A Cozy Evening with My Ex (Patreon)

PART 1

A Cozy Evening with My Ex (Saturday) stranger bodychange lifeislife

The evening of September 16, 2026, was chilly and wet in Chicago. The rain had only just stopped, leaving behind gleaming asphalt where the yellow glow of streetlights and the signs of businesses that were still open stretched in long reflections. Romy Mercer was walking home after another shift, her chin tucked deep into the collar of her oversized black hoodie, both hands absently gripping the strap of her bag.

Her shift had dragged on almost until closing. The last client had arrived late, the stylist had taken longer than expected with her color, and then Romy had to count the register, answer messages, and wait for everyone to finally leave. Six months ago, staying at work until nine in the evening would have been nothing more than a normal workday for Roman Mercer. Now, after eight, Romy increasingly caught herself checking the time.

As usual at moments like this, a man suddenly appeared ahead of her—tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a black jacket with the hood pulled over his head. He came around the corner about fifty feet away, glanced briefly in her direction, and kept walking toward her.

Romy immediately tensed.

Without even realizing it, she tightened both hands around her bag strap and shifted a little closer to the edge of the sidewalk. The man wasn't doing anything suspicious at all. He was just walking. But the smaller the distance between them became, the more clearly Romy could see just how much bigger than her he was.

Although, admittedly, pretty much everyone was bigger than her now. Romy still hadn't gotten used to that. The difference was barely noticeable at the salon, with the reception desk, the chairs, the workstations, and the constant bustle around her. Out on the street, though, being four foot eleven felt entirely different, especially when the guy coming toward her was so tall she barely came up to his shoulder. Especially considering that she herself had once stood well over six feet.

PART 2

Six months ago, Roman probably wouldn't even have noticed this guy. Someone was walking toward him, so what? Now Romy caught herself estimating the distance to the brightly lit storefront on her right and checking for no real reason whether there were any other people ahead.

She even felt a little ashamed of herself for it.

Meanwhile, the man drew closer and calmly passed her without slowing down. For a few seconds, Romy was struck again by the unfamiliar scale of everything: the stranger's shoulder was almost level with her eyes, and he took up a good half of the sidewalk.

She walked a few more steps before turning to look back anyway.

The man was already heading in the opposite direction, paying no attention to her whatsoever.

“Jesus...” Romy breathed, irritably hitching the bag strap higher on her shoulder. “Am I going to jump at every guy I see now?”

The little pink bow charm swayed under her fingers. Romy looked down at it and grimaced for a moment.

One more thing Roman Mercer would hardly have expected to see dangling from his own bag six months ago.

Just like the bag itself.

She lowered her gaze. Her hands automatically went to the hem of her short dress and tugged it a little farther down, while the perfectly ordinary thought crossed her mind that maybe she really shouldn't wear something like this after dark.

Romy took one more step and froze.

“What the...” she murmured, simply staring at her own legs for several seconds.

What frightened her more than the man himself was how natural that thought had felt. Not I'm tiny now, not that guy was huge, but specifically—I shouldn't wear a short dress at night.

“Fuck you, Melissa,” Romy muttered, tugging the dress down again.

Melissa Grant, the salon's owner, had announced a month ago that the receptionists needed to look “a little more feminine,” and Romy had given in after several arguments. The dress was part of that compromise—along with the new bag and that stupid pink charm.

A couple of blocks later, her building finally came into view: an ordinary six-story block of dark brick that, over the past few months, Romy had come to regard as the only place where she could stop constantly thinking about how she looked to other people.

PART 3

She turned off the sidewalk toward the entrance, pulling her keys out of her bag as she walked. The bow charm snagged on the zipper again, and Romy irritably yanked it free along with the key ring.

“I need to take this shit off,” she told herself for what had to be the hundredth time, even though she knew perfectly well she'd forget again tomorrow.

It was dry under the awning. Romy stopped in front of the door, quickly smoothed a hand over the damp hair she had stopped cutting two months after the incident, and absently tugged her dress down once more, only to frown the instant she noticed herself doing it.

“Oh, for God's sake...”

The intercom gave an indifferent beep, the lock clicked, and Romy pulled the heavy door open, already picturing herself stripping off the dress in five minutes, climbing into a hot shower, and spending the rest of the evening in one of the old stretched-out T-shirts that had somehow survived the overhaul of her wardrobe.

The stairwell smelled of fried potatoes and what seemed to be some kind of meat. Romy's empty stomach immediately cramped, reminding her that the last time she'd eaten a proper meal had been sometime that afternoon.

“Shit...” she muttered as she headed for the stairs. “Should've at least grabbed a sandwich.”

By the time Romy reached her floor, her thoughts had settled firmly on food. She stopped in front of her apartment and slipped a hand into her bag for her keys—then almost immediately frowned.

Her fingers found her wallet, makeup case, charger, a packet of tissues, some receipts, and God knew what else, but no keys.

“Where the hell are you...”

Romy opened the bag wider and began irritably rummaging through its contents. Not so long ago, she'd genuinely had no idea how women managed to turn a small purse into a bottomless pit where it was impossible to find anything at all.

She froze as she remembered her own jokes about it, then slowly grimaced.

“Yeah. Hilarious, Roman.”

BAM

A dull thud sounded directly above her head. Romy flinched so hard that she nearly dropped the keys she'd finally found.

“Fuck!” She jerked away from the door and snapped her head up.

PART 4

Tessa Walker was standing directly over her, one palm braced against the door. Her big breasts—which would have prompted entirely different thoughts from Roman only six months ago—looked absolutely enormous from Romy's angle and were almost level with her face, deliberately bouncing as their owner laughed out loud.

“Oh my God, Romy!” Tessa finally took her hand off the door, still laughing. “You should've seen your face!”

“Tessa, what the fuck!” Romy pressed a palm to her chest, feeling her heart hammer somewhere in her throat. “Are you completely insane?!”

“I just leaned against the door.”

“You slammed it as hard as you could!”

“Not as hard as I could,” Tessa objected calmly, then immediately snorted with laughter again as she looked down at her. “You actually jumped.”

Romy glared at her, trying at the same time to catch her breath and get the key properly between her fingers again. What irritated her most was that Tessa knew perfectly well how easily startled she was now and clearly regarded it as one of the best consequences of whatever had happened six months ago.

“Very funny.”

“A little funny,” Tessa admitted with a broad grin. “Especially after you spent five years telling me I jumped at every little sound.”

Romy opened her mouth to answer, but couldn't immediately think of anything good enough.

“Fuck you,” she finally grumbled, turning back to the lock.

At that moment, however, Tessa's warm breast pressed softly against Romy's cheek, making her freeze with the key already in the lock.

“Tessa.”

“Hmm?” Tessa replied with perfect innocence.

Romy slowly turned her head and discovered that this only made it worse. Tessa's hard nipple slid across her cheekbone and stopped almost at the corner of her mouth, warm through the thin fabric, and Romy sharply pulled her head away.

“Could you stop shoving your boobs in my face while I'm trying to open the door?”

“Oh, sorry.” Tessa straightened just enough to give her a few inches of space. “What, don't you like it?”

Romy stared at her in silence for several seconds, feeling her face begin to heat up. But not from arousal.

For some reason, that irritated her more than anything else.

“No,” she finally said.

PART 5

Tessa's smile widened for a moment.

“No?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“Tess, fuck off.”

“Wow,” Tessa drawled, plainly savoring the moment. “You used to be ready to bury your face between them every chance you got.”

“Jesus, Tessa...”

Tessa immediately burst out laughing.

“God, that tone. For a second there, I felt like I was back in high school, when I showed up in that crop top and Mrs. Harper pulled me aside to spend ten minutes explaining that I was ‘distracting the boys from their studies.’”

“I didn't sound...” Romy began, then realized that no, she'd sounded exactly like that. As if Tessa had just put something completely inappropriate on display, rather than the very thing Romy had loved only a short time ago.

Tessa seemed to notice it too. The smile remained, but her gaze grew more attentive for a moment.

“All right, all right,” she said, finally stepping away from Romy. “I'll keep my horrible boobs to myself.”

“I didn't say they were horrible.”

“Oh, so they're still nice?”

Romy let out an irritated breath and reached for the key again.

“Are you doing this on purpose?”

“Of course.”

“You have a boyfriend, you know.”

“And?”

“And you're standing in the hallway shoving your boobs in your ex-boyfriend's face.”

Tessa thought about it for literally one second. Then, apparently on purpose—no, definitely on purpose—she narrowed her eyes and began looking around as if searching for someone.

“What are you doing?” Romy asked, immediately tensing and tightening her fingers around the key.

Tessa spent another couple of seconds ostentatiously peering over her shoulder, then looked down the other end of the hallway before finally lowering her gaze to Romy again.

“Looking for your ex-boyfriend.”

Romy frowned.

“What ex-boyfriend?”

“That huge guy whose face I'm supposedly shoving my boobs into.” Tessa looked around again. “You said ‘ex-boyfriend.’ I figured he must be around here somewhere.”

Romy stared at her for several seconds before the meaning fully sank in.

“Very fucking funny.”

“I thought so.”

PART 6

“Listen. Just move away from the door.”

“Sure.” Tessa raised both hands and took a step back. “You've gotten so jumpy.”

“I'm not jumpy.”

Romy finally turned the key and pushed the door open with her shoulder. Tessa immediately moved to follow, but Romy stepped over the threshold and turned around.

“I didn't invite you in, by the way.”

“I know.”

Romy sighed heavily but didn't argue. After all, irritating as her jokes could be, Tessa was probably the only person who, from the very beginning of all this inexplicable nonsense the scientists had dubbed the Change, had continued treating her almost exactly the way she had before. And the three years they'd spent together—years in which Roman had genuinely been able to relax from work, the endless phone calls, and the need to keep everything under control—hadn't simply disappeared because they no longer slept in the same bed.

Of course, now Tessa also had an infuriating knack for noticing things Romy preferred not to notice herself.

“Just don't tell me any more about your new boyfriend's cock,” Romy tossed over her shoulder without turning around.

“But it really is small. Yours was bigger,” Tessa said in a playful yet somehow earnest and supportive tone as she shut the door behind her.

Romy closed her eyes, stepped farther inside, and simply stood in the entryway for several seconds, as if hoping that the last sentence would cease to exist if she refused to react to it.

“Thanks, Tess. That's exactly what I needed to hear today.”

“I'm just trying to support your self-esteem.”

“I don't have a cock anymore. How exactly is that supposed to support my self-esteem?”

“Well, technically, you still won.”

Romy slowly turned around.

Tessa was standing by the door with a perfectly serious expression, but she lasted about three seconds before the corners of her mouth began to curl upward. Then higher. And higher. Finally, she couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out laughing, throwing her head back.

“Fuck you, Tessa.” Romy couldn't help smiling too, though she immediately tried to force an irritated look back onto her face. “I'm serious.”

PART 7

“So am I!” Tessa managed through her laughter. “I bet your pussy is a perfectly normal size now too. Did you try that dildo I gave you?”

Romy blushed so visibly that Tessa didn't even need to wait for an answer.

“O-o-oh,” she drew out, instantly ceasing to laugh. “So you did try it.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“Romy, your ears are red.”

Romy automatically covered one of them with her palm and immediately realized that she'd only made things worse.

“Get lost.”

“Oh my God, you actually tried it!” Tessa broke into an utterly delighted grin. “I gave it to you as a joke.”

“AS A JOKE?!” Romy blurted out far too sharply. Realizing that this gave even more away, she hurried to add, “I mean, I didn't try it. Or, I mean, I did—no. It's... Damn it! Whatever! We're done!”

Tessa didn't answer. She only tried to quiet her laughter, but the look on her face said everything for her. There was no point trying to explain herself.

Romy ostentatiously turned away and began unzipping her hoodie, hoping that if nothing else, this would make it clear that the conversation was over. Underneath was the same short dress she'd already spent more time thinking about in the past half hour than she would have liked to spend thinking about it in her entire life.

“Not a word,” she warned when she saw Tessa's eyes travel downward.

“Nice legs,” Tessa immediately said.

Romy slowly raised her eyes to meet hers.

“I said not a word.”

“That was two words.”

“Tessa.”

“What? I was giving you a compliment.”

Romy snorted and slipped the hoodie off her shoulders, hanging it on a hook. Without it, the dress immediately seemed even shorter, and her hand almost automatically moved down to tug at the hem. Halfway there, Romy caught herself, clenched her fingers irritably, and grabbed the strap of her bag instead.

Tessa, of course, noticed.

“I'm not even going to say anything.”

“Good. Don't.”

“Though I really want to.”

“I'm about to throw you back into the hall.”

“All right.” Tessa obediently raised her palms. “I'm quiet.”

PART 8

Romy took off her bag and set it on the entryway cabinet. The pink bow swayed on its strap.

“Oh my God, that's adorable,” Tessa immediately cooed, hooking a finger under the pink bow.

“Don't touch it.”

“Why? It's cute.”

“Exactly.”

Tessa looked first at the charm, then at Romy.

“Melissa put it there,” Romy grumbled, snatching the bow away from her. “Said the bag looked too boring.”

“And you let her?”

“I was busy. Then I forgot to take it off.”

“For an entire month?”

Romy froze with the charm between her fingers.

“How do you know how long it's been there?”

“Because I saw it two weeks ago.”

“And you didn't say anything?”

“I wanted to see how long it would take you to acknowledge its existence on your own.”

Romy glanced sideways at the little pink bow. She could, in fact, take it off right now. The clasp was right in front of her; all she had to do was press it with her nail and toss the stupid thing into a drawer. But for some reason, she simply let go. The bow swayed and tapped softly against the bag.

Tessa raised an eyebrow.

“Not a word,” Romy warned immediately, then marched toward the kitchen.

“I'm quiet,” came the reply from behind her.

Romy didn't answer. The first thing she did in the kitchen was open the refrigerator and stare inside for several seconds, hoping that somehow a proper meal had appeared there during the day. It hadn't. Half a carton of eggs, some yogurt, a jar of sauce, a few vegetables, and a container whose contents she had been afraid to inspect for the past two days.

“Fantastic.”

Tessa stopped in the doorway.

“Yeah, you're a shitty housewife.”

“Why the hell am I supposed to be a housewife in the first place?” Romy immediately spun around, still holding the refrigerator door.

Tessa froze for a moment, then slowly broke into a smile.

“O-o-oh.”

“What do you mean, ‘oh’?”

“Nothing. It's just that ‘supposed to’ sounded very natural. Very ‘I'm a woman, not a dishwasher,’ and all that.”

“That's not what I meant,” Romy said at once, far too quickly, turning back to the refrigerator.

“Of course it wasn't.”

PART 9

“I meant, why the fuck am I supposed to be a housewife just because I'm now...”

She didn't finish.

“I agree,” Tessa replied without asking her to clarify and, for once, without trying to tease her. “Why the fuck should you?”

Romy, who had already been bracing herself for an argument, stalled for a moment.

“Well... exactly.”

She turned back to the refrigerator and began examining its contents as though the rest of her argument might be hiding in there. Her shoulders relaxed when neither another joke nor a sarcastic remark followed from behind her.

Apparently, she'd gotten away with it.

“There are eggs,” Romy announced, taking out the carton. “I can make an omelet.”

“Sure.”

“Want cheese?”

“Yeah.”

“Tomatoes?”

“Uh-huh.”

Romy set everything on the counter and reached for a frying pan. Meanwhile, Tessa finally came into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and buried herself in her phone. Several minutes passed with surprising calm. Romy cracked the eggs, Tessa scrolled through something, and outside the window cars hissed along the wet street.

And the longer this completely normal silence continued, the more convinced Romy became that Tessa had actually decided to leave her alone.

She was wrong.

“By the way,” Tessa said as casually as possible, without looking up from her phone. “Do guys ever come into your salon?”

Romy, who was beating the eggs with a fork, didn't even react at first.

“Sometimes.”

“Often?”

“Every now and then. Why?”

“No reason.”

Tessa went on scrolling through her phone. Romy watched the top of her head for several seconds, then shrugged and turned back to the stove.

“Husbands come in, boyfriends wait for someone. Sometimes they book appointments themselves. It's a salon, Tess.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Silence again.

Romy poured the eggs into the pan.

“Any cute ones?”

The fork went still in her hand. Slowly, very slowly, Romy turned her head. Tessa was still looking at her phone.

“What?”

“The guys. Are any of them cute?”

“How would I know?”

“Usually you use your eyes.”

“Tessa.”

“What?”

PART 10

Now she finally looked up. Her expression was so innocent that Romy understood instantly: there had never been any truce. Tessa had merely been waiting.

“Why would I care whether they're cute or not?”

“You wouldn't,” Tessa agreed easily.

“Exactly.”

Romy turned away and began moving the spatula around the omelet as it started to set, giving it far more attention than it needed.

“Still, it's strange,” Tessa continued a few seconds later.

“What's strange?”

“Oh, nothing.” Tessa lowered her gaze to her phone again. “You used to be very good at deciding whether a woman was attractive. Even when I didn't ask.”

Romy froze for a moment. Her heart was already pounding, but now her fingers had started trembling slightly, and her throat had suddenly gone dry.

“Well, that's... women,” she said quietly, somehow too quietly, already realizing how unconvincing her counterargument sounded.

“A-a-ah... women. Got it.”

Then she went back to her phone.

Romy waited for her to continue. She didn't, and for some reason that made Romy even more tense. She flipped the omelet, nearly tearing it in half, and glanced over her shoulder.

“What exactly did you get?”

Her voice wavered slightly, but Romy tried to make it sound as if she was asking purely out of irritation.

“Nothing in particular.” Tessa shrugged. “It's just that women are women.”

“Exactly.”

“And men are men.”

The spatula went still again.

Romy didn't turn around.

“Very profound.”

“Thank you. It took me a long time to get there.”

Romy exhaled loudly and went back to dragging the spatula around the pan, even though the omelet had long since stopped requiring such close attention.

“And?”

“Nothing.” Tessa paused. “I'm just wondering how much longer you're going to pretend you aren't into men now.”

Romy spun around so sharply that the spatula clinked against the edge of the pan.

“What?!”

“That's exactly what I'm talking about.”

“What the hell gave you that idea?”

Tessa finally placed her phone facedown on the table and looked at her.

“Romy, seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

“We were together for three years.”

“So?”

PART 11

“So I know perfectly well how you used to look at women.” Tessa gave a slight shrug. “Especially me. Then the Change happened, a few weeks went by, and suddenly you started looking away whenever I got changed. Then you stopped making moves on me. Then we tried to have sex, and you spent ten minutes pretending you were just ‘not in the mood tonight.’”

Romy felt heat rush instantly from her neck to her ears.

“Everything was completely fucked up for me back then.”

“Agreed. But a week later, you bought a vibrator.”

“You gave it to me!”

“A different one.”

Romy went rigid.

Tessa bit her lip, clearly trying not to smile.

“How did you...”

“You left the box in the bathroom.”

For several seconds, Romy simply stared at her.

“You went through my trash?!”

“It was sitting next to the trash can.”

“That doesn't mean...”

“Of course it doesn't.” Tessa picked up her phone again. “Just like it doesn't mean anything that you notice every cute guy who walks past you now.”

“I don't notice them.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I don't!”

“Okay.”

For some reason, that calm “okay” infuriated Romy far more than it would have if Tessa had kept arguing.

“And anyway, even if I looked at some guy, it still wouldn't mean anything.”

Tessa slowly raised her eyes from the phone.

Romy stopped short.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Tessa couldn't hold it in and covered her mouth with one hand, but a snicker escaped anyway.

“Oh my God! I knew it! I fucking knew it!”

She said it with sheer triumph, like Archimedes shouting “Eureka,” and even slapped her palm against the table.

“What the fuck did you know?!” Romy immediately went on the defensive.

“That you're into men now!”

“I didn't say that!”

“You literally just said you look at guys.”

“I said ‘even if’!”

“Yeah. And you blushed.”

“Because you're driving me fucking insane!”

Romy abruptly turned back to the stove and began transferring the omelet to a plate with such concentration that it looked as though the rest of her life depended on getting it perfectly centered.

Behind her, Tessa was still laughing under her breath.

“God, I've been waiting six months for you to finally say it yourself.”

“I didn't say anything.”

PART 12

“Romy, I don't care.”

The spatula stopped again, and this time there was no mockery or laughter in Tessa's voice.

“What do you mean?” Romy asked without turning around.

“Exactly what I said. So you're into men now. So what?”

“I'm not...”

“Oh, enough already,” Tessa interrupted without any malice. “What, do you think I'm offended or something?”

Romy set the spatula down beside the stove and finally turned around.

“We already broke up because I don't have a cock anymore.”

“No. We broke up because you spent two months pretending nothing was happening, and every time I tried to talk about it, you started going on about hormones, stress, adjustment, and some other bullshit.”

“It was hormones, and...”

Romy faltered, no longer sure what she had been about to say.

Tessa remained silent.

“Fuck,” Romy finally breathed, turning away. “Yeah... something like that.”

For some reason, admitting it out loud was much worse than knowing the answer perfectly well herself for the past several months. It was one thing to let her gaze linger on some man, spend the rest of the evening angry with herself, and pretend nothing had happened. It was something else entirely to say it in front of Tessa. In front of the woman Roman had once talked about other women with, slept with, lived with, and sincerely considered all of it such a natural part of himself that he had never even stopped to think that everything could change so completely.

“I just...” Romy swallowed and stared at the plate. “It's kind of... Look, can we not do this right now, okay?”

Tessa watched her for several seconds, then simply pulled the plate closer.

“Okay.”

Romy looked up, clearly expecting more.

There was none.

“That's it?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don't know.”

Tessa cut off a piece of omelet with her fork.

“Then eat before it gets cold.”

Romy watched her for one more second, then silently sat down across from her. Her cheeks were still burning, she couldn't bring herself to look Tessa in the eye, and the last thing she wanted was to admit that the words she'd just said belonged to her.