Chapter 1: Home

It was early with the sun just peaking up over the horizon.

Molly Kliner stepped off the train with a sigh that came from somewhere low in her ribs—a sound half fatigue, half anticipation. The platform shimmered under a veil of late spring heat, just warm enough to soften lip balm and loosen the seams of tight denim. Already, the salt-sweet tang of Willow Bay, a quaint little town just outside Boston, clung to her skin: sea air, sun-warmed honeysuckle, and fried dough from the boardwalk stands a few blocks east.

She didn’t move for a moment. Just stood there, blinking at the golden sky, her suitcase parked by her ankle like a sleepy dog.

‘God,’ she thought. ‘It really hadn’t changed.’

She bent to grab the handle, and the movement drew her shirt tight across her midsection. Her jeans pinched at the waist. A soft roll of her belly crested upward, pressing against the seam like it had been waiting for release. She exhaled, not in frustration—but in pleasure.

She liked that feeling now. The gentle pressure of fullness. The way her body cushioned itself.

She hadn’t been thin before college—just narrow, maybe. Straight-lined. But now, after a year of midnight pizza, shared pastries, and careless seconds in the dining hall, she was taller than most girls and unmistakably... softened. The freshman fifteen had come and stayed—closer to eighteen, probably—but she didn’t regret a pound.

Her hips were wide and unapologetic now, her thighs plush, her breasts full enough that her old bras pinched just a little deeper with every wash. Even her arms, once lean from high school swim team, had rounded out. She wore breezy layers that were always just slightly too tight—on purpose. Today’s tee was a faded red number that clung across her chest and stuck to her lower back like a secret.

She tugged the suitcase forward with a dull wump. It was heavy, yes—but not just with clothes. It carried her summer, and all the mischief she hadn’t quite admitted to yet.

Her first year of college was under her belt (which was an understatement, had any still fit her), and Molly was anxious to return home, to see her family. Especially her mother and Aunt, whom she’d be working with all summer to replenish her bank account which had dwindled throughout school.

It would also be a time, she mused, to reconnect with old friends, to see who had changed (like her) and who had remained just the same as when she’d last seen them.

The sidewalk leading into town welcomed her with its usual gentle buckling, uneven and chalky white in the sun. Willow Bay, coastal and crooked, still looked like a postcard that had been left on a windowsill too long. Houses painted in taffy pastels, window boxes sagging with wild violets. Hydrangeas the size of cantaloupes. Porch swings that creaked like they’d seen things.

A woman on a bike passed her with a polite nod. Molly smiled back, dragging her suitcase behind her and feeling the sway of her hips sync with its lopsided rhythm.

Everything here moved slower. The wind was slower. The sun pressed against her freckled shoulders with a deliberate kind of heat—less like weather and more like touch.

She walked past a familiar maple tree and caught her reflection in a hardware store window. Flushed cheeks, hair wind-pulled, belly outlined beneath cotton.

She liked what she saw.

“Okay,” she murmured aloud, voice low and amused. “Let’s see how much trouble you get into this summer.”

And with that, she turned the corner toward her aunt’s bakery, a place that had been in their family since her great grandmother opened it in the 1920’s as a young girl. Now, the place felt as historic as the town itself.

Home.

++++++

The bell above the door jingled its familiar chime as Molly pushed into Ina Rose Bakery.

The scent hit her like a childhood memory weaponized—vanilla-sugar steam, warm dough, melted butter, almond extract, and strawberry glaze. It settled into her clothes before she even crossed the threshold, hugging her tighter than any welcome-home banner ever could. Molly clocked someone standing behind the counter, the woman’s back was to her, but she knew her Aunt sensed her presence. She’d only texted her a dozen times while on the train ride home.

Patty didn’t look up right away. She stood behind the counter, hips cocked, piping creamy swirls onto a tray of cupcakes, one forearm streaked with ganache, the other holding a piping bag like it was part of her anatomy. Her apron had clearly been washed a thousand times, and it still had flour caught in the stitching.

When she finally turned around, her face lit up like someone had turned on the light inside her.

“Well, look what rolled in,” Aunt Patty said, eyes crinkling into her signature half-mocking smile, that so much resembled her twin sister, Molly’s mother. “You look good, baby-girl. Like a real woman now. All hips and attitude.”

Molly snorted, already dropping her suitcase beside the pastry case. “I was always a woman, thank you very much.”

“Not like this, you weren’t,” Patty said. “You’ve got the look of someone who stopped eating salad to please a boy and started eating cake to please herself.” Patty smiled, tilting her head a fraction, as if drinking in her niece for the first time since Christmas holiday, which was when they’d last laid eyes on one another. Molly had been a few pounds lighter, then.

“I mean… accurate.” Molly chided, running a hand down her stomach.

Patty smiled and came around the counter with a warm grunt and enveloped her niece in a hug that was exactly as Molly remembered—cushioned, tight, and somehow scented faintly of vanilla bean and laundry starch.

Her arms were soft but solid, built from a life of rolling pins and lifting sacks of flour, the kind of strength that didn’t announce itself, but lifted twenty-pound mixers without fanfare. Even though Patty was a twin, she did not share the same physique as her sister, Molly’s mother.

“You smell like breakfast,” Molly said, muffled into Patty’s shoulder.

“I am breakfast,” Patty replied. “You hungry?”

“I’m starving,” Molly said, and she wasn’t entirely joking. She’d risen early when she’d boarded the train that morning and the few granola bars she’d packed into her purse were a distant memory now.

“Then let’s put something in that belly before it caves in and takes you with it.”

Patty bustled back behind the counter, waving Molly toward the front barstool like a game-show hostess.

Ten minutes later, Molly was perched at the counter with a cup of cinnamon coffee hot enough to burn secrets and a sample plate that should’ve required a permit. Half a cheese Danish, a sliver of pecan tart, two tiny lemon squares, a golden corner of blueberry bread pudding, and a puff of something flaky and mysterious that crumbled when she poked it.

“You always feed people like they just got rescued from a shipwreck?” Molly asked, mouth full of Danish.

“I feed people like I love them,” Patty said, pouring herself a mug of coffee and leaning on the counter. “And judging by the shape you’re in, you’ve learned to appreciate it.”

Molly gave her aunt a deadpan look. “Shape I’m in?”

“I mean it in the most flattering way,” Patty grinned. “You're lush, baby. You’ve got that softness people spend their twenties trying to diet away and their thirties trying to get back.”

Molly laughed through a sip of coffee. “That’s disturbingly accurate.”

Patty pointed a sugar-dusted finger. “That’s because I’ve seen every version of this family. And let me tell you, Polly—your mother—was no feather back in the day either.”

“She always claimed she was a size four until she got pregnant with me.” said Molly, swallowing a bite of Danish.

“She was a liar and a dreamer,” Patty said, casually reaching onto Molly’s plate and biting into a lemon square. “Your mom was a size four the same way I’m five-foot-eight. Still, she got on that Atkins craze a while back and the woman’s nothing but skin and bones. She does exercise though—which is a plus.”

Molly grinned, licking the edge of a pecan tart from her thumb. The food really was like a hug you could chew. Warm, dense, just a little too sweet. It filled every part of her mouth, then settled in her belly with the same confidence as a cat on a sunlit rug. Molly’s insides hummed with warmth.

She felt it—slowly—beneath her shirt. The way her stomach had swelled gently as she sampled each bite. The edge of the counter pushed against it now, a soft reminder that her jeans weren’t doing her any favors.

She didn’t pull back.

She leaned into the pressure, just a little. She’d slowly gotten used to the late-night study sessions, mixed with even later night snacking with her friends. It hadn’t taken her long to stretch out her stomach in ways that allowed her to eat a little more. Nibble a little extra.

“So,” Patty said, pulling up a stool beside her. “What’s the plan, Miss Freshman? You working with your mom part-time again?”

“And here—if you’ll have me.” Molly said. “I was thinking a split schedule. Seams and scones.” Molly’s mother ran a very popular seamstress store, By A Thin Thread, and Molly had learned at her mother’s knee and had become a dab hand with a stitch and button.

Her hand surreptitiously ran along the side of her stomach and caressed the jeans she was wearing—a pair that she’d let out an inch during finals week.

“Sounds like you’ve given your summer some thought already.” Patty said. Then she caught her niece’s gaze, “you sure you can handle that much estrogen for four months?”

Molly swallowed and took a sip of the cinnamon coffee. It tasted exquisite. “It’s my native language.”

Patty nudged her gently with a shoulder. “You’re not just here to fold napkins and hem sleeves, this summer. You’ve got something cooking. I can see it in your eyes.”

Molly blinked. “I—what?”

“Baby,” Patty said, reaching for her mug, “I’ve known you since you were a half-formed bean in your mother’s belly. I know when you’re plotting something.”

Molly smirked. “Maybe I’m just excited for baked goods?” She raised her shoulders and gave a sheepish grin that her aunt dismissed.

“You always were a terrible liar,” Patty said, then winked. “Just remember—whatever you’re planning, keep your hands clean and your pies dirty.”

Molly laughed and put a hand to her mouth. Her aunt was always full of interesting turns of phrase. She leaned back on the stool, her belly rounding gently under her snug tee, and Molly let out a long, contented sigh.

“I’m home,” she said.

Patty reached her mug of cinnamon coffee and took a measured sip. “Damn right you are.”

Molly smiled and took in the shop, which was just as she’d always remembered with its gingham table tops, and cute wooden chairs. She spied the glass cases filled with various baked goods her aunt had made by hand and to the various photos on the wall showcasing her family, and in particular, her great grandmother Ina Rose, whom the bakery had been named after.

Patty had raised an eyebrow when Molly reached for another bite of the pecan tart and said, “So... you just stopping in to snack, or are you ready to earn that plate?”

Molly blinked. “Wait, are you putting me to work already?”

Patty smirked. “Sweetheart, do you see a register full of tips back here? This isn’t a charity. That blueberry bread pudding’s gonna cost you.”

“I was just popping in to see you and have a bite before seeing Mom,” Molly protested, but the protest was weak, her voice syrup-thick with sugar and caffeine.

Patty crossed her arms over her flour-streaked apron, cocked her head. “Then tell me, Ms. Ivy League, how were you planning to pay for that tart you inhaled?”

Molly made a face.

“Exactly,” Patty said, then winked. “Work it off. I won’t tell your mother if you don’t.” She knew her aunt meant it only in gest, but it would give them some extra time to connect.

Molly laughed and pulled out her phone. “She’s probably expecting me already. I’ll text her. You’ve officially kidnapped me.”

“That’s my girl.” Patty said and got up, mug still in hand, returning to where the cupcakes lay, partially covered. She began humming as she took up her work once more.

Molly thumbed her screen open and typed:

Molly: Mom, Aunt Patty’s holding me hostage in her kitchen. Payment for a Danish eaten under false pretenses. May not make it to the boutique alive. Send flour.

Three dots appeared almost instantly.

Polly: Good. Tell her to put you on dish duty until your arms jiggle like hers.

Molly blinked and barked a laugh. “Oh my god.”

Patty looked over. “What?”

Molly got up and walked over to her aunt, reading the reply aloud. “She says, and I quote: Tell her to put you on dish duty until your arms jiggle like hers.”

Patty let out a deep belly laugh. “She always was jealous of my upper-body confidence.”

“She’s not wrong though,” Molly said, pinching Patty’s arm gently. “You’ve got great jiggle.”

“Strength and softness, baby,” Patty said proudly, striking a mock bodybuilder pose. “I am the female form perfected.”

Molly grinned and shook her head, already tugging her hair up into a bun and throwing on a spare apron that barely got around her waist. She surveyed her aunt’s kitchen, already buzzing with the work of the day. She knew the life of a baker started with the rising sun and that Patty had already been up for hours.

There was something comforting about falling back into the bakery’s rhythms—something that soothed the part of her that had been tense since finals week, the part that ached for routine that wasn’t tied to grades, roommates, or campus noise.

The kitchen was humid from the ovens, the air dense with sugar and steam. Molly’s shirt clung to her back as she leaned over the counter, and flour soon dusted her from collarbone to knuckle. The marble slab was cool under her palms as she kneaded dough, that sat next to her aunt. The familiar push and pull of it waking something dormant in her fingertips.

“You remember the rhythm?” Patty asked, stepping up beside her and dusting a fine snowfall across Molly’s forearms.

Molly didn’t look up. “Like riding a buttery bike.”

Patty snorted. “Showoff.”

She rolled, folded, sampled. Patty handed her a spoon dipped in ganache. “Check the balance.”

Molly tasted it. The chocolate slid across her tongue like silk—bittersweet, intense, whispering of espresso and burnt sugar. Her eyes fluttered closed for just a second too long.

There was something erotic about good ganache. About flavor that settled in her molars and made her stomach curl in approval. It grounded her. The apron pressed tighter at her waist now. She let it. Molly had always enjoyed food, and in particular good food. It had taken her most of high school to figure it out, but Molly had a fetish—a secret desire of enjoying the human form rounded out. Molly loved seeing added weight on people and never knew why until she’d inadvertently began to gain weight throughout high school. What she had thought were merely growth spurt pounds, had quickly become her most unexpected and greatest obsession. She was on the high school swim team, so she’d had to settle for only filling up her body to bursting with seltzer water. She loved that feeling of lying in bed, late at night, with one hand between her legs while the other traced over the temporarily added curves of her stomach, wishing it was permanent. But once swimming had ended, Molly had begun experimenting the summer before college, and that’s when the trend of changes she had been craving, had begun to stick…only to fully blossom during her first year at college with most pleasing and softening results.

The mid-morning hours slowly ticked by towards noon, the hours blurring in a golden haze of vanilla extract, powdered sugar and flour. Molly hummed as she continued working, each revised sample of ganache stirring memories she only kept for herself late at night. These were punctuated every so often when Patty would hum or whistle or call out instructions between complaints about her knees or the fact that she kept moving the container of cinnamon and forgetting where she’d left it. The women moved in tandem, laughing and working like a well-rehearsed duet. It became nearly automatic for Molly to have something entering her mouth while she revised and baked.

She felt her belly expand slowly as the morning wore on—sliver of muffin here, spoonful of custard there. She tugged at her waistband once, more out of habit than discomfort. Her apron strings had migrated higher, cutting just beneath her ribs now. She didn’t mind. The feeling was strangely grounding, like a reminder that she was here, being fed and useful and not expected to explain herself.

At one point, she licked icing from her knuckle without thinking—eyes still on the mixer. When she glanced up, Patty was watching her with a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“What?” Molly asked, wiping the corner of her lips.

Patty just shook her head, soft and amused. “Nothing. Just happy you’re back.”

Molly didn’t reply right away. She let the moment stretch, warm and thick as custard between them.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Me too.”

And for the first time since the train rolled into Willow Bay, she felt like maybe—just maybe—this summer could be something more than recovery.

It could be reinvention.

++++++