A Little Extra Room- Part 7

After a few hours of tossing and turning in a bed that squealed its protests to its hefty new guest with each laborious movement, Trixie finally reached for her phone, her mind already formulating her next text to Justin. She’d waddled up the stairs as quickly as she could after being dismissed but Justin had stayed in the living room to bond with her father, sending her adorably excited little updates about how her father appreciated the bottle of whiskey and had given Justin a tour of his own collection. 

They sat watching baseball as the smells of her mother's cooking floated up the stairs, but knowing that her sister would be there any second made Trixie feel the need to interrupt the impromptu bromance quickly forming between her boyfriend and her father so that she could press him for information. 

‘Can you come upstairs pls?’ She typed. ‘I need to talk to u’

‘whats wrong babe?’ Justin sent back quickly, Trixie knowing him well enough to know that he didn't want to leave. 

‘Pls just come,’ she responded a bit dryly, and moments later heard Justin making quick work of the stairs, a notable juxtaposition from the several minutes of wobbling, huffing, puffing, and panting that had characterized Trixie’s trip up the same set. 

He knocked once, more to make her aware of his arrival than to ask for permission to enter, and his eyes lit up when he saw her, pulling the door behind him. 

“Baby, you look amazing,” he breathed, crossing to the other side of the bed and placing his hands on either side of her perpetually swollen, overfed belly. 

Her body shook at the slight movement and the rolls of back fat that were beginning to encroach her way to her middle quivered uncontrollably, the soft, newly gained flab overstuffing her midsection hypersensitive and therefore undulating at the slightest touch. 

“Babe, stop,” she hissed as if her family could somehow hear the position of his hands from a floor away. 

He immediately stepped back, that coy, slightly lustful smile that usually made her weak in the knees slowly creeping its way onto his face, and held up his hands in innocence. 

“What?” he asked, his grin intensifying. “I can't tell my beautiful girlfriend that she looks good?”

“Not now you can't,” Trixie protested, placing both hands on the mattress in preparation to lift herself into a sitting position. “We have to talk about-”

She paused, straining as she realized that the combination of her weakened muscles and her insistence that Justin stop at a drive-through every few hours on their way down had left her too fat and too full to lift herself up. She struggled for a moment, pinkening as her flab-coated body wobbled with effort, then fell back to the bed with an unceremonious crash, the spindly and clearly weakening frame making its protests obviously known. She reddened further at the loud, unmistakable noise, praying that it had been more of a creak and less of a crack, and huffed lightly as she tried to catch her breath, realizing in the moment just how much larger she was since the last time she’d stayed in that room. 

It was one thing to be aware of her weight, to know that the number had increased by a quantity that would've been unfathomable to her in her thin days, but to laying there helplessly with her gut protruding into the air and the blubber covering her entire overstuffed body shaking as she tested the limits of the bed frame truly put the entire situation into a new perspective. 

Justin had turned her into a blob, a blob too fat to be recognized by her own mother. An overfed, out-of-control glutton who didn't have a hope of even getting out of bed by herself, much less of losing all the weight she’d piled onto her body. In fact, weight loss, or at least the discussion of it, was the reason she’d called Justin up in the first place, although his timing was convenient given she clearly needed his help to heave herself up without smashing the bed frame beneath her. She also needed to go over what they would say at the dinner table, a topic of conversation she’d been too anxious and too embarrassed to broach in the car. 

“Can you help me,” she whispered as if Justin wasn’t well aware that helping his stuffed lover get up had become a daily part of their routine, aggressively attractive to him and humiliating for her.

He grinned wider and grabbed both of her chubby hands in his, his gym-toned strength easily heaving Trixie's fat-laden body from the mattress and allowing her to settle with her back against the headboard. 

“Ok,” she said, even that light exertion enough to make her red in the face. “Ok. We need to talk about everything,” she insisted, trying not to look at him as she knew his eyes were glued to her body, particularly to the way that her stretch mark covered lower belly pushed its way out of the bottom of her straining t-shirt and onto her bulging, tubby thighs. 

“Everything like what?” came Justin's response, the deep rumble of his voice confirming all too obviously that he was just as distracted by the scene in front of him as Trixie had suspected. 

“Everything like…like everything,” Trixie repeated nonsensically. “My sisters will be here soon and, and my parents already saw me and, everything. It's just everything. What has my dad been saying to you?”

“That the Mets suck?” Justin responded with a shrug. “We’ve just been talking about whiskey and baseball, that’s it.”

“Right. He hasn't said anything about my weight?” Trixie scoffed, her words less of a question and more of a statement. 

“I mean, not really,” Justin answered slowly, drawing out the last word so much that Trixie finally looked up at him to see his olive skin was slightly flushed as well, a complete abnormality for the always confident, always secure Justin. 

She knew that this entire weekend was almost as nerve-wracking for him as it was for her, and while she’d wanted, and tried, to comfort him, she was too concerned with saving her own skin to give him the reassurance that he needed. Her family didn't hate him. After seeing her, they wouldn't even blame him for taking her away from them. The evidence of his innocence was wobbling all over her and precariously packed into her too-tight clothes. They would know exactly why she’d been so incognito the moment she waddled into the room. 

She sighed, wanting to make him feel better but more intent on knowing what he knew and hearing what he’d heard. 

“What did he say? Because he said a lot to me, and I just can’t- I need to know what I'm going to have to deal with.”

Justin sighed in turn, stepping closer and dropping down on the mattress to a cacophony of creaks brought about by Trixie’s mass already testing the limits of the overtaxed frame. His eyes widened in surprise and he stood quickly, then shot a glance to Trixie and slowly lowered himself back down after seeing the hurt reproach on her face. 

“Nothing, really. He just asked me if I play any sports and I told him no, then he asked me if I work out and I told him yes. Then he..uh.”

“What?” Trixie demanded.

“Then he asked why I never take you with me. That's all.”

“And what did you say?”

“I just laughed and changed the subject, I didn't know what to say.”

“And that's the only thing he brought up?” Trixie confirmed, and Justin nodded quickly, clearly eager to be done with the subject. 

“I think,” Justin began hesitantly. “I think you were right. This whole thing is kinda weird. Or not weird, just- I'm not sure. Uncomfortable. Because you know there's nothing I’m more into than your body, than the fact that you’ve let me feed you into the kind of girl who has to suck in to sit in a booth, but I don't want to talk about that with your dad. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know exactly what you mean,” Trixie shot back. “And that's exactly why I didn't want to come, I told you that this would happen.”

“You didn't say this would happen!” Justin protested. “You just said you didn't want your family knowing you gained so much weight, I didn't know it would feel…”

“Feel like some fetish scenario you dreamed up?” Trixie interjected. “I basically told you that verbatim, I told you that and you didn't care because you were so intent on them liking you.” she hissed, suddenly self-conscious of their volume once more. “When they already liked you,” she added, venom overtaking her tone. “The fact that I have to have a game plan for how I’m going to approach this dinner is all your fault, you’re the one that begged me to come, you’re the one that-”

She cut herself short, watching the dejection spread across Justin's countenance and instantly feeling like a heel. Justin was normally so self-assured, so well entranced in his role as the dominant figure in their relationship that all of her emotions seemed so easily managed by him, particularly her anger. In fact, he usually found it sexy, diffusing the situation by running his strong hands over her swelling rolls while he stared her down with a look that meant a stuffing and the bedroom wasn't far behind. 

This time, however, he was the one mired in insecurity, or more accurately was mired in insecurity alongside her, and she realized that the blame game would produce no winners that day. Instead, they needed an alliance that would protect her from her father's direct harshness, her mother's prying curiosity, and the unpredictable reactions sure to be had by her two younger sisters. 

“I’m sorry babe,” she said, her plump, hamish upper arm jiggling slightly as she reached toward him to provide a comforting touch. “I’m sorry. Let's just talk about how we’re gonna handle this, ok?”

“Handle what?” Justin asked, smiling first down at her hand and then up at her face. 

“Handle the interrogation. Handle the questions, and the stares, and the advice. All of it.”

“Just ignore it?” Justin offered, wrinkling his brow in thought. “Or, or, we could try to head it off. Basically acknowledge right in the beginning to, you know. Control the narrative.”

Trixie felt her heart quicken at the thought and shook her head with urgency, cringing at how the conversation was beginning to make her hungry. Just the idea of waddling into the dining room, plopping down in a chair too narrow to adequately support her massive ass, and immediately launching into a speech in front of her family about the fact that she knows she got fat was enough to make pinpricks of sweat pop out on her forehead.

“We can’t ignore it,” Trixies contradicted, bypassing Justin's second suggestion entirely. “My dad already told me it looks like I ate the old Trixie, ignoring it isn't gonna work.”

“He said that?” Justin marveled, throwing his gaze up to the ceiling. “Wow.”

“Yea, that and worse,” Trixie confirmed grumpily. “He’s not gonna sugarcoat this and my mom can't really stop him.”

“What about your sisters?”

“I have no idea about my sisters,” Trixie admitted. “You know we were never that close. I mean, Tina should be fine, she was always kinda chubby growing up and never heard the end of it, but Katie…I'm not sure. We were really never that close.”

“I know,” Justin affirmed, rubbing small circles on the back of Trixie’s hand. “You’ve talked to me about that before. But you guys are 9 years apart, how could you have been close?”

Trixie nodded, fears and guilt about her waning relationship with her siblings unassuaged. 

“The point is I don't know how she’ll react. And I don't want the whole dinner to just be a discussion about…you know.”

Justin nodded seriously.

“We can't avoid the comments and the questions I guess, but just…I don't know. Just try to change the subject if you can. Ask them a lot of questions, dig into their lives and stuff, and…oh, I don't know. You know,” Trixie rambled. 

“I got you, babe,” Justin assured her. “Really, I do. I won't let them make you feel bad. Should we, uh…should we head down now?”

“Why?” Trixie asked without looking up, studying her fingernails intently as if they contained a clue for the best method of managing her current situation. 

“Well, because you said your sisters would be here soon and…you know?

She frowned, looking up at him again. When they were at home Justin was never shy with his words, particularly when they related to Trixie’s body and ever-climbing weight. He loved to be as overt as possible, explicitly detailing how each plump bulge of fat looked on her figure and the way her ball-like wobbling belly looked, felt, and most importantly made him feel. They had never had a conversation like this, a conversation filled with so much unsaid, so many utterances of ‘you know’ in place of what they really meant. What they both knew all too well. 

“No, I don't know,” she pressed, tired of speaking in code. “What?”

“Well…” Justin began, suddenly finding every spot in the room more interesting than eye contact with Trixie. “The stairs. You don't wanna, like, make a grand entrance. Wouldn't it be better if you were already down when they got here?”

Trixie froze, immediately recognizing the wisdom of his statement while simultaneously dreading the outcome. That would mean that she would be taking up half the couch, her blubbery, swollen body spread out for all to see with her mound of a belly obscuring her lap when her two sisters arrived. She would also have to spend more time with her father, her mother still clearly entrenched in the elaborate kinds of meals she prepared every time Trixie and her siblings made the journey home. 

“Fine,” she all but whispered, wanting nothing more than to be back on the reinforced couch Justin had purchased for her when it became clear she’d grown far too large for their old Ikea model. 

Despite the circumstances, despite the debate she and Justin were having about how her enormous body would be the focus of the entire night, she could no longer fight the feeling building in her middle. She was hungry. 

After working her way down the stairs slowly, Justin behind her with a gilding hand on the small of her back, she waddled into the kitchen to find her mother exactly where she’d expected her to be; amidst a hot stove full of pans with a stack of mixing bowls and cutting boards piled high in the sink. 

Her mother turned as soon as the creaking floorboards indicated Trixie’s arrival, a momentary glimpse of shock crossing over her face as if she was just remembering the bloated caricature her oldest daughter had become, and forced a smile on her face that nearly trembled at its edges in its insincerity. 

“Hi hun,” her mother greeted, her eyes dropping to the protrusion of Trixie's belly in a manner that seemed unconscious. “How is..what’s up?”

“I’m fine,” Trixie answered simply, standing in the entryway awkwardly.

Her hesitation stemmed from more than just the fact that she seriously doubted the stools at the kitchen island were solid enough to support her. She didn't feel at home in this house, didn't feel any connection to it, and suddenly wished desperately for the well-loved house she’d grown up in, the house she’d occupied when she was an athlete that could bound up the stairs as nimbly as Justin did, where she could plop down in any chair she saw without concerns for how it would hold up under all the heavy, porky layers of fat she'd buried her old body beneath. 

She sighed, mortified to ask her next question but desperate to quell the hunger that was now beginning to pain her after a few hours without food, an amount of time that she hadn't been forced to endure snackless in at least a year. 

“Is anything ready?” she all but mumbled. “I'm kinda hungry.”

Her mother's face crinkled in either disgust or disappointment, perhaps an even measure of the two, and she turned to the pantry, gesturing with a stiff hand. 

“There's snacks. We bought a few things since we knew you girls were coming.”

Trixie shuffled to the pantry door as her mother resumed her cooking, her face burning at the non-reaction that still spoke volumes. Even when she shouldn’t, even when she couldn't, she had to eat. She had to stuff her face, it was the way Justin had conditioned her. No matter what Trixie actually wanted, no matter the way she hoped to present herself, Justin's forced feedings had turned her into her own feeder, had rewired her brain to turn to food for every emotion, for every instance of boredom. She should be able to control herself long enough to avoid judgment but she couldn't. She was just too greedy. Too fat. 

She swung open the pantry door as she heard Justin greet her father in the living room, and studied its dismal contents, neither of her parents' big snackers. The ‘spread’ her mother had picked up for her sisters and herself consisted of a bag of pretzel sticks, a box of microwavable popcorn, and the veggie straws Trixie had favored once upon a time, and she sighed lightly, not exactly expecting to see the family sized bags of sour cream and onion that Justin ensured remained stocked in their own pantry, but disappointed nonetheless. 

She settled on the pretzels and grabbed the bag, pried them open, and began to much on them where she stood, unsatisfied with the dry, greaseless snack but still relieved to be putting something in her stomach as if she hadn’t consumed a veritable feast in fast food alone just a few hours earlier. 

“Don’t you want a bowl?” Her mother asked genuine horror tinging the edge of her words. 

Trixie shook her head, her mouth full, and her mother sighed for what felt like the hundredth time that day. 

“Please, don’t eat the whole bag. Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.”

“I won't,” Trixie muttered indignantly. “I wasn't going to,” she added, although she knew she could take down the meager bag in a matter of minutes. “What’s for dinner?”

“I made meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, mixed veggies, and cast iron biscuits,” Trixie's mother replied, turning her attention back to the sauteing vegetables. “You know,” she started, her tone changing. “It's really easy to get more veggies in your diet. You used to love vegetables when you lived at home, you loved eating healthy.”

“I still eat healthy,” Trixie lied, her instinct to push back at her mother's obvious hinting more ingrained in her than the fact that she’d turned herself into a morbidly obese pile of lard that clearly hadn't eaten healthy in years. “Sometimes,” she admitted. 

“And working out too, you used to love going for a run,” her mother continued as if Trixie hadn't spoken, still refusing to make eye contact with her oversized offspring. 

“I’m going to go check on Justin,” Trixie said quickly, turning heel and continuing to munch on the bag of pretzels as she waddled to the living room. 

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, she thought, well aware that her father would have far more to say about how much weight she’d packed on but unable to stand her mother's gentle prodding for information for another second. 

She paused in the hallway, mortified at the need to catch her breath, and shoved in another handful of pretzels, chewing ferociously. This entire weekend would be filled with moments like this and she’d receive no respite, so her only hope was that Justin's presence put a damper on the comments and stares. She pushed herself off the wall she’d been leaning against, for once grateful that her parents' new home was not the airy open concept of her youth that meant every room was visible from the other, and had just resumed her waddling when she heard a knock on the door. 

She startled, the sudden movement causing her body to jiggle wildly for several seconds before settling, and stared down the door in terror as if her reckoning lay behind it. It did, in a sense. She had no idea which of her sisters would be arriving first, but whichever it was, Trixie quickly came to the conclusion that she couldn't face her. That she needed to run away, to escape. Running wasn't an option, and neither was hiding. Not at her size.

“Trixie, are you in the front hall?” her mother called, the assumption that Trixie had been slow to make her way to the living room an accurate one. “Can you get the door? It should be Katie.”

Trixie gulped and turned towards the offending slab of grained maple, her heart beginning to race anew. Time to face the next set of shocked, disbelieving, and judgmental eyes. Time to see her youngest sister.