A Little Extra Room- Part 6

*Thanks so much for your patience everybody! I'm traveling overseas right now and I was unexpectedly without wifi for like a day and a half, but I'll have an extra story dropping for each tier this week to make up for this chapter and the next chapter of an oversized ultimatum coming a day late! Everything else this week should be right on time, and you can expect that extra chapter on Friday:)*

“Justin, I'm not going,” Trixie repeated firmly, an edge in her voice that the two of them were entirely unused to. “I’m serious. This isn't a joke, this isn't for you to get all horny over, I’m just not going.”

Justin sighed, looking heavenward. 

“Trixie, I’m not trying to make this about that,” he insisted. “I swear. But it's just that-”

“I am not going,” Trixie repeated in staccato, pausing between each word for emphasis. 

“Trixie,” Justin breathed in exasperation. “This isn't about me. I’m not trying to make this into some scenario that I'd enjoy, you know I wouldn't do that. The entire time we’ve been doing this, the whole time you’ve been letting me feed you, have I ever insisted on something like this? No. but…” 

He trailed off. 

“You understand why this is important to me, right? Why I care so much?”

“Cause you hate me,” Trixie mumbled under her breath. 

“Cause I love you more than anything on this planet,” Justin corrected, taking her pudgy hand in his. “Cause you’re the most beautiful, perfect woman I've ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes on. Cause I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

It was Trixie's turn to look up to avoid his gaze, and she pressed her eyes closed, letting her head fall back into the plush sofa cushion behind her. 

“I can’t go to my family reunion,” she finally whispered after several beats of silence. “I just can't.”

Justin began to rub slow, comforting circles on her palm with his thumb, encouraging her to go on. 

“It's been too long. I’m too..” 

She sighed again. 

“I look too different,” she finished, one hand dropping unconsciously to rest on the crest of her protruding gut. “I haven't seen them since you and I got together and I just can't face them like this,” she admitted, finally looking down at her overfed, roll-laden body bulging with soft, swollen fat. “The last time they saw me I was a gym rat. I was training for a half marathon, I didn't eat gluten. And now I'm huge, I'm a fucking hippo. It's all they're gonna talk about. I just can’t go.”

“Babe, but that's what you said last year,” Justin reminded her gently. “And the year before that, and the year before that. You haven't seen any members of your family in over three years. And you stopped posting on social media, and you decline all their invites, and-”

His expression broke for a moment and Trixie's eyes widened, shocked to see the passing glimpse of an indiscernible but clearly overwhelming emotion cross over her typically suave lover's face.

“Baby?” she asked, her entire body jiggling as she heaved her mass forward to scooch closer to his and brush his face with her plump little fingers. “Baby, what's wrong, it's ok,” she rushed in one breath, already desperate to comfort him despite the fact that she was unable to pinpoint the exact root of his distress. “I don’t care that I haven't seen them, I have you. And I still talk to my mom and my sisters, we talk on the phone all the time. It's not a big deal, it's really not. I mean, I love them, but you know we were never super close. Really, baby, it's ok.”

Her brow wrinkled in concern as she watched Justin's face carefully for a clue that would better help her discern his sudden emotion. 

“Baby?” she asked again hesitantly. 

He lifted her hand and kissed it, holding it to his lips for a few seconds before lowering their intertwined fingers to his lap, then turned to her more fully. 

“It's selfish,” he finally admitted. “But I don't want them to think that you pulling away from them like this is my fault, you know? That I’m trying to isolate you, or keep you away from them or something. I know they have no idea what's going on,” he said, lifting a hand to stop Trixie's protests before they left her lips. “But that doesn't mean that they won’t assume things. That doesn't mean that they won’t put two and two together. We got serious, and you haven't seen them since. I just…”

He paused again, his obvious trepidation entirely unlike him.

“I just want them to like me,” he finished quietly. “It's important to me. I wanna have a relationship with them, I wanna,” he threw up his hands, tongue-tied and clearly frustrated with his own inability to articulate himself in the moment. “I just want them to like me.”

“Babe, they like you,” Trixie hurriedly reassured. “They like you, I swear. My mom always asks how you are and my sisters always tell me to tell you hi, they like you!”

“Your dad doesn't,” he argued. 

Trixie frowned. 

“How do you know that?” she pressed.

Justin's cheeks flushed lightly red, and if it weren't for Trixie's concern at his sudden uncharacteristic attitude, she would've giggled at the dominant, perpetually cool Justin getting so flustered.

“I overhead,” he confessed abashedly. “I overheard you talking to him one day. I don't think you knew I was home and you had him on speaker.”

Trixie's heart dropped, already perfectly aware of the conversation he was referring to. 

“Baby, he didn't mean-”

“He asked if you were happy with me.,” Justin interjected. “If you actually felt like I was the one. He said that I don't make an effort for you.”

“Yea, cause he had no idea what he was talking about,” Trixie shot back. “He doesn't know that you do everything for me, that you take care of my every little need or want and treat me like a princess. He doesn't know because it's none of his business. So why does it matter if he has the wrong impression based on wrong information? You and I both know the truth, and that's what matters.”

“Yea,” Justin agreed listlessly. “But I guess… I guess it matters to me. Because this isn't just about us right now. It's about the future I want to have with you, the family I want to start with you someday. I want our kids to be close with their extended family, I want…I don't know. I just want them to know how much I care about you. I wanna have a chance to prove myself to them, you know?”

He straightened up. 

“What if I just go?” he suggested more enthusiastically. “What if we say you had to work but I wouldn't miss it? That way I can spend time with everybody and they can get to know me a little better and maybe…maybe like me more?”

Trixie rubbed her temples lightly, wanting to appreciate how adorable Justin's uncertainty was when juxtaposed with his typical gently domineering presence, but unable to take any pleasure in the moment because of her own distress at the issue. 

“I don't know about that babe,” she began. Isn't that, like, a little weird?”

“Please?” Justin asked, the singular word so rife with emotion that Trixie felt her heart break a bit. 

“Fine,” she acquiesced. “Fine. I’ll go with you. We’ll go.”

Justin's face lit up.

“Seriously?”

He leaned down and kissed her, first on the lips and then on the forehead, and pulled back, still grinning fit to beat the band. 

“I’ll go pack,” he said, leaping up with a childlike excitement and all but running to their bedroom. “This is gonna be great,” he called over his shoulder gleefully, and Trixie, finally alone, buried her face in her hands. 

This is gonna be a nightmare, she silently contradicted. 

After a multi-hour car ride in which Trixie could barely contain her misery and Justin could barely contain his glee, they finally pulled into the driveway of the house her parents had bought after her youngest sister moved out and they’d both retired out of state. The house was nice, but small and unfamiliar compared to her childhood home, and even before gaining enough weight to become unrecognizable, Trixie had never been a huge fan of visiting them here. 

The whole thing felt odd and foreign, like the right cast of characters but in the wrong setting, and it made her miss the memories they’d made in the house she still held dear, a house she occasionally insisted Justin drive past just so she could still see the bedroom window of her girlhood, still imagine she was on the outside looking in instead of the inside looking out. The decision to move back to her hometown after college hadn’t been entirely motivated by her penchant for nostalgia, but it had certainly been a factor. 

Trixie burped, still full from their last fast food stop only 45 minutes before, and felt the panic that had been rising within her since their journey began reach its boiling point. She looked to Justin and to her surprise, he also seemed to be fidgeting with nerves. He’d put the car in park and was tapping his fingers against the wheel quickly, his lips moving silently as if he were rehearsing lines. 

“What?” Trixie asked, too anxious herself to apply any tact or comfort to the check-in. 

“Nothing,” Justin assured. “I’m just making sure we have everything.”

He turned off the car and looked behind Trixie into the backseat. 

“We have the flowers for your mom, that bourbon your dad likes, wine for your sisters…”

He closed his eyes as if trying to recollect.

“Are we forgetting anything?”

“You didn't need to get anything for my sisters, Justin.”

“I know, I know. I just want them to be happy I'm here. Who can be mad at the dude who brought wine?” he teased, his body language still exposing his nerves despite his calmer demeanor. “Are you good?” he asked, turning to look at her more fully.

Trixie looked down at herself as well, trying her best to take in her body as if she also hadn't seen it for years, as if she was also expecting the slim, fit Trixie that she had been the last time her family actually laid eyes on her. 

The difference was jarring, to say the least. Despite buying larger clothes for the occasion, both her shirt and pants were skintight, technically covering her fleshy, fat-coated body but adhering to her fatty rolls tightly enough to leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. Despite the massive shelf of her oversized cleavage, her belly still bulged out even further, resting heavily on her lap, pushing out the front of the straining long-sleeve shirt she'd stuffed herself into, and clearly a few good meals away from snapping her seatbelt right open. The belt dug heavily into her middle, giving her a prominent double belly comprised of two thick slabs of fat, and her thighs took up every spare centimeter of room between the passenger door and the center console, meaning she’d been uncomfortably squished for hours. 

She knew that stuffing her face with fast food for the duration of the road trip hadn’t helped matters at all, but she also knew that at her size, a few extra combo meals really couldn't make a difference. They were going to be surprised and horrified either way, so why torture herself with hunger? For the first time in their relationship, it had been Trixie calling the shots on her meals, and each stop they made wasn’t because Justin insisted or even requested that she eat, but instead because Trixie realized that stuffing her face was the best distraction she had access to at the moment. She had been the one to beg for more just a few hours after stuffing her face, trying her hardest not to think. Not to think about where she was headed, or what they would say, or the fact that her gluttony was now self-motivated. She just wanted this whole thing over with, and she desperately regretted giving in to Justin's pleas, no matter how cheerful and excited he’d been the whole way down. 

“I guess,” she finally answered glumly. 

He kissed her on her chubby cheek then undid her seatbelt for her, the retractable fabric springing back to place in relief. 

“It's gonna be great babe. It’ll be good, I promise.”

She nodded, completely unconvinced, and pushed open her door. She, Justin, and her two sisters would be staying at her parent's house tonight, and the reunion with all of her extended family would be the following afternoon. That meant two separate days of watching people who once knew her as an athlete drop their jaws when they saw she was now a waddling tub of lard. She’d almost wanted to warn her family in advance, somehow slip into conversation that she’d gained a little weight, but every time she tried to broach the topic she froze up. Besides, there was nothing she could say that would capture the magnitude of what she’d become, nothing that she could say that would convince them that the health-minded girl they’d always known had transformed herself so drastically, permanently ruined her figure so quickly. 

Although he didn't exactly know it, Justin was right to be excited, to look forward to a clean slate in terms of impressing her family. The second they saw her, they would realize that it hadn't been Justin keeping her away from them. They would realize that she’d grown so fat she was ashamed to be seen, and the blame would be swiftly removed from Justin's shoulders and solidly placed upon hers. 

She took a deep breath and struggled her way out of the car, her entire body wobbling from the effort of unlodging herself, then waited for Justin to open the backseat and grab the gifts.

“Should I get the bags?” Justin asked, his nervous energy making him talk faster. “Or should I leave them? Or should I come back and get them? I don't want you to carry anything. I’ll come back, I'll come back.”

She sighed and Justin finally straightened up, then laughed. 

“Sorry, sorry. Just excited.”

“I know,” Trixie sighed. “Let's just go, ok?”

Justin nodded, grabbed her hand, and they slowly made their way up the front walk, Trixie's waddle slowing down Justin's normally confident strides. 

“Do you wanna knock, or should I?” he asked, leaning down to speak into her ear. 

“I will,” said Trixie, her stomach a mess of knots. 

They reached the door and Trixie lifted a fist but paused, terror striking. She’d come this far. Everyone was expecting her, and on top of that, they must've heard the car in the driveway. Even if she were to waddle back to the car as quickly as she could and take off, they’d probably come out before she could get away. She had no choice. 

She knocked twice, dropped her hand, then fruitlessly tried to suck in her spherical, bulging belly, her useless core muscles doing little to hide just how large she’d grown. 

The door swung open and Trixie watched as her mother’s face morphed from excitement to confusion. She squinted hard as if she’d suddenly realized she needed glasses, and looked back and forth from Trixie to Justin with eyes wide. 

Trixie tried to speak, to acknowledge it was her, to greet the mother she hadn't seen in three years, but she found her mouth too dry to begin to form a single word. 

“Justin?” Trixie's mother finally asked incredulously, looking back to him once more. 

Trixe's face flamed red, the realization setting in that if it hadn't been for the fact that Justin was standing there with her, her own mother might not have recognized her. The realization that if she were to pass a member of her family on the street or in a grocery store they might not look at her twice, might not ever have any idea that she’d eaten herself into an entirely new identity. She wasn't Trixie anymore. Now, she was just fat. 

“Hi Mrs. Citron," Justin greeted after a beat, extending the formidably well outfitted bouquet that was clutched in his left fist. “Thanks so much for having us.”

Trixie's mother made no effort to reach for the offering and instead stood stock still blocking the doorway, frozen in shock and therefore keeping them all in the same awkward position. 

“I, uh. I also brought some Old Carter. I know Mr Citron likes it. And some fun rosé blends for everybody,” he said, lifting the bag in his other hand. 

Trixie’s mother blinked hard.

“Um. Great, great,” she replied distractedly, still staring down Trixie like she was trying to discern if the oversized whale of a woman was truly her daughter. “Great.”

They all stood there for another moment, Trixie’s face growing redder and hotter by the second, when Justin finally broke the tension.

“Could I set these down?” he asked, gesturing behind her. “I was just gonna run back to the car and get our bags real quick.”

“Oh!” said Trixie's mother as if just realizing that they’d arrived. “Oh! Oh, of course, I'm sorry, come on in,” she invited, speaking to Justin but still looking at Trixie. “Please, come in.”

She stepped out of the doorway and backed up enough for Trixie to squeeze past her, still not addressing her directly as if suspicious about her status as an imposter. 

“You can put everything on the table, thank you,” she said to Justin. “Hun,” she called loudly, angling herself towards the stairs. “Hun, Trixie is here.”

“Coming,” Trixie heard her father call gruffly. “Just changing out this light bulb.”

“We’re having some cousins over after the reunion,” she said to Trixie in explanation, the first words she’d spoken to her daughter since discovering just how she’d been spending her time for the last three years. “You know your father, everything has to be perfect.”

Her mother looked her up and down, the shock on her face making way for light disgust. 

“Hi Mom,” Trixie finally squeaked out, unable to make eye contact. 

“Trixie,” her mother breathed lightly, as if mourning her, and smiled a tight, pained-looking smile as correction. “Honey. How are you? Is everything…I mean what have you… Well, how, how is everything? Are you- are you ok? Or, good, I mean? Have you been…um….”

She let herself trail off, her real question going unasked, but not uncommunicated. 

“Uh,” Trixie stuttered, unsure of how or if she should answer. “ Uh- yea,” she finally said, deciding that a non-answer was the best response to a non-question. 

“Be right back,” said Justin on his way from setting the flowers and drinks in the kitchen, hustling past them to grab the bags from the car.

“And, and everything is going well?” her mother asked, trying the line of questioning again. 

Trixie nodded. 

“And you’re…happy? With Justin?”

Trixie nodded again. 

“Have you been, um, eating more lately?” she finally eked out, and Trixie felt her face glow even hotter. 

“I’m gonna go help Justin with the bags,” she began, but before she could turn around, she heard the telltale sound of her father clomping down the stairs.

He came into view, an easy smile on his typically stern face, then stopped short at seeing her, almost stumbling on a step. 

“Jesus,” he all but bellowed, his reaction as outsized as Trixie's new figure. “Trixie? What the hell happened to you?”

He continued down the stairs, still staring at her as if she were an extraterrestrial standing in his foyer. 

“I mean, my god,” he said as he got a closer look. “You’re huge. It's like you ate the old Trixie.”

“Herald!” Trixie's mother cried sharply.

“What?” he said, turning to her. “What, am I just supposed to not say anything?”

He turned back to Trixie, giving her several full body scans as her face and neck grew so hot she began to feel faint. 

“I mean, what have you been eating honey?” he asked, his eyes obviously glued to her globular belly. “Because whatever it is, it's too much, amirite?” he said with a chuckle, trying to make light of the situation after hearing the anger in his wife’s tone. 

He stared at her intensely till she looked up, then extended both hands in a ‘go on’ motion.

“Well?” he demanded. 

Trixie balked, not expecting to have to provide a real answer to his semi-nonsensical question. What had she been eating? Everything, obviously everything, and she wasn't sure what answer he was looking for, what would satisfy the questions that both her parents had but only one of her parents was willing to ask. 

“Um,” she finally stuttered. “Um. I don't know.”

“You don't know?” her father repeated. “Well honey, you need to figure it out. I mean this kind of weight gain is just ridiculous. We’re gonna have to get you on the show with the weight loss surgery that your mother always watches, what's that show called?”

“Herald,” Trixie’s mother hissed more aggressively. 

“What?” he repeated. “I’m joking, I can't make a joke? C’mon honey,” he said, turning back to Trixie. “You know I love you and you're always beautiful to me, but you look like you can barely fit through the door. How did all this happen?”

Trixie just looked down, unable to respond. 

“You were always my little girl,” he went on. “I can't believe-,” he cut himself off with a shake of his head. “Wow. Just, wow. So this is why you’ve been too busy to come see us for three whole years? You were busy cramming down donuts?”

“Harold, leave her alone,” Trixie’s mother insisted. “Go help Justin with the bags,” she commanded with a point, and her father rolled his eyes and headed for the door, leaving the two of them in the awkward silence he’d created. 

“Your father,” Trixie’s mother began, suddenly avoiding eye contact herself. “Your father is…right. We need to have a talk about all this, about your…gain. I mean, you have to admit it's out of control Trixie. Right?” 

Trixie remained silent and her mother forged on. 

“Your sisters will be here in a few hours, alright? Why don't you go unpack, rest a little from your trip, and we’ll all talk at dinner.”

She gave her a small smile devoid of any joy. 

“Good to have you home, honey,” she said, and left Trixie alone to waddle up the stairs to the guestroom and await the weight gain intervention that her mother had promised.