chapter 1

. It had been a rough week. Honestly, it had been a rough month. Oh, who was she kidding? The whole past year had sucked.

She'd just gotten the financial reports of her company that morning, and things were looking worse than the previous quarter. She was the president and CEO of a small advertising agency, which had been in the black for the past 3 years, up until the recession hit. Things had been on shaky ground since. She hadn't had to let anyone go yet, but there was no telling how much longer that would be the case.

A week ago, her assistant, Amy, had quit so she could have her first baby. Kate adored Amy. She'd been with her since she started the company. It would take months to get a new assistant trained to the level she needed her (or him?) to be. She'd begged Amy to come back after a maternity leave--she had even offered her six months!--but Amy planned to be a stay-at-home mom now. Good luck with that, Kate thought bitterly to herself. Why wasn't she the one having the baby?

She wasn't sure she even wanted a baby, to be honest. It just felt like the thing she was supposed to be doing with her life at this point. She was 36, divorced as of last December from Jeremy, a successful lawyer, and there was no one in her life right now. She could have had anyone she wanted, of course. She was beautiful--tall, thin, slightly muscular--it was obvious she put in her time at the gym. She had perfect C-cup breasts, a tight, round little ass, long, dark hair, and striking blue eyes. She was the kind of woman who tended to intimidate both men and women alike, until they got to know her and found out how nice she really was.

The problem was, she had never allowed herself be with the right kind of guy. She'd dated lots of men like Jeremy through high school and college. You know the type--the jocks, the student body presidents, the guys that will spend as much time in front of the mirror as their wives or girlfriends. She had liked Jeremy, but she wasn't sure she ever loved Jeremy. Everything had felt like a competition between them. Who was the better cook? Who was more up on current events? Who was more successful in business? Who spent the most time at the gym? Actually, that last one was the real sticking point for her.

The fact of the matter was that Kate liked bigger guys. Not bigger as in muscular. You know, bigger. Chubbier. Alright, fatter. That was something Jeremy was never going to be. She used to have dreams of bringing home dozens of doughnuts and stuffing him with them, watching his belly swell while she massaged it lovingly. She would wake up extremely horny, then come crashing back to reality when she realized her fit husband was sleeping peacefully beside her. She never shared any of this with him, of course. She never shared it with anyone.

They had tried to make their marriage work for five long years. The funny thing was they looked like they were the perfect couple. Friends and family couldn't believe that they were breaking up. But their sex life was always just ho-hum. Jeremy seemed just as disinterested in sex as she was. What was he looking for? What was his "type"? She'd heard through their mutual friends that he was dating someone seriously again. She wondered what she was like...

She knew that she'd done this to herself. She thought back to her first boyfriend, Kyle, in 8th grade. Even now, Kate smiled when she thought about him. Kyle was cute, with a fantastic sense of humor and even better body--soft, chubby, with a big bubble butt. She remembered their magic two weeks together, especially the school dance where she had gotten to slow-dance with him fifteen times. (Those were the days--junior high, when the DJ played more slow songs than fast ones.) She remembered the way he felt, her body melting into his squishy belly. Feeling bold, she even grabbed his butt a couple of times. But, alas, two weeks was all it took for taunts of "Katie loves fatties" to convince her she had to swear off fat guys. Right after she broke up with him, Kyle got together with the sweet, slightly overweight girl that had lived down the street from Kate growing up. She would watch them wistfully as they walked down the halls hand in hand and couldn't help but hate them both, even though she knew it was her own dumb fault for caring so much about what other people thought.

She hadn't dated a remotely fat guy since. The closest she ever got was flirtations with random men she would meet--in the bookstore, at the deli, at the gym. She loved to work out right behind a big guy sweating it out on the treadmill in front of her, and imagine what sex with him would be like. So pathetic. She'd also started coming up with every possible reason to visit her pharmacy, because she'd discovered that the new pharmacist looked like Brad Pitt, had Brad decided to become a Krispy Kreme connoisseur-cum-pharmacist instead of an actor. He had this big, pudgy belly he was trying--and failing--to hide under his lab coat. He also appeared to be approximately 23 years old. Ugh. Not only did she like them fat, but she seemed to like them younger and younger, too. She blamed it on Kyle--if it weren't for her doomed 8th grade crush, maybe she would be able to be in a functional relationship now. She wondered what he was up to now. She could probably Google him or find him on Facebook, but...what would be the point? Plus, she worried that she would find that he'd slimmed down, and she preferred to remember him as he was.