She'll Remember in the Morning

Chapter 1

Delia came to the party an hour late, with a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon in a tote bag of exotic fabric. She wore girly jeans that showed off her butt, a fitted, light flannel shirt, an eastern scarf, a plaid flannel hat with ear flaps, and a lush, knit cardigan with a flower pinned to it. She was relieved to be quickly complimented on the flower, so that she relate the story how she had found it on the sidewalk, on the way.

She stood about five-foot seven and weighed maybe a hundred thirty-five pounds. Her proportions were such that her ass was the widest and roundest part of her body, tapering down her fleshy thighs like a chicken's legs. Her tits were in the B cup range, and her arms and fingers were softly and smoothly fat, like a baby's. Her stomach protruded, but didn't overhang her jeans. She was taking off her cardigan when she felt that stomach rumble with hunger. She fwipped her bangs out of her big, pale blue eyes with a jerk of her head, and looked around.

Everybody had greeted her arrival, then returned to their conversations while she put her things down. She scanned the familiar faces for the interesting people. Donovan the Host was tall and sheepish, and though she did like talking to him, he conversed with two acquaintances she didn't care for and a couple strangers. They were standing by the counter where the drinks were. He was being more animated than usual; giddy from hosting, or already tipsy? Delia couldn't tell if his face was flushed.

She spied her people lazing about on a couple couches which sat on the other side of a dining table in the center of the room. She headed over and said hi, claiming an armchair, then went back to the dining table to pile up on snacks.

Donovan had done well in gathering party food -- he always went overboard with attention to detail. Before her lay two halves of pizza (one veggie and one meaty) a dozen kinds of savory pastries, cheese and crackers, a practically untouched bowl of nachos, a whole pan of brownies (an empty pan next to it), some store-bought bready chocolate cake, and a store-bought pie, not even taken out of its package yet. There were also a couple dusty bottles of sweet dessert wine (people never go for the stuff, for some reason) -- plus the usual small paper plates, cups, utensils, etc.

Delia grabbed a dinner plate from one of Donovan's cabinets and hurriedly stacked it with a slice of each pizza, two of those pastry things, a bunch of nachos (about as many as a person would take fries, dig?), and a pair of brownies. She didn't care if it looked like too much -- she knew she could play it off as cute, that she took so much. She ate one of the slices of pizza in a few minutes, on the spot. She took big bites and folded it at times so that she could shove it down fast.

She returned to her armchair and tried to gauge the drunkenness of her peers. They were all very coherent, but warm; she figured they were a beer or two in. Her friend Andy was playing with a box-of-pins toy -- the kind where a hundred small, blunt metal pins can be pressed onto any object and mold to the shape, but which lose the shape if you turn it over; if you haven't seen one, forget it. She nudged him and suggested in low and sly intonations that they shotgun a beer. Andy was game, and only on his second drink, so a couple minutes later she put aside the gutted can and cracked another. From this she drank in frequent, large gulps as the conversation carried insularly on about hip hop she'd never heard of and old times she hadn't been present at, so she polished off the pizza and nachos, in alternating bites. She fell into kind of a daze, which could have lasted ten as easily as twenty minutes. Delia took a bite of quiche, then a sip of beer, then another bite, then a sip of beer, and so on, absently and in even amounts, never really thinking about whether she was getting full. Soon she was alternating bites of brownie and thought a little about the unusual combinations of flavors in her mouth.

When Ferdinand arrived, she snapped out of it. Delia was glad that he was there because he liked to sit back from group conversation and had great, clever commentary he'd toss her way. In fact, she was a bit excited that he'd arrived, thinking of some romantic possibilities, thinking of his unusually colored eyes and his sometimes mysterious conversation. He downed a couple shots of whiskey with the standing kids, then joined Delia who was now into her third drink and feeling a bit numb. His jibes continued to liven her up, and he soon suggested they get some snacks.

He mostly took cake and brownies, and quite a lot. Delia wasn't ravenous but she took some of the same kind of thing. They went back and talked about eighties music and actually had some input in the conversation at large, while absently snacking and drinking. Though the conversation would shift around, they continued to drink and talk for an hour or so, by the end of which she'd finished her fifth drink. The more drunk Delia got, the less she noticed that she was eating. With a red face and goofy grin, Ferdinand was soon saying how she just had to eat his piece of cake because he couldn't. The more drunk Ferdinand got, the more he would offer her food. Delia was getting a building excitement through this relationship -- she had a tipsy intuition about an intimacy between them, an intimacy about their joking about food and eating, a sex appeal to his encouragement that she eat, a sex appeal to eating... She was getting a little wet when she put the spongy cake in her mouth and washed it down with the thick bubbly beer.