chapter 1

Reaching the top of the stairs, Natasha leaned against the bannister to steady herself. She puffed her cheeks out and exhaled through her mouth, fanning herself with her free hand.

“Fuck, we need a place on the ground floor,” she said. She could feel her heart fluttering in her chest as she sucked in air.

“Says the skinny one,” Natasha’s partner, Laura, replied facetiously, stepping aside to let the younger woman into their apartment.

Natasha chuckled and smacked her too-large gut as she sidled into the second floor walkup. “Yeah, skinny, sure.”

She may not have been quite as heavy as Laura, but she was pushing 210 pounds on a five-foot-three frame and under no illusions about how unhealthy her weight was.

“How was your day,” she asked, regaining her breath.

“Long, but otherwise good,” Laura replied. The older women was an accountant, and with tax season looming, she had begun to put in extra time at the office. As usual, the sedentary work and long hours were taking their toll on her waistline.

“How many lunches?” Natasha asked with a smirk, copping a feel of Laura’s ass as she closed the door.

“Two actually,” she admitted. Her face, already rosey from high blood pressure, reddened further. But her full lips twitched upwards in a smirk. Her delicate features looked as though they belonged on a model or actress, not an overindulged number cruncher, and when she was amused, it lit up her face.

“Really?” Natasha couldn’t suppress her laugh. Her question had been a joke.

Walking away towards the living room, Laura looked back over her shoulder, chuckling self-consciously. “Yeah, McDonalds and then KFC.” She eased herself down onto the couch, adding with a hint amusement, “Dr. Hertz would been so mad.”

Natasha knew that, at 36, Laura’s cholesterol was through the roof. Her doctor had warned that her heart health was on its way to becoming a real problem, and seated on the couch with her fingers interlaced over her bulging midriff, she looked every bit of her 250 pounds. Always prone to carrying her weight in her belly, the obese brunette had spent her adult life steadily packing on layers of excess fat until her body became apple-shaped in the most literal sense possible.

“Yeah, he seriously would be,” Natasha raised her eyebrows as she sat down next to Laura, relieved to take the weight off of her own, overfed frame off her feet. After the rigors of walking from her car and up the stairs, sitting down felt like bliss.

Chronically sedentary, she had been feeling her stamina slowly, but steadily decline over the last couple years. Looking down at her legs, which were on display in a pairs of linen shorts, she reflected that they could not possibly have looked more toneless. The smooth, brown skin of her thighs was unsullied by any hint of muscle.

“I wouldn’t feel too badly,” she said, cheekily. “We both know that you’ve got a wicked fast-food addiction.” Then, after a paused, she kneaded Laura’s fatty flank. The flesh was surprisingly firm--the product of a buildup of hard visceral fat from a lifetime of bad eating and no exercise.

“Don’t I know it,” Laura chuckled. “Gotta have that grease and salt.”

“Speaking of grease and salt, what do we want to do about dinner?” Natasha wondered aloud.

“Hmm… order take-out?” Laura smirked visibly, still visibly amused by the hedonism implied by the evening’s conversation.

Natasha, for her part, needed no encouragement. “Neither one of us should be eating that junk,” she admonished, patty her own belly. “But of course I’m not going to turn down an offer like that.”