"Once decided" (Patreon)

...It won't be worse...

- It won't be worse, - she repeated aloud. Her motionless injected forehead didn't even move a millimeter. Now no one will give her forty-four years. Thirty-five, no more. And she lost weight in the last six months. Not bad at all. To be true - she lost weight perfectly. Even the old clothes that she had worn before the hormonal surge became oversized.

She wanted to run her hand over her silicone breasts, which she secretly made a few months ago, but at that moment the door to the toilet opened. She jerked her hand back and hurried to turn on the faucet. Suddenly hot water splashed, and her skin instantly turned red. A woman in high heels and a blonde wig walked into the booth without looking at her.

The cell phone started ringing. It was her husband. She hurriedly dried her hands and answered, leaving wet footprints on the monitor. 

-Yes, hello.

 -Where are you? - The husband is calm. ... Now, probably in a greasy apron, he is standing in the kitchen and cooking potatoes for her arrival. 

-Have you boiled potatoes yet? she asked instead of answering.

 - I'm cooking now.

 She looked in the mirror at her smoothed face: "Thirty-five is still a lot. Thirty-two, no more."

- Where are you? - he repeated the question.

 It didn't sound clear. He pressed the phone to his shoulder. For twenty years, she could determine even through the phone in which room he was standing, where he was looking and what he was doing.  When she married a man of forty at the age of twenty-two, she did not think that one day he would be sixty.  When, in her thirties, she wanted children, she did not imagine that her already aging husband would not want to have them.  When she turned forty...

  -I'm at work. I'm a little late.

 ... A woman in a wig stepped out of the booth. She tightly closed the pipe with her hand so that the noise of water and coughing would not be heard by her husband. 

 -Good. I'm waiting. I already gave your mother the medicine, don't worry. 

 - Thanks, - she managed, trying not to burst into tears. - I will go. Wait, - she exhaled silently, - I love you.

... This was the last lie for today. When she finished talking, she took the SIM card out of her phone and flushed it down the toilet. When she arrives, she will buy a new phone. She will cry a lot, but she will never regret what she did. She will start all over again where no living soul knows her. She will work hard and still have time to make a career. She will look for and, perhaps, meet a good man. The same age or younger ... much younger ...