Chapter 1 - "two fat girls"

“God, what is happening to me?” Constance bemoaned woefully, examining her physique in the mirror. “Nothing fits me anymore! I’m getting huge!”

She stood in the middle of the small studio apartment she shared with her roommate and business partner Alexandria (Alex for short) surrounded by discarded clothing littered about the floor as she tried desperately to find a well-fitting outfit to wear. No matter how hard she tried to suck in her ever-expanding gut, her flabbiness had become undeniable and could not be easily contained.

“Relax,” said Alex, who reclined in her bed, wearing a tight-fitting tee shirt and stretch pants and munching on doughnuts. “You look fine. So your clothes are fitting a little tighter; what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal,” decried Constance, “is that your damn, stupid delicious doughnuts are making me gain a crazy amount of weight!”

Standing there in nothing but a bra and panties, she gave her soft and rounded tummy a hard slap that reverberated through the small room and caused waves of fat rolls to ripple playfully.

“Look at me!” she went on. “I’m getting so… so… “

“Fat?” Alex chimed in, completing her flustered friends sentence for her.

“Ugh!” Constance huffed, “I don’t even want to say that word.”

Alex, herself a hefty woman with long dark hair and big brown eyes, had grown up being fat all of her life and was already quite accustomed to life as a plus-size woman. Constance on the other hand had always been a very slim and petite blonde with long skinny legs and a tiny waist; the shock of seeing herself ballooning out of control was taking a toll on her otherwise cheery disposition.

“What word?” Alex teased, knowing full well what her friend was talking about.

“You know,” Constance replied, “the ‘F-word.’”

“You mean FAT?”

“Yes,” Constance snapped back. “I’m not ready to call myself that yet.”

Constance reached for another pair of jeans that she had folded up on the edge of her bed, and attempted to jump into them, tugging mercilessly at the waistline as a mound of fluffy white flesh simultaneously pushed them downward. The struggle was futile; they just weren’t budging.

“Dude, you’re totally going to rip those jeans,” Alex tried to warn her. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a loud tearing sound pierced the air, and Constance stood holding two shredded pieces of denim in her hands. She began to weep.

“Come on,” Alex said consolingly, “it’s not that bad.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Constance whinnied through her teardrops. “You’re used to this sort of thing because you’ve always been… well… “

“Fat?”

“Yeah. That.”

Constance slumped down on to the edge of her bed positioned adjacent to her roommates and buried her head in her hands as she cried. Her big belly unfolded out across her lap and her meaty thighs wiggled as her plush body sank deep into the mattress.

“Oh my God!” Alex cried out. “What a drama queen!”

Alex propped herself up from the place where she had been laying comfortably and took a seat next to her sobbing companion, putting an arm around her back and pulling her head into her gigantic breasts. Constance’s tears soaked into Alex’s tee shirt as she wept uncontrollably.

“You’re making such a big deal out of nothing,” said Alex as she stroked her chubby fingers through the soft golden tresses of Constance’s hair. “There are far worse things in life than being fat.”

“Like what?”

Alex took in a deep breath and turned her head up to look at the ceiling, as she knew that this was an opportunity to speak openly with her friend about some of the personal hardships she had been through in her own life.

“Listen,” she said, “before you and I met in college, you know I didn’t come from the same kind privilege as you. My family was really poor and we struggled a lot.”

“I know,” Constance said as she lifted her head to look at her friend, wiping the tears from her eyes. “You’ve told me this before.”

“What you might not realize,” Alex went on, “is that these doughnuts that you love so much - the ones that we’re trying to build a business around - I learned to make them because when I was a kid and I had to take care of my little brother and sister while my mom was out working and my dad was out God-knows-where, I had to cook for them and the only thing I could find on the shelves was some flour, sugar and a can of bacon grease my mom had kept under the sink.”

“Bacon grease,” Constance gasped. “Is that the secret ingredient?”

“One of them,” Alex confessed. “Over the years I perfected the recipe, and now anyone who tries my doughnuts will be hooked for life.”

“You’re not joking!” Constance concurred. “They’re amazing, Alex!”

“But you know, they are a labor of love and they were born out of some really hard times.”

In that moment Constance started to feel a little silly for being so upset. When she thought about how hard it must have been for Alex to have to learn how to cook for her younger siblings and take care of them essentially all on her own it just gave her that much more respect for her, especially when she took into account the relative prosperity and privilege of her own background.

“And all of this right here,” Alex said, patting herself on her own bulk of blubber under her shirt, “it wasn’t exactly by choice, but I’m not ashamed of it at all. All of this means that I am blessed, and I am a survivor. I wear my fat like a badge of honor.”

Constance cracked a smile as she hung her head down and looked at her bare belly, sticking out over her legs. It was getting so big now that she almost couldn’t see the ends of her kneecaps.

“I guess I didn’t think it was going to be this hard,” Constance said softly. “When we moved to the big city to pursue our dreams of starting this business together, I thought we would be an overnight success.”

“Nothing happens overnight, sweetie,” Alex said, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “At least nothing good does.”

Pushing herself up onto her thick and chunky legs, Alex reached forward and pulled her friend Constance up as well. “Come on, Connie,” she said cheerily, “let’s get dressed. The doughnut shop isn’t going to open itself.”

“Okay,” Constance said with a smile. “Thank you for being a good friend to me, Alex. I’m very grateful and blessed to be a part of your life.”

Reaching out she gave her friend a big warm hug, pressing her nearly-nude body tightly up against her. Alex, not normally one for getting overly emotional or sentimental reluctantly complied with her friends display of affection but quickly pulled away after a moment.

“Come on,” she repeated. “Let’s get dressed. I’ll let you borrow some of my old clothes - and I’ll take you shopping at the big-girl store later tonight.”

“The big-girl store?” Constance replied, her face again melting back into a dreary glare.

“Let’s get to work, fatty!” Alex teased, poking Constance in her soft mound of flab on her gut. “You can buy me breakfast on the way.”