chapter 14

It's amazing how much a girl can change when she's in love. For perhaps the first time in her life, Kelly Simmons was happy, truly happy. She no longer needed a set of goals or a list of accomplishments to achieve. There was nothing she had to prove any more, most especially to herself. She no longer looked in a mirror full of fear and loathing at what she might see. It wasn't Britt's challenge or hundreds of thousands of added calories or anything else that transformed her entire being, it was the love of Max Sokalski.

That's because Max's love was pure and unconditional. She didn't have to be anything in particular, she didn't have to look any special way. She didn't have to be anyone's trophy. All she had to be was Kelly Simmons, that was more than enough for Max.

For some girls, falling in love caused them to lose their appetites because the focal point of their existence wasn't food, clothes or anything other than the man in their lives. Kelly's love was expansive, embracing, inclusive. For her, life had become a celebration. In the truest sense of the word, every day for Kelly was a party because every new day was a special occasion. All this was made possible through Max's love for her.

Once she surrendered herself to the power of love, counting calories or worrying about dress sizes or the enormity of a waistline suddenly didn't matter any more. For her, food was simply a part of the celebration of life. Naturally enough, a life of celebration through food was going to have consequences. Max proposed one month to the day after their first kiss. In that month Kelly had gained an astonishing thirty-five pounds. She felt comfortable with her increasing bulk because Max loved and adored HER. Coincidentally, Max confessed that the bigger she got, the more she reminded him of the three other loves of his life, his grandmother, his mother and his late wife. But it wasn't the weight or the way that weight made her look that turned on Max. It was the unrestrained joy of life that her relationship with food now expressed. It demonstrated in ways he couldn't exactly put into words Kelly's newly found capacity to love.

Max had fallen in love with Kelly even before he had met her, his grandfather had seen to that. His vivid descriptions and his total admiration for the girl were contagious. But Max wasn't entirely sure it would work out between them because he doubted Kelly's capacity to love unconditionally. But as they got closer and closer to each other emotionally, as Kelly began to accept the love that Max had to offer, that's when she expanded her emotional horizons to include Max and that was when her physical horizons began to expand as well.

Five months later, on the six month anniversary of their first kiss, Kelly, all 387 pounds of her, waddled and jiggled down the aisle to become Mrs. Max Sokalski. There were no more challenges to daunt her, no more bridges to cross or mountains to climb. What lay before her was the love of a good man. Challenge enough for any woman, no matter WHAT she weighed!