Apple Pie and the Art of Seduction

Chapter 1: The Insult

It was one of these boring weekend winter afternoons, when even the thin girls look a bit fat in their puffer coats. Alex noticed them, as he was out shopping in the city center. He was in need of fresh T-shirts and had bought a pair of slim fits. He had a slim figure, so that was the right size, but above that he liked the feeling of the fabric enclosing him after a meal. A tight shirt is a treat, he thought.

A little while ago he noticed he didn’t have the slim figure anymore he used to have. At first he simply felt it: after finishing a big meal, he felt his shirt was getting tight. Later that evening, he watched himself in the mirror and he saw that his belly wasn’t hollow anymore. It was filling up, only slightly though. He pressed his hands on his belly and tried to feel a curve, but there wasn’t anything to feel, really. Alex understood why people still called him slim, and thought they were still telling the truth.

This afternoon he was walking an old cobbled street, lined with shops and tearooms. It was around three o’clock: lunch was already a few hours behind, but dinner was still far away. he had bought himself some fries for lunch. Something warm, he thought, to fill me up. It was a bigger lunch for him than usual. He did have a little bit of that sensation of overeating. His belly was pushing against his slim T-shirt - one the very ones that needed replacing.

Alex passed a tearoom. First he saw his own reflection in the window: a tall, slim figure. I’m quite OK, he silently said to himself. I could be a bit bigger and more impressive, he thought. Going to the gym didn’t do it for him. All that he got from pushing the weights was a lower weight of his own, but not more muscles.
Behind his reflection he saw what this tearoom was well-known for: homebaked cakes and pies. The soft dough and sugary coatings of apple pie, cream pie and blueberry cake shone through the window, right through his reflection, as if they were in his belly. I could have myself a piece of pie, Alex thought. It’s still early, and I do love cream.

Alex entered the tearoom and found himself a table. He looked around: there were a lot of elderly couples, some friend groups, a few people on their own. The atmosphere was cozy and warm. The smell of freshly-baked apple pie awakened his appetite. He would choose that one, with cream. Yes please.
The waitress came into view. A bright girl with long red hair, cute glasses and Alex wanted to look at her face, as of politeness, but felt his eyes were noticing not just her pretty face but her whole body. And his mind told him something that overrode all other thoughts: this girl was fat. This was a girl with a serious belly. Alex noticed she had a muffin top, which on one side had made her T-shirt crawl up a bit, showing a few centimeters of soft skin. Her arms were stretching her black T-shirt (‘Come back for more’, it read), and he saw her boobs were clearly held in place by a tight bra: they were pressed to her body, making them look even bigger than they probably were. Her face was round, with a chin that was about to morph into a roll of fat. Underneath, her thighs were trying to destroy her skinny jeans.

Alex noticed all this in a split second, and he also noticed something else. He noticed that he liked all of this very much. Maybe it was because of the fat fries that were still keeping his belly stuffed, maybe it was the smell of the apple pie. In any way he realized that he was irrationally attracted to her.

There was no way to transform that attraction into real contact, though. Their conversation was, of course, professional. Hi there, what can I get you? I’ll have the apple pie, please, with cream. And a coffee. Thank you, coming right up. That was all the conversation they had.

As Alex was waiting for his order, he felt his eyes following the waitress everywhere she went. The cafe had two floors, and she was constantly moving up and down serving the customers on the second floor as well. Sometimes she went to the basement, where a sign said the toilets were, to get some supplies.
Now she was back behind the counter, preparing his apple pie. He saw her adding the cream with a spoon, sticking it in her mouth to finish the leftovers before putting it in the sink. I can see what kind of behavior led to you getting fat, he thought. And I don’t mind it at all.

One of the elderly couples had now finished their tea, and they approached the counter to pay the bill. They struck up a friendly conversation while she was getting their bill ready.
‘You’re walking an awful lot here, my dear,’ the woman said to her. ‘Going up and down all those stairs.’
‘That’s right,’ laughed the waitress politely. ‘It’s good for my health.’
‘This way you don’t need to go to the gym,’ the woman said.
‘Ha ha, no indeed. I can lose weight just by working.’

What a nasty thing to say, Alex thought. He thought this woman was fatshaming the waitress. It’s not that she needed to be reminded of her being overweight, he thought. She probably knows, and chances are her weight is troubling her. No need to focus her attention on her extra kilos while she is working. Why should she be told that she would need to go to the gym? What a nasty thing to say indeed.

The waitress didn’t seem to mind, though. Or she didn’t show it. In any case, the couple left a generous tip and left, after having received a bright ‘goodbye!’ from the waitress, and she carried on preparing Alex’ pie and coffee.

The conversation with the customer had altered Alex’ mind though: all he could think of now was the waitress and her fat. He told himself that it would be an honorable thing to see if she was OK with the customer’s remark. To comfort her, as a sensitive gentleman. But subconsciously, he was after something completely else: he wanted to be near that fat body of hers. He wanted to touch it. To have it and to hold it.