Chapter 1

Sophia had dozed off. I didn’t blame her. The flight out of Philadelphia had been delayed for nearly 3 hours and the sun was starting to set as we made the drive from Phoenix up into the red rocks of Sedona. I looked over briefly from the driver’s seat of our rental SUV. The ruby light of the slowly setting sun lit on her chestnut hair and the shadows played on her adorable double chin. She let out a tiny snore which made me smile as I turned my attention back to the road and the ever increasing elevation.

Two weeks after her 30th birthday she was prettier than the day I met her as a funny 21-year-old. It was love at first sight as she came bounding out of my younger brother’s car, part of his new entourage. Her hair was shorter then and she wore her glasses more often, but honestly it was her figure that stopped me cold. Hardly five feet tall, thick in all the right places with that hint of babyfat that you could tell might get her in trouble later on, and heavy breasts squeezed into a too-tight tee. We dated for a few years, got married, and our second daughter would turn two later in the summer.

Soph put on a little weight in the first few years of our relationship as we learned to let our guard down with each other, getting confident in our relationship. The soft belly turned into a pooch, her wardrobe rotated into a larger size (and then another larger size), her already large breasts filling and then overflowing her bras. I loved every change, every new curve. It only added to her air of casual cuteness. She knew it, too, and made only the most modest efforts to diet, keeping her weight gain to a manageable pace rather than trying to lose pounds and inches.

Pregnancy changed things, though, and for the first time I started to see resemblances to her mother, a much larger -- but hardly unattractive -- woman. That very day she woke me up, showing me the two blue lines on the plastic pregnancy test as I groggily tried to understand what was going on, that day she changed her diet. She made breakfast for both of us – eggs with cheese, toast, sausage, leftover baked potatoes cut up and roasted – and she went back for seconds. “Eating for two” she said with a smile, patting her by then undeniably chubby tummy. But she didn’t stop there. She made herself a hot fudge sundae – well before ten in the morning – and smiled as she finished it while standing at the kitchen counter, squirting more whipped cream as she ate down to the last dribbles.

Not every meal was that decadent, but I paid attention to her weight as we went for regular checkups with her OB GYN. At her first visit she was around 135 lbs – chubby for a girl her height and build – but by the ninth month she was tipping the scales at over 200 lbs. 212 if I remember correctly. Her whole body had changed, some ways unsurprisingly like her belly and boobs and face, but other ways a little interesting – for a girl who never had much of a butt, Soph grew a booty that completely matched her growth in other parts of her body. The comparisons to the rest of her family were impossible at that point. Her parents and younger sister were all happy, gregarious people who loved to eat, and it showed.
But all good things come to an end as other great things begin, and Soph slowly lost a lot of the baby weight as she stayed home to take care of our daughter. By Charlotte’s first birthday, Sophia had lost 60 lbs. or more and was comfortable with her weight. Six months later we were pregnant again.

Sophia never got as big with the second pregnancy, hovering just under 200 lbs., but she couldn’t lose as much either. She never told me what she weighed, and I never asked, but she was undeniably a big girl, with a full, hanging belly that threatened to hide her panties at the right angle, adorable rolls along her waist, a fullness everywhere. Even that voluptuous booty that had mysteriously disappeared in the year after our daughter was born had come back in full.