Betrayal. You're a Fat Woman!

“Why, am I—what? Am I telling the truth? I want my children to have an ordinary mom? Not a fat cow!”

An ordinary mom. A fat cow. Those words cut so deep that it became hard to breathe…

He stepped toward me, and the air filled with the scent of his expensive perfume. Earlier, that smell would make my head spin. Now it has become the scent of humiliation for me.

“Look at Pasha’s wife from the next entrance. Three kids, and she looks like she’s about twenty-five. Look at Sveta from your previous job—on the photos in social media she’s like from a cover.”

Comparisons. He measured me against other women so casually, as if he were choosing things in a store. And in this race I was inevitably the loser—worse, fuller, less beautiful.

The phone in his pocket vibrated. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen—and the corners of his lips twitched in a familiar, almost gentle smile. The very one he once aimed at me.

“I have to answer, work,” he tossed out—and left.

A work call on Saturday evening. Well, sure. Of course.”