Big Beautiful Dreamer
ridiculously contented
~BHM, Eating, Romance, ~SWG - A recovering patient has a big surprise for a returning girlfriend
“I’m sorry, Gabe,” the doctor said. “I know it’s hard to hear it. Tell me what you understood me to say so I can make sure we’re on the same page.”
“I’ve been ill … lost almost forty pounds,” Gabe began. The doctor nodded.
“The antibiotics have licked it and I’m ready to go home,” Gabe said.
“I’ll regain the weight gradually but …” he faltered.
The doctor said, “But at first your weight gain will be centered in your abdominal region. When the body regains fat after starvation, it fears another period of starvation and chooses to hoard the calories closest to the organs, where they can do the most good, and only gradually and reluctantly will the body allow some of those calories to filter out to limbs and face.”
Gabe managed a half smile. “I guess looking a little strange for a while beats being sick.”
“It does indeed.” The doctor sent Gabe on his way with a host of final admonitions, medicines, and prescriptions. Gabe thought he might hit the hospital cafeteria before heading home. He was properly hungry for the first time in weeks. Ruefully he rubbed his concave belly in the now-oversized polo shirt and hiked up his drooping jeans.
He collected a tray and slid it along the line, nodding yes to Jell-O, yes to chicken a la king, yes to grilled vegetables, yes to rice and gravy, yes to a roll, yes to salad, yes to a slice of cake, yes to two tall bottles of water. He paid the cashier and sank gratefully into a booth, falling upon the food with a newly discovered appetite. His trip had been archeologically useful, and the article was making the rounds of the peer-reviewed journals, but meanwhile some jungle bug had laid him low and he’d almost died in Corumba before making it to the States.
His girlfriend, Susan Szniecki, was also on a dig, but hers was in Midian, in the Holy Land, and she wasn’t due home for another eight weeks. She’d e-mailed sympathy and concern every day or two, but she couldn’t leave her dig.
Gabe plowed through the goodly amount of food and water like a hungry stray dog, surprised when it appeared to have vanished. He stood and stretched, warmly satisfied and drowsily full, and rubbed his belly. It was still concave, but the surface of his midsection was now pulled taut, firm and heavy with a good hot meal, all made up of recognizable ingredients. It felt wonderful. Refreshed, he all but strutted from the hospital. Even the brief taxi ride wore him out, though, and once home he had barely the energy for a lukewarm shower -- it felt wonderful -- and to fall into bed.
The next morning, starving but with no food in the house, he hastily dressed and hit up a McDonald’s drive-through, bringing the bag back to the apartment, where he devoured two Egg McMuffins, an order of hotcakes slathered in syrup, two breakfast burritos, a hash brown, and a large Coke, savoring the purely American taste of hot, greasy, sweet, spicy, cheesy, carbonatey mmmmm.
The big meal went down awfully fast, and afterward he was surprised at how stuffed it made him. He drowsily rubbed his belly, enjoying the taut distention and warm, heavy feeling of fullness. How long had it been since he’d had a Coke, anyway? He belched loudly, tasting the caramel and carbonation. He felt as though a large warm dog were resting on his stomach, felt the weight, the pressure, the stretch. He also felt exhausted. Just eating had worn out his energy. He lay down on the sofa, resting a hand on his belly, now bloated and aching with the large fast-food meal.
When he awoke, it was after 11 and his stomach growled. In the back of his head was the doctor’s warning about babying his stomach with fresh, healthy foods, nothing processed or fast- in his diet for a while. He grimaced as his lower abdomen gurgled ominously and hastened to the bathroom. Whoops. Maybe the doctor had known what he was talking about. He dragged himself into the shower, fighting to stay awake as the wonderful high pressure and warm water caressed his worn-out body. He lathered it gently, resting between sections. Finished, he crawled damply into bed for a short nap.
He awoke a half-hour later and slowly dressed. The effort exhausted him. He managed to drive to the store, where he picked up produce, chicken breasts, quick rice, and other simple foods. At home, he put the food away, rested again, then put some chicken and rice in the slow cooker, staving off his immediate hunger with crackers and peanut butter. A lot of crackers and peanut butter, actually. Suddenly the first sleeve of crackers was empty and the peanut butter two-thirds gone, as was a quart bottle of water. He belched and shuffled to the sofa, where he lay down and turned on “Meerkat Manor.” He half-dozed, watching the meerkats and thinking about the chicken and rice and vegetables in the cooker.
He’d made a lot of it, intending to save some for later, but when it was ready, around five, he went back for seconds and thirds and fourths and ended by scraping the pot. He hiccupped, twice, then belched. Whoa. He was beyond full. An entire potful of chicken and rice atop all those crackers and peanut butter. His stomach was sore, his belly bloated and aching and audibly churning. His T-shirt was stretched tight and as he looked down he saw that his now-engorged gut bulged outward, obscuring his feet. He padded to the bathroom to look in the mirror.
The shirt’s collar and sleeves hung loosely about his scarecrowed neck and arms, while his midsection crowned forward like … well … like the doctor had predicted. He’d eaten prodigiously, and any weight that was coming back was returning first to his belly, which was hoarding it to fuel the organs. Got to keep that heart pumping, after all. He grinned. He was tired, but not as wiped out.
He belched. “Scuse me,” he told his reflection, and patted his aching stomach. Wow, had he really eaten … let’s see … three whole chicken breasts, two heaping cups of rice, three chopped celery sticks, a pound of baby carrots and … urrrp … yup, he’d definitely eaten the carrots.
He returned to the kitchen and scooped a pint of Ben and Jerry’s from the fridge. Reclining on the sofa, he spooned mouthful after mouthful from the carton until suddenly he hit bottom. Yummmm. He licked his lips, savoring the last liquid sweetness, and slowly rubbed his tummy, reveling in the aching satiation, the taut distention, the roundness, firmness, the bulge that hid his feet. It felt so good to want to eat again, to have access to lots of good, familiar, American food, to be back in the land of the Golden Arches. He belched again, his eyelids fluttering as night fell, and he slept, dreaming of pizza.
In his last e-mail to Susan, he’d mentioned that he was “filling out, losing the scarecrow look. You won’t recognize me.”
She wouldn’t either. After the first couple of weeks, as predicted, his arms, legs, and face had indeed begun to fill out … and kept filling out as he kept eating as though making up for lost time. He’d left the hospital at 150, way too low for his six feet. He’d quickly gone up to 165, those first fifteen pounds all going straight to his belly.
Susan e-mailed that her dig had been extended another eight weeks.
“Can’t wait to see you healthy and happy,” she’d written.
Gabe had grinned at that. He missed her awfully, and found himself eating to while away the loneliness. Processed food had crept back in, although Gabe was careful to include plenty of bagged salad, fresh meat, and produce in his diet … along with some Ben and Jerry’s, McDonald’s, and Papa John’s. He had learned how good a full belly felt, learned how good it felt to eat until he was stuffed to bursting, reveling in the pull and tautness of a distended gut, how relaxing it was to recline and massage a belly gorged with pizza and Coke.
The more he enjoyed eating, of course, the more it showed: in his visibly thickening waistline, his steadily burgeoning belly, the belts that had to be fastened more and more loosely, the new (roomier) clothing. Occasionally he wondered if Susan would be put off by a Gabe who was not his once-normal 190 pounds stretched over six feet -- he hadn’t seen 190 on the scale for a while now -- but dismissed the thought. His article had been accepted, he’d gotten a fairly astonishing raise, and he wanted another bowl of chili. And some more chips.
Two hundred came and went on the scale with astonishing rapidity, and Gabe discovered he was routinely going grocery shopping twice a week, doing a “big shopping” on Wednesdays and a smaller run on Saturdays to catch up. He was by then usually out of ice cream and always out of Coke. And bagged salads, you had to eat them quickly before they went bad. They weren’t putting as many cookie in a package as they used to either.
Friday had become pizza night, and by Saturday morning there was seldom more than a slice or two left in the box. Gabe watched his expanding paunch in the mirror as he shaved, felt the thickening love handles in the shower, knew he was working his way up the waist sizes in the jeans store, but in truth he was enjoying it.
There was something unexpectedly pleasing in the feel of the new padding around his middle, the heft and expansion he felt when he breathed deeply, the shift of his stride to accommodate his expansion, the way he fitted into his favorite chair. And it was definitely pleasing to fill his belly. The warmth and dopey satiation after a big meal had become a familiar, homey feeling, and to eat just enough no longer satisfied; he longed for the pleasant ache and heaviness of being stuffed after a meal.
Susan’s dig kept getting extended -- eight weeks here, six weeks there -- as funding kept trickling in and the dig was proving fruitful.
The needle didn’t even pause at two-twenty-five. He was habitually eating four or five times a day, if you counted snacks between meals, and having dessert after both lunch and dinner. There was now never any pizza left over on Friday nights.
AT THE AIRPORT, Gabe had to step right in front of Susan, and even then she didn’t recognize him at first. Her eyes widened.
“Gabe?!”
Gabe’s smile came out slowly, like a sunrise, and her heart flipped in a way it hadn‘t for months. Had she ever missed him.
“Hi, Suse.”
Susan stepped back. “Ah, wow!”
Gabe bit his lip. Showdown time. He put a hand to his belly, which bulged over his waistband and tugged at his sweater, straining to cover all 250 pounds of him.
The eight weeks that had become 16 weeks had ultimately turned into a six-month separation, driving them both crazy, but resulting, Susan had said, in not just an article but a book … and tenure. In those six months, Susan had let her chestnut hair grow, and had become deeply tanned, the Middle Eastern sun bronzing her skin and giving her green eyes a glow. She was thin and muscular, looking breathtaking in a green dress, leggings, and silver ballet flats, while he was pale and … fat. He made a face.
“Uh, um, I …” he stuttered. Suddenly she was smooshed against his soft round gut, her head buried against his well-padded chest.
“You look wonderful! I can’t believe how sexy you’ve gotten,” she murmured. “I could take you right here.”
“Susan!” Gabe felt his face flame. “Shh!”
“Take me home. Quickly!”
In the car, Gabe probed. “Sexy?”
Now it was Susan’s turn to blush.
“I love that belly on you. It’s … oh gosh …” she hid her face in her hands.
“Yes, sexy,” she said firmly, recovering, and laid a hand on his gut. “You look wonderful.”
“That’s just the absence talking,” Gabe said, but maybe it wasn’t. The next day, jet lag gone, Susan had gone out and bought two hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and made a meal that, Gabe estimated, used up at least half of them. She heaped his plate again and again, ignoring his protestations. Gabe loosened his belt once, twice, unbuttoned his jeans, finally announcing thickly that he could not swallow another mouthful. Susan asked if he was sure, then took away his empty plate.
Gabe grunted as he pushed his chair back; bracing his hands on the table, he hauled himself up and, pants undone, moved ponderously to the sofa. He leaned back, feet on the coffee table, and after a few minutes Susan joined him. She snuggled in next to him and rested a hand on his swollen, achingly full belly. Gently she massaged it, making him groan with pleasure and close his eyes. As she massaged, he stroked her hair.
“Suse?”
“Mm.”
Gabe hiccupped. “You really think this is sexy?”
“What?”
“This.” Gabe laid his own hand atop hers on his roundly distended belly, hugely swollen with dinner. He’d eaten enough for three men and he was stuffed to bursting, but it was also mind-bendingly pleasurable to have Susan rubbing his midriff.
“Mm… You know, I do. Don’t know why.” Susan paused, causing Gabe to grunt.
“Sorry,” she said, and resumed. It wasn’t long before they repaired to the bedroom.
“Gabe?” she said afterward, her head tucked under his arm.
“Yeah?”
She slowly stroked his stomach in a circular pattern. “Please don’t lose the weight. Okay?”
“Suse, this makes no sense.”
“I know,” she said.
“I only know what I feel … it’s just … a gut feeling,” she said unthinkingly, and they both laughed.
Gabe thought about trying to peel off some weight anyway, but it was hard to do. Susan had gotten a serious baking jones since she returned, and there was always, it seemed, a container of brownies on the counter, a pie in the cake keeper, the cooky jar full of homemade goodies. She was still on sabbatical, going over the proofs of the book and baking, she swore, cleared her brain from time to time. So, apparently, did making dinner. Every afternoon when he got home, good smells would greet him along with a fervent embrace from the cook, who would heap his plate high, ignoring token protests.
To his continued bafflement, the broader his waistline, the better the sex. Susan was often the initiator now, and their intimacy had become deeper, the foreplay more passionate, the coupling more prolonged and infinitely more satisfying. At least twice a week, sometimes oftener, when he climbed into bed Susan would turn to him as if on a spindle and trace a finger down his broadening belly, tickling, pressing, exploring the navel, drumming, stroking, kissing. She called his midsection an ever-changing site, one that she loved to explore.
On New Year’s Eve, as balloons drifted around them, Gabe murmured something into her ear. Susan burst into tears and, gulping, nodded. “On one condition,” she murmured back. Gabe grinned.
Digging Into Pleasure
by Big Beautiful Dreamer
by Big Beautiful Dreamer
“I’m sorry, Gabe,” the doctor said. “I know it’s hard to hear it. Tell me what you understood me to say so I can make sure we’re on the same page.”
“I’ve been ill … lost almost forty pounds,” Gabe began. The doctor nodded.
“The antibiotics have licked it and I’m ready to go home,” Gabe said.
“I’ll regain the weight gradually but …” he faltered.
The doctor said, “But at first your weight gain will be centered in your abdominal region. When the body regains fat after starvation, it fears another period of starvation and chooses to hoard the calories closest to the organs, where they can do the most good, and only gradually and reluctantly will the body allow some of those calories to filter out to limbs and face.”
Gabe managed a half smile. “I guess looking a little strange for a while beats being sick.”
“It does indeed.” The doctor sent Gabe on his way with a host of final admonitions, medicines, and prescriptions. Gabe thought he might hit the hospital cafeteria before heading home. He was properly hungry for the first time in weeks. Ruefully he rubbed his concave belly in the now-oversized polo shirt and hiked up his drooping jeans.
He collected a tray and slid it along the line, nodding yes to Jell-O, yes to chicken a la king, yes to grilled vegetables, yes to rice and gravy, yes to a roll, yes to salad, yes to a slice of cake, yes to two tall bottles of water. He paid the cashier and sank gratefully into a booth, falling upon the food with a newly discovered appetite. His trip had been archeologically useful, and the article was making the rounds of the peer-reviewed journals, but meanwhile some jungle bug had laid him low and he’d almost died in Corumba before making it to the States.
His girlfriend, Susan Szniecki, was also on a dig, but hers was in Midian, in the Holy Land, and she wasn’t due home for another eight weeks. She’d e-mailed sympathy and concern every day or two, but she couldn’t leave her dig.
Gabe plowed through the goodly amount of food and water like a hungry stray dog, surprised when it appeared to have vanished. He stood and stretched, warmly satisfied and drowsily full, and rubbed his belly. It was still concave, but the surface of his midsection was now pulled taut, firm and heavy with a good hot meal, all made up of recognizable ingredients. It felt wonderful. Refreshed, he all but strutted from the hospital. Even the brief taxi ride wore him out, though, and once home he had barely the energy for a lukewarm shower -- it felt wonderful -- and to fall into bed.
The next morning, starving but with no food in the house, he hastily dressed and hit up a McDonald’s drive-through, bringing the bag back to the apartment, where he devoured two Egg McMuffins, an order of hotcakes slathered in syrup, two breakfast burritos, a hash brown, and a large Coke, savoring the purely American taste of hot, greasy, sweet, spicy, cheesy, carbonatey mmmmm.
The big meal went down awfully fast, and afterward he was surprised at how stuffed it made him. He drowsily rubbed his belly, enjoying the taut distention and warm, heavy feeling of fullness. How long had it been since he’d had a Coke, anyway? He belched loudly, tasting the caramel and carbonation. He felt as though a large warm dog were resting on his stomach, felt the weight, the pressure, the stretch. He also felt exhausted. Just eating had worn out his energy. He lay down on the sofa, resting a hand on his belly, now bloated and aching with the large fast-food meal.
When he awoke, it was after 11 and his stomach growled. In the back of his head was the doctor’s warning about babying his stomach with fresh, healthy foods, nothing processed or fast- in his diet for a while. He grimaced as his lower abdomen gurgled ominously and hastened to the bathroom. Whoops. Maybe the doctor had known what he was talking about. He dragged himself into the shower, fighting to stay awake as the wonderful high pressure and warm water caressed his worn-out body. He lathered it gently, resting between sections. Finished, he crawled damply into bed for a short nap.
He awoke a half-hour later and slowly dressed. The effort exhausted him. He managed to drive to the store, where he picked up produce, chicken breasts, quick rice, and other simple foods. At home, he put the food away, rested again, then put some chicken and rice in the slow cooker, staving off his immediate hunger with crackers and peanut butter. A lot of crackers and peanut butter, actually. Suddenly the first sleeve of crackers was empty and the peanut butter two-thirds gone, as was a quart bottle of water. He belched and shuffled to the sofa, where he lay down and turned on “Meerkat Manor.” He half-dozed, watching the meerkats and thinking about the chicken and rice and vegetables in the cooker.
He’d made a lot of it, intending to save some for later, but when it was ready, around five, he went back for seconds and thirds and fourths and ended by scraping the pot. He hiccupped, twice, then belched. Whoa. He was beyond full. An entire potful of chicken and rice atop all those crackers and peanut butter. His stomach was sore, his belly bloated and aching and audibly churning. His T-shirt was stretched tight and as he looked down he saw that his now-engorged gut bulged outward, obscuring his feet. He padded to the bathroom to look in the mirror.
The shirt’s collar and sleeves hung loosely about his scarecrowed neck and arms, while his midsection crowned forward like … well … like the doctor had predicted. He’d eaten prodigiously, and any weight that was coming back was returning first to his belly, which was hoarding it to fuel the organs. Got to keep that heart pumping, after all. He grinned. He was tired, but not as wiped out.
He belched. “Scuse me,” he told his reflection, and patted his aching stomach. Wow, had he really eaten … let’s see … three whole chicken breasts, two heaping cups of rice, three chopped celery sticks, a pound of baby carrots and … urrrp … yup, he’d definitely eaten the carrots.
He returned to the kitchen and scooped a pint of Ben and Jerry’s from the fridge. Reclining on the sofa, he spooned mouthful after mouthful from the carton until suddenly he hit bottom. Yummmm. He licked his lips, savoring the last liquid sweetness, and slowly rubbed his tummy, reveling in the aching satiation, the taut distention, the roundness, firmness, the bulge that hid his feet. It felt so good to want to eat again, to have access to lots of good, familiar, American food, to be back in the land of the Golden Arches. He belched again, his eyelids fluttering as night fell, and he slept, dreaming of pizza.
In his last e-mail to Susan, he’d mentioned that he was “filling out, losing the scarecrow look. You won’t recognize me.”
She wouldn’t either. After the first couple of weeks, as predicted, his arms, legs, and face had indeed begun to fill out … and kept filling out as he kept eating as though making up for lost time. He’d left the hospital at 150, way too low for his six feet. He’d quickly gone up to 165, those first fifteen pounds all going straight to his belly.
Susan e-mailed that her dig had been extended another eight weeks.
“Can’t wait to see you healthy and happy,” she’d written.
Gabe had grinned at that. He missed her awfully, and found himself eating to while away the loneliness. Processed food had crept back in, although Gabe was careful to include plenty of bagged salad, fresh meat, and produce in his diet … along with some Ben and Jerry’s, McDonald’s, and Papa John’s. He had learned how good a full belly felt, learned how good it felt to eat until he was stuffed to bursting, reveling in the pull and tautness of a distended gut, how relaxing it was to recline and massage a belly gorged with pizza and Coke.
The more he enjoyed eating, of course, the more it showed: in his visibly thickening waistline, his steadily burgeoning belly, the belts that had to be fastened more and more loosely, the new (roomier) clothing. Occasionally he wondered if Susan would be put off by a Gabe who was not his once-normal 190 pounds stretched over six feet -- he hadn’t seen 190 on the scale for a while now -- but dismissed the thought. His article had been accepted, he’d gotten a fairly astonishing raise, and he wanted another bowl of chili. And some more chips.
Two hundred came and went on the scale with astonishing rapidity, and Gabe discovered he was routinely going grocery shopping twice a week, doing a “big shopping” on Wednesdays and a smaller run on Saturdays to catch up. He was by then usually out of ice cream and always out of Coke. And bagged salads, you had to eat them quickly before they went bad. They weren’t putting as many cookie in a package as they used to either.
Friday had become pizza night, and by Saturday morning there was seldom more than a slice or two left in the box. Gabe watched his expanding paunch in the mirror as he shaved, felt the thickening love handles in the shower, knew he was working his way up the waist sizes in the jeans store, but in truth he was enjoying it.
There was something unexpectedly pleasing in the feel of the new padding around his middle, the heft and expansion he felt when he breathed deeply, the shift of his stride to accommodate his expansion, the way he fitted into his favorite chair. And it was definitely pleasing to fill his belly. The warmth and dopey satiation after a big meal had become a familiar, homey feeling, and to eat just enough no longer satisfied; he longed for the pleasant ache and heaviness of being stuffed after a meal.
Susan’s dig kept getting extended -- eight weeks here, six weeks there -- as funding kept trickling in and the dig was proving fruitful.
The needle didn’t even pause at two-twenty-five. He was habitually eating four or five times a day, if you counted snacks between meals, and having dessert after both lunch and dinner. There was now never any pizza left over on Friday nights.
AT THE AIRPORT, Gabe had to step right in front of Susan, and even then she didn’t recognize him at first. Her eyes widened.
“Gabe?!”
Gabe’s smile came out slowly, like a sunrise, and her heart flipped in a way it hadn‘t for months. Had she ever missed him.
“Hi, Suse.”
Susan stepped back. “Ah, wow!”
Gabe bit his lip. Showdown time. He put a hand to his belly, which bulged over his waistband and tugged at his sweater, straining to cover all 250 pounds of him.
The eight weeks that had become 16 weeks had ultimately turned into a six-month separation, driving them both crazy, but resulting, Susan had said, in not just an article but a book … and tenure. In those six months, Susan had let her chestnut hair grow, and had become deeply tanned, the Middle Eastern sun bronzing her skin and giving her green eyes a glow. She was thin and muscular, looking breathtaking in a green dress, leggings, and silver ballet flats, while he was pale and … fat. He made a face.
“Uh, um, I …” he stuttered. Suddenly she was smooshed against his soft round gut, her head buried against his well-padded chest.
“You look wonderful! I can’t believe how sexy you’ve gotten,” she murmured. “I could take you right here.”
“Susan!” Gabe felt his face flame. “Shh!”
“Take me home. Quickly!”
In the car, Gabe probed. “Sexy?”
Now it was Susan’s turn to blush.
“I love that belly on you. It’s … oh gosh …” she hid her face in her hands.
“Yes, sexy,” she said firmly, recovering, and laid a hand on his gut. “You look wonderful.”
“That’s just the absence talking,” Gabe said, but maybe it wasn’t. The next day, jet lag gone, Susan had gone out and bought two hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and made a meal that, Gabe estimated, used up at least half of them. She heaped his plate again and again, ignoring his protestations. Gabe loosened his belt once, twice, unbuttoned his jeans, finally announcing thickly that he could not swallow another mouthful. Susan asked if he was sure, then took away his empty plate.
Gabe grunted as he pushed his chair back; bracing his hands on the table, he hauled himself up and, pants undone, moved ponderously to the sofa. He leaned back, feet on the coffee table, and after a few minutes Susan joined him. She snuggled in next to him and rested a hand on his swollen, achingly full belly. Gently she massaged it, making him groan with pleasure and close his eyes. As she massaged, he stroked her hair.
“Suse?”
“Mm.”
Gabe hiccupped. “You really think this is sexy?”
“What?”
“This.” Gabe laid his own hand atop hers on his roundly distended belly, hugely swollen with dinner. He’d eaten enough for three men and he was stuffed to bursting, but it was also mind-bendingly pleasurable to have Susan rubbing his midriff.
“Mm… You know, I do. Don’t know why.” Susan paused, causing Gabe to grunt.
“Sorry,” she said, and resumed. It wasn’t long before they repaired to the bedroom.
“Gabe?” she said afterward, her head tucked under his arm.
“Yeah?”
She slowly stroked his stomach in a circular pattern. “Please don’t lose the weight. Okay?”
“Suse, this makes no sense.”
“I know,” she said.
“I only know what I feel … it’s just … a gut feeling,” she said unthinkingly, and they both laughed.
Gabe thought about trying to peel off some weight anyway, but it was hard to do. Susan had gotten a serious baking jones since she returned, and there was always, it seemed, a container of brownies on the counter, a pie in the cake keeper, the cooky jar full of homemade goodies. She was still on sabbatical, going over the proofs of the book and baking, she swore, cleared her brain from time to time. So, apparently, did making dinner. Every afternoon when he got home, good smells would greet him along with a fervent embrace from the cook, who would heap his plate high, ignoring token protests.
To his continued bafflement, the broader his waistline, the better the sex. Susan was often the initiator now, and their intimacy had become deeper, the foreplay more passionate, the coupling more prolonged and infinitely more satisfying. At least twice a week, sometimes oftener, when he climbed into bed Susan would turn to him as if on a spindle and trace a finger down his broadening belly, tickling, pressing, exploring the navel, drumming, stroking, kissing. She called his midsection an ever-changing site, one that she loved to explore.
On New Year’s Eve, as balloons drifted around them, Gabe murmured something into her ear. Susan burst into tears and, gulping, nodded. “On one condition,” she murmured back. Gabe grinned.
