Runner's Gut

Chapter 1

Fay squeezed, grunted, stretched and desperately tried to slip her sized XL black, sequined dress down her curvy, plump body. She wondered why she was even going to the stupid reunion since she really lost contact with a lot of the people she knew in high school. Not only that, she had gained over a hundred pounds since most of them had last seen her. She was 5 foot 6 with back length brown hair, blue eyes and was a track star in high school. Her senior year she weighed 130 pounds during track season which was rather beefy for the track team, but that's mostly due to she had a sweet tooth. Fay had been running track since middle school to control her weight and was pretty fast. As she managed to get the dress down over her boobs and gut, she had to wiggle her big hips to get it down over her ass. Luckily for her, she still had a rather firm butt from all the years of running she did and managed to slip the dress down. She looked about six months pregnant in it, but it still fit enough to be wearable. She checked herself out in the mirror and scoffed at the size of her belly. She squeezed it and said out loud “God I'm fat.” She normally could deal with her co-workers and her two sons making snide comments because she had been overweight for a while now, but her high school classmates saw her as a svelte runner.

After Fay left high school, she went to a communications school that didn't have a track team. The freshman fifteen ended up being a freshman thirty that she kept because she got pregnant by her boyfriend at the time. They ended up getting married when she was 20 and she had another baby after she graduated. Unfortunately for her, her boyfriend was a sleazebag and ended up cheating on her. She filed for divorce three years earlier and that's when the weight started piling on. Depression from being alone and the stress from raising two kids essentially by herself caused her to balloon up to 200 pounds. She gained the last thirty over the previous two years to put her at 230 pounds as she was getting ready. She thought it was terrible timing to have their ten year reunion in the middle of February after the holidays but she realized it was her own fault for getting so fat, not anyone else. There were going to be a lot of people that were going to be shocked she put on so much weight but there were three people in particular she REALLY needed to avoid. Her former rival at school Grace Hudgins who was one of the stereotypical bitchy popular girls, Hank Wilson the captain of the football team who she dumped in middle school and he never forgot about it, and Trey Saunders, her ex-boyfriend and track star on the boy's team back in high school. She didn't want to see Grace or Hank because they hated her, but she didn't want Trey to see her fat like this. When they dated in high school she was a lot slimmer and he was an all-star athlete. The problem was he was offered a full scholarship at Florida State University which was 1,000 miles from Indiana where they were from. Indiana State wasn't interested and Indiana University would only pay for a half scholarship so he figured to go to school for free in sunny Florida.

Fay's youth and immaturity played a factor in their breakup as she couldn't stay faithful to Trey who was 1,000 miles away their freshman year. When she ended up getting pregnant by her now ex-husband, it drove Trey away and she hadn't heard from him since. As she finished getting ready, she pouted her lips and tried to look sexy but she wasn't feeling it. She thought her cheeks were too chubby and her double chin was too prominent. Still, she knew some of the jerks at school weren't in the best shape these days either so she wasn't too worried. As Fay finished combing her hair, she packed up her purse and went downstairs. Her mother was watching the kids that night so she said her goodbyes as she got in her car. A lot of people moved after finishing high school but she lived in the same town so it wasn't too far a drive. She thought it was silly to hold the reunion at the high school instead of a ritzy ballroom or some other place to house the Class of 13. She looked down at her gut and sighed thinking that if she can notice it, then others will as well. As she drove she thought about how she was going to avoid Grace, Hank and Trey. “Maybe they wouldn't even be there” she thought. Then she scoffed and said “Yeah, and pigs will fly out of my ass.” She thought about lighting a cigarette which she still kept in her car but she thought better of it. Part of her gain had to do with her quitting smoking during the holidays. She started when she was having problems with her ex-husband who was also a smoker. She thought by picking up the habit, it would scare him straight but it didn't work. She kicked the habit but now had a gut and chubby cheeks as the effect of kicking it. When she finally got to the old high school, memories flooded back. One of them in particular was finishing second in a track meet against the number 1 and 8 runners in the whole state. Against the same school, Trey finished 1st in the boys meet. She didn't want him to see her but it might have been inevitable.

As she pulled into the parking lot, she looked around to make sure nobody could see her. It was an unusually warm night so she only needed her overcoat but she wished she had worn leggings. Not that it was that cold out, but she thought that they'd make her thighs look slimmer. As she shut the door a voice from behind said “Fay?” Fay froze and said to herself “Here we go.”