his walk look unfamiliar. A cold trickle of fear, sharp and clean, cut through the beer haze. This wasn’t stress. This wasn’t bad sleep.
She turned back to the empty table, to her empty glass. Her hands lay palm-down on the wood. They were her hands. The same faint scar across the knuckle from a slipped box cutter at the cafe. But they were squared. The veins stood in slight relief under skin that was no longer soft.
The bartender caught her eye, lifting a bottle in question. She nodded.
Back at the apartment, it was dark. Matt’s door was closed. The flickering bulb in her room had finally given out, plunging it into a deep, textured black. Jessica didn’t turn on another light. She walked to the mirror, a pale shape in the darkness.
She fumbled for her phone, thumbed the flashlight on.
The beam was brutal, honest. It showed everything.
Her blonde hair was still long, but it looked coarse, wiry where it fell over the new, hard line of her jaw. Her neck was thicker, rising from the broad shelf of her shoulders. The dress shirt, still half-buttoned, was a ridiculous, suffocating costume. She shrugged it off, let it fall to the floor.
Under the stark white light, her arms were corded with new, lean muscle. Her collarbones, once delicate, now stood like sturdy architecture beneath her skin.
She switched the flashlight off, plunging the room back into a blackness that felt safer. She pulled on an old, stretched-out band t-shirt and went to bed, the fabric soft and forgiving.
They didn’t talk about it.
For the next six weeks, they orbited each other in the apartment, masters of silent agreement. The unspoken rule was simple: pretend nothing is happening, and maybe it will stop.
Jessica took extra shifts at the café. The industrial grinder, which used to require a stubborn heave, now purred to life under the casual press of her thumb. When she handed lattes to customers, her voice, a low rasp, made a few of them do a double-take. “You sound rough,” one regular said. “Big cold?” She just shrugged, a new, loose-hanging motion that felt natural in her broader shoulders. She bought men’s flannel shirts from the thrift store because the arms were longer, telling Matt they were “more durable.”
Matt worked from home, his video conferences strictly audio-only. He ordered new jeans online, a size up, in a “relaxed fit.” When they arrived, he locked himself in the bathroom for twenty minutes. They were loose at the waist but snug again in the hips and thighs. He wore them anyway, with the hoodie perpetually tied around his waist. He found himself reading sentimental articles about soldiers reuniting with dogs, tears welling up with a shocking, immediate heat. He blamed the glare from his monitors. His shampoo seemed to stop working; his hair grew at a ridiculous rate, becoming a soft, unruly wave that curled at his neck and fell into his eyes. He started wearing a beanie, even indoors.
They shared beers on the couch, the routines of their friendship a life raft.
“You’re eating my leftovers,” Matt accused one night, watching Jessica demolish the second half of his takeout curry straight from the container.
“You said you were full.” Her voice was gravelly. She didn’t even look up.
“I was. I am. That’s not the point.” His own stomach felt fluttery, capricious. One day he’d be ravenous, the next the thought of food turned his stomach. His skin had become annoyingly sensitive; the tag on his t-shirt felt like sandpaper.
“I’ll buy you more tomorrow,” Jessica said, licking the spoon. Her appetite was a furnace. She was spending a fortune on groceries. She caught her reflection in the microwave door—her face looked sharper, her features more pronounced, as if someone had tightened a screw at the back of her skull. She turned away quickly.
At a dive bar open mic night, Jessica played a set. Her singing voice, once a light alto, had a raw, powerful edge she couldn’t control. She fumbled the high notes on a familiar cover, the sound cracking in a way that was less folk, more rock-star grit. The small crowd cheered anyway. After, a guy with a beard approached. “Great tone, man. Really unique.” He clapped her on the back, his hand landing between her shoulder blades with a familiar, buddy-to-buddy thud. She stood frozen, holding her guitar case, the word ‘man’ ringing in her ears like a bell.
At home, Matt was trying to trim his own hair over the bathroom sink. The clippers slipped, leaving a ragged gouge above his ear. He stared at the stranger in the mirror—the wide, anxious eyes, the full lips bitten raw with worry, the cascade of brown hair now ruined by his own hand. A wave of frustration so intense it felt like nausea washed over him. He picked up a ceramic soap dish and hurled it into the shower stall. It exploded into satisfying, sharp pieces. Then he immediately burst into tears, sliding down the bathroom wall to sit on the floor, weeping into his knees until he was empty.
Jessica came home to the sound of shattering ceramic and soft sobs. She stood outside the bathroom door, her hand raised to knock. She heard the crying hitch, then stop. She lowered her hand. She went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and drank orange juice straight from the carton. The silence from the bathroom was heavier than any sound.
The denial became a full-time job. Jessica’s old jeans were donated. Matt’s collection of fitted caps no longer fit. They navigated around the changes like furniture in a dark room, bruised but insisting they were fine.
The breaking point, when it came, was almost mundane.
It was a Tuesday. Jessica was trying to open a new, stubborn jar of pickles. She wrapped the band t-shirt around the lid, braced it against her stomach, and twisted. Nothing. She sighed, a low, rumbling sound that was now her normal.
She repositioned her hands, set her jaw. This time she put her whole body into it, a surge of focused strength she didn’t question.
The lid gave way with a loud pop.
And the jar, slippery from the condensation, shot from her grip like a wet bar of soap.
It flew across the kitchen, arcing through the air in a spinning, glinting parabola. Matt had just walked in, beanie in hand, his hair a chaotic mess.
He froze.
The jar shattered against the wall two inches from his head, exploding in a blast of glass shards, vinegar, and spearing gherkins.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of dripping and the sharp, acidic smell of pickles.
Slowly, Matt turned his head. He looked at the viscous mess sliding down the wallpaper. He looked at the lethal, glittering fragments on the floor. Then he looked at Jessica, who was still standing by the counter, her powerful, unfamiliar hands empty and hanging at her sides.
Their eyes met. No more explanations. No more laundry excuses or blame on shampoo.
The pretense lay on the floor, smashed among the pickles and glass.