Jennifer stepped back into her apartment like she was walking into a stranger’s life. The soft hum of the fridge, the faint scent of the vanilla candle she’d burned the night before—it all felt too normal for what she was carrying inside her.
She dropped her keys in the bowl by the door and didn’t even look at her phone. Messages from friends, missed classes—none of it mattered right now. She didn’t want to explain. She didn’t want to be seen.
She just wanted to disappear.
Still dressed in the stretched-out bodysuit and the flannel wrapped low around her hips, she kicked off her shoes, walked straight into her bedroom, and collapsed onto the bed. The weight of her chest and belly made even that awkward. She curled onto her side, hugging a pillow to her middle, trying not to think about how real everything still felt despite the doctor’s words.
Not pregnant.
She kept hearing it, repeating it, like it might overwrite the evidence in her body. But it didn’t. Her breasts still ached. Her belly still pressed outward in that undeniable curve.
She grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. Bright colors, loud voices—something shallow, mindless. A dating show was on, two women fighting over a guy with a man-bun and a six-pack. It was ridiculous, dramatic, safe. Jennifer let it wash over her.
She stayed like that for hours. Wrapped in blankets, head half-buried in pillows, half-watching people scream and kiss and cry while she drifted in and out of sleep. Every so often, she shifted uncomfortably, adjusting her shirt, cradling her belly without thinking. Her body still felt alien. But the show helped drown it out—just a little.
She didn’t have answers. She didn’t have a plan.
But she could pretend, for now, that it wasn’t happening.
At least until the next change came.