New Year New Me

“God, what a day,” Nora groaned, kicking the front door shut with her heel. She let her heavy tote bag slide off her shoulder, watching an avalanche of script pages and half-chewed pens spill across the entryway floor. She didn't care. She was exhausted.

“Hey girl, hey!”

Nora blinked, adjusting her glasses as her roommate and childhood best friend, Kim, sauntered into the living room. Kim was wearing a neon string bikini, oversized designer sunglasses, and absolutely nothing else.

“Oh, jeez—can you please put some actual fabric on your body?" Nora gestured wildly at her roommate's exposed midriff. "Why are you sunbathing anyway? It’s literally January in New York!”

“When you look this good, you want the whole tri-state area to know it,” Kim replied, grabbing a protein shake from the counter. “Why don’t you join me? You’ve got a nice body under those ratty sheets you call clothes, you know!”

“Uh, no thank you. No one in a five-mile radius needs to know what I’ve got under here," Nora muttered, defensively tugging at the hem of her oversized gray sweatshirt. "And what’s wrong with my clothes? They’re comfortable. They have structure.”

Nora was the definition of the shy, chronically low-profile type. She didn't do tight dresses, she didn't do boyfriends, and she definitely didn't do "coquettish." She was cute—she had soft features and a naturally decent figure—but she preferred to bury it all under loose, baggy layers and heavy vintage jackets. The absolute most she would venture would be a pair of denim shorts during a July heatwave, and even then, the inevitable compliments from strangers would make her blush so hard she’d look like a tomato for an hour.

“So, are you gonna come out with me tonight or what?" Kim called out, retreating to her room to change. "It’s the first day of an all-new year! We gotta go live it up!”

A few minutes later, Kim emerged in a nightclub dress that was short enough to be a napkin and tight enough to restrict oxygen.

“I’m gonna have to aggressively decline. I have an early morning in the writer's room tomorrow,” Nora said. She was always working, always rewriting, never having time to actually let loose. The mere thought of going to a loud club just to have drunken finance bros hit on her and tell her she was "exotic and cute" made her skin crawl.

“You need to start living life, girl. New year, new you,” Kim offered, tossing her hair back with a wave of profound roommate wisdom before clacking out the door in her heels.

“Maybe someday,” Nora muttered to the empty apartment. Shivering from the draft, she dragged herself toward the bathroom to wash the day's stress away.

That night, Nora’s subconscious decided to betray her.

In her dream, she was running horribly late for work. She was sprinting down the corridors of the studio, stumbling through the heavy double doors of the writer's room just before her boss, Kristen, could unleash a lecture in front of the entire staff. But instead of the usual tense silence, Nora was met with a deafening wall of roaring laughter, catcalls, and hollering.

Confused, Nora looked at her coworkers' mocking faces, then slowly tracked her gaze downward.

She was completely, utterly naked.

Nora woke up in a cold sweat, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She gasped, clutching the mattress. It was just a nightmare, but the phantom sensation of a hundred eyes on her bare skin felt horrifyingly real.

“That’s it. That’s the last time I ever sleep naked,” Nora wheezed, wiping her brow. Last night she had been so utterly drained after her shower that she hadn't even bothered to put on pajamas, knowing Kim would be out until dawn anyway.

Exhaling a breath of relief that it was just a dream, Nora swung her legs out of bed. Still entirely unclad and desperate for a morning caffeine fix to shake the nightmare, she padded down the hallway and rounded the corner into the kitchen.

She froze dead in her tracks.

Standing right in front of her coffee maker, holding a toolbox, was her incredibly handsome next-door neighbor, Chris.

“Good morning, neighbor—oh!” Chris turned around, his eyes instantly widening into massive circles before he instinctively slammed his hand over his face, turning a deep, violent shade of crimson at the sight of his completely nude neighbor.

Nora’s brain completely short-circuited. The sheer, icy shock of the moment pinned her feet to the floor. Her hands flew up in a frantic, uncoordinated scramble to cover herself, one arm slashing across her bare chest while the other clamped down over her crotch. But ten trembling fingers couldn't begin to hide the reality of her exposed body.

Hidden for years under giant thrift-store blazers, Nora actually possessed a stunningly soft, feminine hourglass figure. Her breasts were unexpectedly full and round, a soft contrast to her narrow waist, and her hips flared out beautifully into a naturally curvy, shapely bottom. Her smooth, pale skin immediately began to betray her panic, breaking out into a sudden, frantic sweat. A deep, burning flush rushed up from her bare chest, climbing her neck until her cheeks were completely ablaze.

“Ch-Ch-Chris! What the h-hell are you d-doing in my apartment?!” Nora shrieked, her voice cracking into an anxious, raspy stammer. Cold sweat broke out along her collarbones, a tiny bead tracing down the slope of her exposed breasts as she shook with absolute, world-ending humiliation. Her breath hitched, forcing out frantic, short gasps.

“Oh, Nora, I am so, so sorry!” Chris blurted out, rapidly spinning around to face the cabinets, keeping his hand clamped tightly over his shut eyes. “Kim texted me last night! She said you guys had a crazy leak under the kitchen sink and asked if I could check it out first thing in the morning!”

Nora tried to speak, but her jaw just worked soundlessly, a pathetic, high-pitched squeak escaping her throat as she stood there completely bare, her heart hammering violently against her ribs.

“Did someone call me—woah, okay!”

The front door clicked open and Kim strolled in, stopping dead in her tracks as she took in the scene: Chris staring aggressively at the wall with his hands over his face, and Nora standing in the center of the kitchen, completely nude, trembling violently with a mix of freezing morning air and total, unadulterated degradation.

“K-Kim! What the hell! I-I'm naked! Get him o-out of here right now!” Nora screamed, her knees knocking together as she tried to twist her body away from view, only highlighting the soft curve of her exposed backside.

Kim looked at her roommate, then at Chris, and broke into a massive grin. “You know, Nora, when I said you needed to mix things up this year, I didn't think you'd turn into a literal nudist! But honestly, you are rocking that outfit, girl! Everything is right where it should be!”

Before Nora could pass out from mortification, Kim grabbed Chris by his broad shoulders, chuckling as she pushed the bumbling, endlessly apologizing neighbor out into the hallway and shut the door.

Nora’s eyes darted across the room, catching her reflection in the full-length hallway mirror. Now that the immediate danger was gone, her shoulders dropped an inch, a ragged, breathless sigh escaping her lips as she stared at her exposed, sweat-glistening, deeply flushed body.

“That is the absolute last time anyone sees me like this,” she whispered fiercely to herself, wiping a drop of nervous sweat from her forehead before sprinting back into her bedroom to bury her curves in the baggiest clothes she owned.

She had a television show to write, and she was never, ever going to let her guard down again.