Ask how she kept it hidden

I waited until she’d taken another slow sip of tea before I asked.

“How did you keep it hidden for so long?”

Jess looked down at the high curve of her belly under the thin white tank top. Her free hand rested on top of it, fingers spread wide like she was still surprised it was real.

“I didn’t, not really,” she said after a moment. “Not completely. I just… got good at hiding the evidence.”

She shifted on the couch, adjusting the cushion behind her lower back. The movement made the tank top ride up another inch. A wider strip of smooth, taut skin showed above the waistband of her leggings, the dark linea nigra running straight down the centre like a marker.

“I wear big hoodies and oversized jumpers most of the time anyway. My parents are used to me looking a bit… baggy. And it only really started showing properly around four months. Before that I could pass it off as weight gain or bloating. I stopped wearing anything tight. Stopped going swimming. Stopped letting Mum hug me from the side because she’d feel it. I timed showers so no one walked in. I even started carrying a big tote bag everywhere so I could hold it in front of me if I had to.”

She gave a small, tired laugh that didn’t sound amused.

“The scan photos were the only physical proof I kept. I thought I’d hidden them well enough under some old university notes. Turns out I hadn’t.”

I watched her hand stroke slowly over the side of her belly as she spoke. The skin looked tight and warm even from here. Five and a half months. Not as huge as Lisa had been last night, but already unmistakable—high, firm, and growing. The kind of belly that made the rest of her look smaller and more fragile by comparison.

“Did anyone else know?” I asked.

“One friend. She helped me with baggy clothes and covered for me a couple of times when I had appointments. She’s the only reason I didn’t completely fall apart before today.” Jess’s voice softened. “I kept thinking if I just got a bit further along, if I could just make it to the third trimester without them finding out, then maybe they’d have to accept it. Or maybe I’d figure out what the hell I was going to do. Instead they found out at five and a half months and threw me out before breakfast was even finished.”

She looked up at me then. Her eyes were still red, but clearer than before.

“You’re the first person who’s seen me like this and not looked at me like I’m either a tragedy or a disappointment.”

The words landed heavier than she probably meant them to. I felt that same low, greedy pull in my gut that had started with Lisa. The knowledge that this young, soft, pregnant body was sitting on my couch, rejected by the people who were supposed to protect her, and looking at me like I was safe.

I kept my voice steady.

“You’re not either of those things.”

Jess’s hand kept moving slowly over her belly. Circling. Soothing. The tank top had ridden up far enough now that most of the lower curve was visible—smooth, stretched skin, the faint silvery beginnings of stretch marks at the sides.

“It still feels weird,” she admitted quietly. “Having it out in the open. I’ve spent so long sucking it in or covering it that I almost forgot what it feels like to just… let it sit there.”

She glanced down at herself again, then back at me.

“Does it bother you? Looking at it, I mean.”

I could have lied. Said something polite and neutral. Instead I told her the truth, or at least part of it.

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”

Something shifted in her expression—relief, maybe, mixed with a flicker of something warmer. She didn’t pull the hoodie closed again. She left it open, the thin white fabric stretched tight across the high, round proof of what she’d been hiding for months.

I stayed on my end of the couch and drank my own tea, but my eyes kept drifting back to the slow movement of her hand over that belly. The heat under my skin hadn’t faded. If anything it was settling deeper, quieter, more dangerous.

She was nineteen, five and a half months pregnant, sitting in my living room with nowhere else to go.

And I was already wondering how much further that belly would grow before the baby came.