Chapter 4 - peas in a pod

Only a few days later Tiffany went into labor. Chris' parents came into town to help with watching the kids, while he went to the hospital and the couple welcomed their infant son. The final delivery weight for Tiffany had peaked at 180 pounds. "This time", Chris thought to himself, 'those pounds are sticking around and they're bringing some friends along for the ride". After just a day of recovering in the hospital Tiffany was already getting stir crazy. The delivery had been quite easy compared to the first two, and she was anxious to simply go home and relax. To her surprise, waiting in their front yard as they pulled back up to their home was a huge display of balloons and a prop stork displaying a baby announcement. Attached was an envelope from Katelyn and Curtis congratulating them on the new addition, and offering any help or support they needed. Tiffany was ecstatic, it was a really nice gesture and she quickly texted Katelyn to thank her.

For the next few weeks, the couple lived the newborn life - waking up at all hours of the night for feedings, losing sleep to a screeching baby, fighting exhaustion the rest of the time. During the first week of being at home, to their surprise Katelyn had shown up at the door each morning, having driven the short distance up the road and hauled her enormous body up their front steps. She was dropping off casseroles of comfort food she had whipped up herself, stating that whenever she had a newborn it was always so helpful when friends or family would bring her a meal so she and Curtis didn't have to worry about making dinner or functioning as adults. Some days, assuming exhaustion permitted it, Tiffany would invite her new friend in and the two would carry on for a couple of hours of good conversation. After a few weeks, Tiffany was feeling a bit more herself, and would make the trip up the road on alternating days while Chris went back to work from paternity leave. She would bring the kids up to play with Katelyn's kids, and then the two would sit down at the kitchen table, Tiffany often nursing the new baby while Katelyn put out a diverse spread of deliciously fattening foods for them to munch on. Frequently Tiffany found herself losing track of time and getting drawn down a rabbit hole of topics with Katelyn, only realizing in a panic that she had been conversing and munching for several hours and was in danger of neglecting nap time and other routines.

Some evenings Katelyn, Curtis, and all the kids would come down to Chris and Tiffany's for dinner. Chris and Curtis had finally had an opportunity to meet, and while they weren't quite on the best friend level of their wives, they found each other to be good company for some drinks and conversation together after work. One night after dinner while the kids watched a movie and Tiffany and Katelyn compared lists of favorite Disney films from their youth, Chris pulled Curtis aside towards the little bar he had set up in the den and offered him a drink. As they sat there listening to the sounds of the movie barely eclipse the conversation and laughter of their two wives, Chris couldn't help but comment on the pair.

"Those two are inseparable, aren't they? They're like two peas in a pod..." he remarked.

"Yeah, it's nuts how well they get along, you'd think they've known each other for 20 years!" Curtis replied.
Taking a sip of the rum and coke Chris had prepared for him, he continued the thought.

"You know, I'm really glad that the two of them met and hit it off. I mean, ever since we had the kids Katelyn's been sort of just a stay at home mom, and...well...in a rural area out here it's kind of hard to make good friends like Tiffany...I used to be afraid that she might be getting lonely lookin' after the kids all day, but now I know she's hanging out with a good friend" he commented.

"I know exactly what you mean" Chris said. "I'm so glad that Tiffany has such a good friend to hang out with, and the kids have some friends their ages to play with. It really was fortunate that we bought this house." He added, smiling to himself that fortune had only played a minor role in the whole thing.

"It's more than just that.." Curtis interjected. "When I met my wife she was a few years younger than me - a college girl, a real social butterfly. She had a number of good friends and was always out and about having ladies' nights and that sort of stuff... but there wasn't ever anybody she got along with quite as well as Tiffany." He said, staring down at his drink.

"Plus...when she had the kids and started...you know...uhh... gettin' a bit bigger" he mumbled, trailing off with the taboo topic he had broached.

"Well... she got kind of isolated from a lot of her older friends. They were still polite to her face, but they slowly stopped calling and comin' round quite as much, she stopped gettin' invited to quite as many ladies' nights. I think these past few months might be the happiest I've seen Katelyn since we started having kids if I'm being honest" Curtis added.

Chris appreciated his candor. He desperately wanted to prod on the "getting bigger" angle of things. A young, mildly plump girl getting that fat that fast was unlikely to have been an accident in his experience, and he had his suspicions about what Curtis really was. Still, there was no polite way to bring something like that up in conversation, so the two moved on to a much safer and more comfortable topic and began making small talk about sports.