chapter 1

My friend Maria called me up the other day and asked me to come over. She said she wanted to tell me all about this new guy she’d been seeing. Always loving to hear some juicy details about my friends relationships I rushed right over. Besides which, I was also seeing someone new and I was excited to tell her all about it too.

When I got there I gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, Serena!” she said to me warmly as she showed me in and sat me down at her kitchen table. She had put out some coffee and pastries for us to munch on while we dished.

“So tell me about this guy,” I said to her after we’d exchanged mild pleasantries for a while. “Who is he? What’s his name? How did you meet him?”

“Okay,” she said, “remember that party I went to a few weeks ago?”

“Oh, you mean the one I couldn’t go to because I had to go out of town for my cousin’s wedding?”

“Yes, exactly.”

Maria and I often go to big-girl parties together. We’re both big girls ourselves, and we have a little crew of big girls we like to hang out and have fun with. There are always lots of hot guys at these events, and a lot of our girlfriends all chase after the same types of guys. You know, the typical tall and muscular guy with a slender waist and toned abs. Maria and I were the only big girls in our clique who were actually into big guys.

“You met him at the big-girl party?” I asked.

“It was like something out of a dream,” she said, her eyes glowing and her smile stretched from ear to ear. “I saw him over the buffet line, and he was popping food in his mouth before he put it on his plate.”

“Oh, I do that too,” I said to her.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Of course, you want to make sure that you’re going to like whatever it is before you load up a plateful of it. Right?”

“Right. So anyway — we started talking, and drinking and eating, and the next thing you know he was calling me up, and we’ve been hanging out like every other night ever since then.”

“Every other night, huh?” I asked.

“Yeah, just about.”

Whenever I heard one of my girlfriends say that their man is only coming by once every two or three days a little alarm bell would go off in the back of my head. Thinking to myself, “Girl, he’s got you on a schedule. You better watch out because you’re not the only chick he’s got in his stable.” But at this moment I chose to hold my tongue — not just because I could see how happy my friend was, but also because the new guy I was seeing was only coming around about every other day himself.

“So what have you guys been doing?” I asked her, even though I pretty much already knew the answer.

“Oh, well you know me,” she said, her cheeks flush as her wide grin grew even wider.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know you — so how many pounds have you put on him so far?”

Maria and I are both feeders. In fact, it’s kind of how we know each other. We both belong to this online community of female feeders from all over the world. We started chatting on there, and eventually we realized that we both live in the same city. So we started hanging out, going to dances and bashes together, and of course sharing our love for feeding and fattening up our men.

“He’s actually gaining faster than any other guy I’ve ever dated,” she said. “It’s amazing! He’s getting so huge!”

“What have you been feeding him?” I asked.

“He loves smothered pork chops,” she said, “and you know my pork chops are off the hook.”

“Yes they are!” I said. “My new guy really likes pork chops too.”

“Oh!” She exclaimed. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone new also. Who is he? Where did you meet?”

“Well,” I said, “I met him at the grocery store a few weeks ago; it was right after I got back from my cousin’s wedding actually. We were in the produce section, and he was standing there eating grapes as he put them into his basket.”

“Oh yeah,” Maria interjected. “I do that all the time.”

“Me too,” I said. “You don’t want to bring home a bad bunch of grapes. Do you?”

“Oh, hell no.”

“So anyway,” I went on, “we started talking and hitting it off — the next thing you know, I’m back at his place, sitting on top of his giant belly and feeding him grapes.”

“Oh, he’s a big guy too?”

“Of course,” I said. “I don’t have time to mess around with no skinny guys!”

“I hear you, girl!”

“So anyway,” I said, “We’ve been seeing a lot of each other — not everyday, but almost everyday — and every time we get together he just chows down like a true champion.”

“Really?”

“This boy can eat,” I told her. “And he’s getting bigger by the day.”

“That’s hot,” Maria said. Then we both sat quietly for a moment. An uneasiness fell over the room, like there was something we were both seeing but were afraid to say it.

“So,” I finally said, breaking the tension, “when’s the last time you saw your new guy?”

“Just last night,” she answered. “When did you see your new man last?”

“Night before last,” I answered. “He wanted to go to that new all-you-can-eat place downtown.”

“Oh yeah, I know the one,” said Maria. “Me and my man went there just a few nights ago.”

“It’s pretty good, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, “It was good, and Derek really loved it. He ate like twenty plates of food. He’s so — “

“Wait!” I interrupted. “Your man’s name is Derek?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“That’s my new man’s name.”

We sat perfectly still for a moment, our gazes locked. We knew the drill; we knew what had to happen.

“Okay,” I said. “On the count of three — one, two, three.”

On three we both drew our cell phones out like gunslingers from the old west, and revealed the photos we had of our respective new beaus to one another. Just as we both had suspected, they were in fact one and the same.

“Gosh,” Maria said. “Not only is it the same guy but he sent us both the same exact picture.”

It was an adorable picture of him at a family barbecue, dressed in white with barbecue sauce all over his face. I wouldn’t say that I was heart broken. Maybe just a little disappointed. We’d only been hanging out for a few weeks, and I really liked him. I could see that Maria was really disappointed and perhaps a bit hurt as well.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “I mean — are we okay?”

“Oh yeah, girl,” she said, putting her hand on top of mine. “I’m not mad at you. He played us both.”

“It would seem that way.”

We both put our elbows on the table and our heads in our hands, letting out a long sigh. Then we sat there quietly for what seemed like a really long time. Suddenly a thought struck my mind like a bolt of lightening, and a little gleam of light seemed to shine on both of our faces as we once again made eye contact with each other.

“Hey,” said Maria. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

I turned and looked at her with a mischievous glint in my eye.

“I’m way ahead of you, girl.”