Page 24 of Smart@ss Cyborg

None of which holds a candle to what Becky could have made for me.

I vow to myself that I will beg her to make me my meals for always.

Day two of building a fence is even more horrible.

Day three nearly kills me.

By day seven, I can’t get out of bed—and don’t. I’m grateful when Becky brings me water, and food. She tries to coax me to the siphon room, but I refuse. “I can hold my water and stool,” I tell her—and watch her eyes fly wide, then squinch as she makes a scrunched face.

“What?” I pant, teeth bared as my body protests even my breathing.

“Nothing,” she finally says, shaking her head at me. “Can you get on your stomach?”

“No.”

“Here. Let me help you roll.”

“I.Can’t,”I insist, sullen.

“Please? I want to try something.”

With her assistance—she pushes at my shoulder as I rise, helping me flip over on arms too tight to hardly extend—I make it into a prone position, my head turned toward her. “Now what?”

Stomach causing her some trouble, she climbs on the bed beside me, and begins to rub my muscles.

Her ministrations are heavenly. At one point, I tell her she must be a land-bound angelic being, and it makes her laugh, but I’m quite serious.

Her heavy stomach compresses against my lower spine as she leans over me, and her stomach feels as if it almost… I’m not certain. I believe I feel almost a fluttering kick. A tadpole’s greeting, I ascertain. But I find I don't mind the weight or sensation and certainly not the pressure or warmth.

I hope the salve she retrieves eases her as well. Her hands have to ache from tending to me, but she tells me it’s no trouble as she laboriously clambers off the bed, one hand over her belly, and leaves me in a much more comfortable broken heap than when I started.

Thanks to her efforts, the next day I’m able to exit our bed.

And the day after that, fencing hurts me, but doesn’t incapacitate me. Paco steals tools from my pockets, which keeps me limber as I leave my work to chase him in a vain effort to get them back.

Two full weeks of the torture sees me able to withstand the physical strain, and my muscles have adapted, the damaged fibers repairing themselves so admirably that I’m even stronger.

My arms look permanently swollen.

My chest has gotten firmer, and I’m developing slight lumps along my abdominals. I’m examining them one night before bed, dressed only in underpants, when Becky asks in a high, choked voice, “What are you doing?”

I glance up at her. “I wonder if I’m having some sort of reaction. A work allergy maybe. Look at this,” I tell her, and poke my stomach in the places where my skin has bubbled up.

“You have a six-pack,” she shares, voice oddly breathy.

Ifrown at her. “A what?”

Her eyes sweep down then dart away from me, and she waves a hand at my midsection. “It’s called a six-pack, when your muscles do that.”

“Do what?”

“Get—hard.”

“Oh.” I watch her, discomfited that I can’t read her reaction. Of late, I’ve been congratulating myself on how well I believe I can now read her.

The activity in her skull is heating up in an area I’m unfamiliar with, and there’s a slight smell in the air—I don’t know what it is, but when I inhale it, my skin tightens.Allof me tightens.

I sigh as I feel myself developing a six pack at my groin too. It happens nearly every morning and it's troublesome.

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