Part 1: The Belly...

The bus was crowded as Samuel stepped aboard and scanned his pass. Busy, too: the last free seat had been snatched up by the person boarding just ahead of him, and so he had **** but to stand in the aisle. As the bus jolted into motion, he grasped one of the overhead handholds to keep himself steady.

As the bus bus resumed its journey along its familiar route, his eye began to wander. The passing cars, weaving haphazardly through rush hour traffic. A billboard advertising boxer shorts adorned with a bare male torso only slightly more chiseled than his own, and he allowed himself a small surge of pride. He'd kept in shape, and even now at 41 years old he knew he cut a dashing figure. At the Municipal Public Traffic Ordinance, rules and regulations that he could practically recite from memory. And finally at his fellow passengers.

They all had their eyes glued to their phones. He had his stuffed in his back pocket—it was nigh impossible to survive without one these days—but he'd never gotten to like the damn things. They seemed... deceitful, stuffed to the gills with momentary distractions at best, and outright manipulations at worst. Maybe he was just too old. When the first iPhone came out he was already in his mid-twenties, and now, at forty-something years old—this time he groaned inwardly—it seemed like the whole thing had passed him by. But, no, even the elderly were absorbed nowadays, like it was a kind of mass-hypnosis. Or a religion, endless crowds of bent heads, praying silently to their bright rectangular altars.

Every single one of them... save for one, at the far back: a girl in her late teens was gazing idly out the window, just as he had been moments before. She was wearing a black top and torn jeans that seemed to be all the rage these days—another trend that had passed him by. Her straight platinum blonde hair was tied in a ponytail, draped over her left shoulder. She had a large bag on her lap and cradled it snugly in her hands.

He took care not to stare for more than a few moments, but something nagged at him at the back of his mind. It was the same feeling you get when you see a new optical illusion: your brain knows something is wrong, and you can't rest until you've figured it out.

So he resettled the backpack slung over one shoulder and offhandedly checked that no one was paying him any undue heed. All clear. Only then did he look at her again; specifically: at her bag.

After a moment, he noticed it wasn't a bag at all. Instead, her black top was stretched tightly across a near spherical shape, and even from this distance, he suddenly realized he could make out her popped out belly button.

She was pregnant!

The realization was a lightning strike. Was she younger than he'd first estimated? He had that problem with white women sometimes, 16 and 26 sometimes looked mere days apart to him; but no, on second glance he felt sure she was legal, though not by much. 20 at the most. Thin, too, that's what threw him: her arms and legs were like spindles, her breasts barely-there—despite her pregnancy—and that only made her belly appear larger.

And at that moment, just as he was openly ogling the girl's body, their eyes met.

Shit.

He hastily tore his gaze away, feeling a blush travel up his neck. How long had he been staring? Seconds? Minutes? Too long, certainly. Dammit, Samuel! He felt like a complete creep and resolved to avoid looking at the girl again for the remainder of the journey. Thankfully, his stop was just around the corner now, so when the bus halted, he scanned his pass at the door once more and got off. Just a few hundred yards to his home, and then he could slump down on his couch and wouldn't have to move another muscle for the rest of the day.