At twenty-two, Rhodes Lawson had the sort of body people assumed he worked harder to maintain than he actually did. He was six-one and 185 pounds, broad through the shoulders and chest from years of baseball, with strong thighs and the naturally substantial backside that had survived even after his final college season ended. His stomach was flat, his waist narrow, his face lean beneath thick sandy-blond hair he usually let grow a little too long between haircuts.
Baseball had left its most noticeable mark below his waist. Rhodes had always been thicker through the legs and seat than the rest of his frame suggested, something Molly had appreciated since long before they were married. She had told him more than once. Sometimes she’d catch him pulling on fitted khakis and linger a little too long with her eyes. Rhodes always noticed. He usually just grinned.
The rest of his physique required remarkably little maintenance. Rhodes possessed the kind of metabolism that had allowed twenty-two years of dietary responsibility to remain mostly theoretical. He ate when he was hungry, stopped when he wasn’t, occasionally forgot lunch entirely, and had never once considered the calorie content of anything.
This suited his personality. Very little bothered Rhodes. He had played baseball because he liked baseball. When college ended, he put his glove in a closet and moved on. He took an entry-level sales job because the people seemed nice and the office was twelve minutes from their apartment. When Molly asked where he imagined them living in five years, Rhodes thought for a moment and said somewhere with a garage.
Molly planned. Rhodes figured things out.
Their wedding demonstrated the difference perfectly. When the florist delivered the wrong centerpieces, Molly nearly cried. Rhodes studied them.
“They’re the wrong flowers.”
Rhodes kissed her forehead. “Then we’re lucky I’m not in charge.”
Four months after the wedding, they finally took the honeymoon they’d postponed because of work: seven nights at an all-inclusive resort on the Mexican coast.
Rhodes became fascinated by the phrase all-inclusive almost immediately.
“So I can order whatever I want?”
“That is generally what it means.”
“And it’s already paid for?”
Rhodes looked toward the oceanfront restaurant. “Seems financially irresponsible not to eat a lot.”
“That is not how that works.”
Their first breakfast lasted nearly an hour. Molly returned from the buffet with eggs, fruit and toast. Rhodes came back balancing two plates. One held an omelet, bacon and potatoes. The other contained pancakes, French toast and several pastries he’d apparently been unable to choose between.
Molly stared. “You don’t even eat breakfast at home.”
“Nobody makes this at home.”
Rhodes considered this. “When?”
He grinned and poured syrup over his pancakes.
Twenty minutes later he’d finished almost everything. He leaned back, satisfied, and looked toward the buffet.
“I could get used to this.”
“You’ve been here one day.”
Rhodes rubbed a hand over his still-flat stomach. “I might gain ten pounds this week.”
“You want to gain ten pounds?”
That surprised her. Rhodes had never complained about his body. He wasn’t even especially thin. Baseball had left him broad through the shoulders and sturdy through the legs. At 185 he looked athletic, young and solid.
Still, Molly could picture another ten or twenty pounds on him.
Rhodes caught her. “What?”
Molly smiled and gave his backside a quick pat. “Maybe a few of those pounds can end up here.”
He looked over his shoulder. “You like it that much?”
Rhodes considered this information with exaggerated seriousness. “Well.”
“Why did you say that like you’re taking notes?”
Rhodes picked up his empty plate. “Apparently I have a goal now.”
Molly laughed as he headed back toward the buffet.
She had no idea how consequential the joke would become.
Rhodes embraced the ten-pound challenge with exactly the amount of discipline Molly should have expected from him: none. He simply ate.
Breakfasts became enormous. Lunch involved appetizers because, as Rhodes kept pointing out, they were already paid for. There were drinks beside the pool, snacks delivered to their chairs, dinners spread across several courses and room service whenever Rhodes decided dinner had happened too early to reasonably sustain a person until morning.
On their third night, Molly woke after midnight and found him sitting cross-legged on the bed eating nachos. Rhodes looked up and offered her one.
“Where did those come from?”
“We ate three hours ago.”
Rhodes ate another chip. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Molly looked at the half-empty plate. “Apparently.”
Rhodes smiled and held another toward her.
By day four he’d found the fitness-center scale.
Molly discovered him standing on it in his swim trunks.
Rhodes immediately stepped off. “Nothing.”
“You’re weighing yourself.”
“That is generally what these are for.”
She caught the display before it reset. “Five pounds?”
Rhodes smiled. “You sound proud.”
The first few pounds looked good on him. Barely visible, but Molly could feel the difference. His stomach had lost a little of its hard flatness. His thighs filled his swim trunks differently. And the part she’d jokingly requested additional investment in appeared to be participating enthusiastically.
Two days later, Molly watched Rhodes pull on khaki shorts for dinner. He buttoned them, paused and turned sideways.
She examined him. The waist still fit. The seat didn’t fit quite as generously as it had when they arrived.
Rhodes saw her reflection. “You’re doing the look.”
Rhodes glanced over his shoulder. “Seriously?”
“Your ten pounds have priorities.”
Rhodes laughed. “I’m up seven.”
“And apparently six went there.”
Rhodes looked pleased. “I’m beginning to think this experiment has strong institutional support.”
On their last morning, the scale read 194.2.
Molly caught it immediately. “You’re disappointed.”
“It wasn’t a legally binding contract.”
Rhodes stepped off and studied himself. The difference was subtle. His shoulders looked a touch fuller, his waist slightly less narrow, with the faintest softness at his stomach. He turned sideways and smiled at his reflection.
Before leaving, they wandered into the resort gift shop. Molly looked at sunglasses while Rhodes drifted toward a rack of resort shirts.
One caught his attention: cream-colored, short sleeves, small blue palms.
He began flipping through the sizes.
Medium. Large. XL. XXL. Then 3XL. 4XL.
Finally Rhodes pulled out a 5XL.
Rhodes held it against himself. At barely under two hundred pounds, the thing looked absurd. The fabric extended far beyond either side of him and the hem fell nearly halfway to his knees.
“Imagine me fitting into this.”
Molly laughed. “You’d be enormous.”
Rhodes looked at the shirt.
Something about the way he said it made her pause.
He immediately returned the shirt to the rack. “I said ten pounds.”
Rhodes pulled out a large. “This is my size.”
Rhodes walked toward the register while Molly followed, laughing.
The 5XL went back on the rack.
Three weeks after they returned home, Rhodes walked out of the bathroom wearing boxer briefs while Molly was reading in bed.
He looked genuinely satisfied.
Molly laughed. “Congratulations.”
Rhodes shrugged. “Nothing.”
Saturday morning, Molly made herself eggs. Rhodes wandered into the kitchen and looked at her plate.
She stared at him. “We’re done.”
Rhodes opened the refrigerator. “Those are unrelated.”
“You didn’t eat breakfast before.”
Molly watched him take out orange juice.
“You want to keep going.”
He poured a glass. “Maybe another ten.”
“You said that very quickly.”
Rhodes noticed. “You’re encouraging me.”
And that was more or less the end of the ten-pound experiment.
Another ten became twenty. Twenty became forty. Not because Rhodes developed a plan. He simply stopped making the small decisions that had kept him at 185 without ever realizing they were decisions.
He ate breakfast. He ordered what sounded good. He stopped leaving half his fries. He discovered he loved dessert. He finished Molly’s food when she was done. He began suggesting appetizers before they’d opened the menus.
And the more he ate, the more he seemed capable of eating.
By Christmas, his brothers noticed immediately.
Nolan opened their parents’ front door and stared at Rhodes standing outside holding a pie. He’d grown considerably since the honeymoon. His green sweater followed a chest that had thickened and curved over a new belly. The fitted jeans he’d worn at the wedding had disappeared from rotation; the pair he wore now was wider through thighs and seat that had expanded particularly enthusiastically.
Rhodes smiled. “Merry Christmas to you too.”
Grant appeared around the corner and stopped.
Rhodes sighed. “Apparently we’re doing this.”
Grant looked toward Molly.
Rhodes pointed at himself. “Don’t blame her. This has been largely self-directed.”
Their mother reacted more softly. She hugged Molly first and then Rhodes. Her arms went around him, paused, and then she stepped back to look again.
“Rhodes. You really have gained weight.”
She put a hand against his side as though verifying that what she saw was actually there. “You were always so athletic.”
Rhodes smiled. “I’m an ex-jock now.”
“You stopped playing baseball six months ago.”
“Retirement hit me hard.”
His father laughed from the kitchen.
At dinner, Rhodes ate more than everyone else. Not theatrically. That was simply how he ate now. He finished his plate, filled it again, ate what Molly didn’t finish and eventually returned for more potatoes.
Nolan watched until Rhodes finally caught him.
“You going to do that all day?”
Rhodes took another bite. “That’s flattering.”
“You used to forget lunch.”
That was the problem with teasing Rhodes. He gave his brothers almost nothing to work with. Call him fat? He agreed. Point out that he was eating too much? Probably true. Tell him his clothes were getting larger? He’d bought them.
And, increasingly, Rhodes seemed to enjoy the attention.
The first-anniversary photograph startled Molly.
Not because she hadn’t noticed Rhodes getting bigger. She had watched every pound arrive. But photographs compressed time differently.
She put their wedding picture beside one taken the week before.
Wedding Rhodes was 185 pounds: athletic, lean-faced, narrow-waisted.
Anniversary Rhodes was nearly ninety pounds heavier.
Same blond hair. Same blue eyes. Same relaxed smile.
Completely different body.
Rhodes was lying across the couch when Molly called him over. He protested that he was comfortable but eventually stood and looked at the photographs she was holding.
“You’ve gained almost ninety pounds.”
Rhodes looked again. “Looks like it.”
“What should my reaction be?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
Rhodes looked down at himself. By then there was no pretending he’d merely filled out. His stomach projected prominently beneath his T-shirt. His chest had become broad and soft. His thighs were heavy, and his backside had exaggerated itself into a much larger version of what baseball had started years before.
Molly burst out laughing.
Then she remembered the honeymoon shirt.
She disappeared into the bedroom and returned carrying the cream-colored shirt patterned with blue palms. Rhodes recognized it immediately.
He sighed and pulled off his T-shirt.
The large made it over his shoulders. Barely. He worked one arm through, then the other, and pulled the shirt downward.
It stopped high on his stomach.
Rhodes tried the first button, then another. By the third, the experiment was clearly over. Several inches of Rhodes separated the two sides.
Molly held up the honeymoon photograph. Same shirt. In the picture it had fit comfortably over his athletic body. Now he couldn’t remotely close it.
Rhodes turned sideways toward the mirror. The hem had ridden upward over his stomach.
“You’ve outgrown your honeymoon shirt by that much in one year.”
Rhodes looked at his reflection.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Rhodes met her eyes in the mirror.
It was the first time he didn’t bother pretending otherwise.
Molly walked over and tugged unsuccessfully at the shirt.
Rhodes looked down at her. “Dangerous feedback.”
The honeymoon shirt went into a box with their wedding keepsakes.
Rhodes never fit into it again.
He crossed three hundred before he turned twenty-four.
The moment itself was spectacularly unspectacular. They were staying with Molly’s parents when she noticed the scale beside the guest-room closet and asked if he’d weighed himself lately.
Molly stared at the display.
Rhodes looked down at himself. “Makes sense.”
Molly burst out laughing. “That’s it?”
“You weigh three hundred pounds.”
“You’ve gained more than a hundred pounds since we got married.”
“And you’re not freaking out?”
That made Rhodes look into the mirror.
At three hundred pounds, the transformation could no longer be dismissed as newlywed weight or filling out. He was a big fat guy now. His stomach hung heavily over his waistband. His chest was thick and soft. His face had filled into round cheeks above a softer jaw.
His lower half had become almost more dramatic than the belly. The old baseball build was still there, only magnified: huge thighs, broad hips, a backside that made buying ordinary pants increasingly irritating.
Molly smiled. “You like saying that.”
For once he didn’t answer with a joke.
That was the point after which there wasn’t much ambiguity left. Rhodes didn’t merely tolerate being fat. He liked being a fat guy.
Maybe he’d always been curious about it. Maybe Molly’s teasing on their honeymoon had given him permission to find out. Maybe he’d simply discovered that the bigger he became, the more comfortable he felt.
Rhodes didn’t particularly care why.
That was also very Rhodes.
A couple of months later, his pants surrendered.
He and Molly were at dinner with friends. Rhodes had eaten calamari, bread, most of a large plate of pasta, part of Molly’s chicken and enough tiramisu that calling it sharing was dishonest. He leaned back.
He reached beneath the table and brought his hand back holding a button.
Rhodes looked at it, then at her.
She started laughing. “You ate your way out of your pants.”
“Technically the thread failed.”
By the time Molly was crying with laughter, Rhodes was laughing too.
The following weekend she bought him stretch-waist trousers. Rhodes put them on, pulled the waistband outward and let it settle comfortably beneath his stomach.
“Why did you let me spend twenty-four years wearing buttons?”
“Someone has to answer for this.”
From that point forward, conventional waistbands entered rapid decline.
At work, Rhodes found dress pants with hidden stretch. Everywhere else, he simplified: athletic shorts, sweatpants, T-shirts, tank tops, slides whenever possible.
It usually did with Rhodes.
By twenty-six, he was approaching three hundred ninety pounds.
That was when Molly finally saw him beside someone who remembered him before any of this had happened.
One of Rhodes’s former teammates was getting married, and several of the old baseball crowd would be there. Getting dressed required considerably more planning than it once had. Rhodes owned exactly one suit that still fit, purchased six months earlier and already approaching the limits of its tailoring. The jacket worked as long as it remained open. His white shirt stretched across his stomach whenever he sat, and the dark trousers had been selected specifically for their hidden elastic waistband and generous cut through his thighs and seat.
Rhodes stood sideways before the hotel mirror.
Molly watched from the bed.
Rhodes tugged once at his jacket. “I look like I’m about to sell somebody a very expensive truck.”
Molly came up behind him and attempted to wrap her arms around his middle. They no longer came particularly close to meeting.
Rhodes caught her eye in the mirror. “You know that’s not going to work.”
He kissed her forehead, and they went downstairs.
The reception was already filling when they entered the ballroom. Rhodes recognized faces immediately—men he’d spent four years practicing beside, traveling with, sharing hotel rooms and dugouts with.
He appeared completely untroubled.
Then he saw Wes Carter near the bar.
Wes had played third base. He had also been, by the fairly unforgiving standards of a college baseball team, the chubby one.
In reality, Wes had never been especially big. Just under six feet and around 210 or 215 pounds, he’d had thick legs and a soft stomach in the unfortunate context of spending every day surrounded by twenty-year-old athletes.
Rhodes remembered Wes tugging shirts away from his stomach in photographs. He remembered the lake weekend when almost every guy on the team had stripped down to swim and Wes had kept his shirt on. He remembered the diet every January and the repeated declaration that he needed to lose fifteen pounds before opening day.
Never viciously, but looking back, Rhodes understood that Wes had cared considerably more than any of them realized.
Wes looked different now. Maybe slightly slimmer than he’d been in college. His suit fit neatly.
Rhodes started toward him.
Wes looked directly at Rhodes.
When he was only a few feet away, Wes glanced at him again. His eyes passed briefly over the enormous blond man approaching him before moving toward the room behind him.
Rhodes grinned. “There he is.”
Wes stared. His eyes traveled from Rhodes’s full face to his broad chest, down across the enormous stomach pushing against his white shirt and finally to trousers stretched around thighs almost comically larger than the baseball-built legs he remembered.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Wes broke, laughing hard enough that he had to put down his drink. Whatever awkwardness might have existed disappeared.
They hugged—or attempted to. Wes’s arms met considerably more Rhodes than they used to. When they separated, he looked him over again.
“I knew you’d gained weight.”
“No, asshole, I’ve seen pictures. I just didn’t realize…” Wes gestured vaguely at all of him. “This.”
Rhodes glanced down. “Yeah. Pictures flatten me.”
The contrast seemed difficult for Wes to process because he remembered Rhodes at his leanest: the narrow waist, the fitted baseball pants, the guy who could eat two hot dogs after a game and somehow forget dinner because he wasn’t hungry.
More importantly, Wes remembered being the big one.
“You know what’s really screwing with me?” he eventually said. “I used to think I was fat.”
Rhodes’s expression changed.
Wes laughed and patted his own stomach. “Two-ten. I spent four years acting like I was enormous at two-ten.”
“You guys gave me so much shit. I wouldn’t even take my shirt off around you assholes.”
That took some of the humor out of Rhodes’s expression.
Wes shrugged. “I hated being the fat guy on the team.”
Rhodes looked at him for a moment and then down at himself. At nearly three hundred ninety pounds, there was something inherently ridiculous about offering perspective.
Wes laughed. “You literally just called me chunky.”
“I was establishing historical accuracy.”
Rhodes smiled, but his voice softened. “We were twenty. And stupid.”
Rhodes glanced down at his own stomach.
“For what it’s worth, if we’d looked like this, you would’ve seemed tiny.”
Rhodes smiled. “Perspective.”
Later, over dinner, Wes discovered that Rhodes’s body wasn’t the only thing that had changed. College Rhodes had eaten like an athlete when training demanded it, but food itself had never particularly interested him.
This Rhodes studied the menu before they’d finished sitting down, suggested calamari for the table, ate his entire steak dinner and accepted half of Molly’s potatoes without requiring an invitation.
Wes watched him butter another roll.
“You used to forget to eat.”
Rhodes nodded. “Got better at it.”
Wes shook his head. “You used to steal bases.”
“Could you steal a base now?”
Rhodes considered the question.
“I could steal the base.”
“Like physically take it home.”
By dessert, the old dynamic had returned completely. Wes teased Rhodes about his suit. Rhodes reminded Wes of the time he’d struck out four times against a pitcher who later became a dentist. Another teammate joined them and reacted to Rhodes with a prolonged holy shit that Rhodes accepted as though it were a compliment.
Eventually Molly wandered away to talk to the bride, leaving Rhodes and Wes at the table.
For a while they watched the reception.
“You’re happy, aren’t you?”
Rhodes looked over. “Yeah.”
“I mean with…” Wes gestured toward him.
Rhodes followed the gesture down to his stomach. “This?”
Wes leaned back. “You really like being this big?”
Rhodes rested one hand absently against the broad curve of his stomach.
He could have explained the honeymoon. The first ten pounds. Molly. Three hundred. Stretch-waist pants.
“I spent years wishing I could be skinny like you.”
Rhodes looked across the table.
“And I spent years not knowing I wanted to be bigger.”
Then he looked at Rhodes again.
“You know what’s really annoying? You’re somehow more confident now.”
“You’re supposed to deny it.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
A server passed carrying miniature desserts.
Rhodes’s eyes followed the tray automatically.
For perhaps the first time all evening, Rhodes looked mildly embarrassed.
Wes nodded toward the desserts.
There was history in the phrase.
Once, big guy unquestionably would have meant Wes.
“See? Now you’re getting it.”
He flagged down the server.
The next few years passed quickly.
What surprised Molly wasn’t simply how much larger he became, but how completely his size integrated itself into their life. She stopped assuming leftovers would survive the night. Pizza orders expanded. If Rhodes was coming to a cookout, friends bought extra. If there was one burger left, everyone knew who would probably eat it.
Once, Grant passed him the final slice of pizza without asking.
Rhodes looked around the table. “Was there a vote?”
Grant shrugged. “You’re Rhodes.”
Furniture gradually entered the equation. Molly bought wider dining chairs. Rhodes noticed the first time he sat down.
Molly continued arranging something on the table.
Rhodes looked at her and smiled. “Love you.”
Booths became something he assessed before attempting. Narrow patio chairs were ignored. The couch developed what Molly privately thought of as Rhodes’s side, although his side had begun consuming part of hers.
His parents had more difficulty treating any of this as normal. His mother had adjusted to the first fifty pounds, then the first hundred. After that, every time Rhodes went a few months without visiting, she seemed to require a moment when he walked through the door.
One Christmas, she opened it herself.
Rhodes stood on the porch in a navy quarter-zip and stretch-waist pants, holding two bakery boxes against an already enormous stomach.
“Rhodes. You got bigger again.”
He glanced down. “Been happening.”
She stepped aside, still looking him over. “I just don’t understand how you got this big.”
Rhodes kissed her cheek. “I’m an ex-jock.”
His father looked up from the living room. “You haven’t been an athlete in years.”
Rhodes continued toward the kitchen.
Later, his father found him standing at the kitchen island eating something directly from a serving dish.
“You know, when you quit baseball, I figured you’d put on twenty pounds.”
Rhodes looked down at himself. By then twenty pounds would barely have registered.
Rhodes took another bite.
His brothers, meanwhile, had discovered that concern was considerably less entertaining than antagonism.
One summer, Rhodes arrived at a family cookout in a sleeveless shirt, black athletic shorts and slides.
Nolan opened the door and looked him over.
“Jesus, Rhodes. You’re fucking huge.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“Then why did you say thanks?”
Rhodes shrugged. “Still liked hearing it.”
Grant appeared behind him.
Nolan pointed at Rhodes. “He likes it.”
Grant looked at his brother.
Rhodes opened the refrigerator and found a drink.
Rhodes cracked it open. “Oh.”
Rhodes took a sip. “What?”
Nolan looked at Grant. “We’ve lost him.”
Rhodes smiled. “No, I’m right here.”
Later, Nolan found him occupying most of the couch and told him to move. Rhodes shifted perhaps two inches.
“You’re taking up two cushions.”
Rhodes glanced down. “Come sit.”
Rhodes patted his thigh. “I’ve got room.”
Nolan stared at him. “Absolutely not.”
Rhodes smiled. “Then quit complaining before I sit on you.”
“You weigh like four hundred pounds.”
“Good choice,” Rhodes called after him.
Molly, sitting across the room, shook her head.
Rhodes settled deeper into the couch. “He started it.”
A few months later, their mother tried to get a family picture at Christmas. Grant stood beside their father. Molly tucked herself against Rhodes. Nolan made the mistake of taking the other side.
Rhodes grinned and dropped one enormous arm around his brother’s shoulders, pulling Nolan firmly against his side.
“Jesus. You’re crushing me.”
Rhodes looked down at him.
For a moment he seemed genuinely puzzled.
Nolan twisted around. “I did not get little. You got enormous.”
The photograph caught Rhodes with a huge grin and Nolan looking thoroughly irritated beneath his arm.
Their mother framed it anyway.
That Thanksgiving, Rhodes finished his third plate, leaned back and let out an enormous belch.
He covered his mouth. “Excuse me.”
Nolan shook his head. “You’ve become disgusting.”
Rhodes looked down at his enormous stomach.
“You haven’t played baseball in five years.”
“You realize you’re married to this fat ass, right?”
Molly looked at Rhodes—the enormous stomach beneath his shirt, the thick arms, the satisfied expression he was unsuccessfully trying to hide.
Rhodes pointed at her. “See?”
Nolan stared at both of them. “You’re ridiculous.”
Rhodes reached for another roll.
His father laughed so hard he had to put down his drink.
Even his mother finally smiled.
That was the thing his family eventually learned.
Rhodes wasn’t putting up with becoming enormous.
And Molly was having fun with him.
Five years after their honeymoon, Rhodes and Molly returned to the resort.
The first real indication of how thoroughly things had changed came in the airport shuttle.
Molly climbed aboard first.
At twenty-two, he’d arrived wearing fitted khaki shorts, a polo and sneakers.
At twenty-seven, he wore a loose black tank top, charcoal elastic-waist athletic shorts and slides.
There wasn’t a button, zipper or belt anywhere on him.
Rhodes turned slightly through the aisle and stopped beside Molly’s row.
He looked at the bench. “You sure?”
Rhodes maneuvered in and lowered himself. The cushion compressed heavily.
Immediately she started laughing.
Rhodes looked over. “What?”
He shifted toward the window.
It accomplished almost nothing.
His backside occupied most of his side of the bench and had made a determined territorial claim on hers. The charcoal shorts stretched broadly across a seat that had once merely been noticeable on his athletic frame.
Combined with thighs that spread heavily when he sat, Rhodes simply occupied considerably more horizontal space than one shuttle seat had anticipated.
Molly’s thigh remained pinned against his.
Rhodes settled comfortably against the seatback.
Another couple boarded. The man glanced at the remaining sliver of bench beside Rhodes and chose the row behind them.
Molly noticed Rhodes noticing.
Rhodes looked down at himself.
“Remember our first honeymoon breakfast?”
“You told me maybe some of the ten pounds could end up back here.”
Molly looked pointedly at the space he was occupying.
Rhodes smiled. “Among others.”
When the shuttle reached the resort, Rhodes stood and stepped into the sunlight.
Molly watched him retrieve the luggage.
Five years had transformed him almost beyond reason.
The broad shoulders were still there, but everything beneath them had expanded and softened. His upper arms were thick, his chest heavy. His enormous lower belly pushed the tank outward before hanging over the elastic waistband buried beneath it.
The old baseball build remained visible only in exaggerated form: powerful legs made enormous by fat, broad hips, a backside that projected enough to pull the fabric of his shorts taut behind him.
His walk had developed a subtle side-to-side shift, not because Rhodes struggled to get around, but because his thighs simply occupied more space.
Even his face had transformed. His sandy-blond hair was longer now, curling slightly around his ears because he’d once again gone too long between haircuts. His cheeks were full, his jaw soft, his chin heavier.
But the blue eyes were the same.
Rhodes caught Molly staring.
“The one you’ve been doing for five years.”
Molly smiled. “Can you blame me?”
Rhodes looked down at himself.
The resort had barely changed.
Neither had Rhodes’s enthusiasm for all-inclusive dining.
At breakfast the next morning, Molly returned with eggs, fruit and toast.
Rhodes arrived carrying two heavily loaded plates.
Rhodes stopped. “No. Say it.”
“Five years ago I asked whether you were really going to eat all that.”
Rhodes looked at the plates. “Did I?”
Breakfast lasted almost an hour. Rhodes finished both plates, then had a pastry, then another because, as he explained, the first had been surprisingly small.
Afterward they wandered through the gift shop.
Molly had nearly forgotten.
Rhodes walked toward the rack.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Five years earlier, the shirt had looked absurd in his hands.
Now it looked like clothing.
Rhodes held it against himself.
Rhodes looked at her. “You don’t think it’ll fit.”
He smiled. “Moment of truth.”
He disappeared into the fitting room.
Across his shoulders it looked surprisingly normal. The sleeves settled comfortably around his thick upper arms. There was even some room through his chest.
Then the shirt reached his stomach.
The cream fabric pulled tightly across the broadest curve of his belly, drawing the lowest buttons into shallow horizontal lines.
“Those buttons are already negotiating.”
That made Rhodes laugh too, which pulled the fabric tighter. He put a protective hand over the lowest button.
Rhodes reached behind himself.
The shirt had caught across his backside rather than falling freely. His stomach pulled the fabric forward while his backside pulled it backward, leaving the hem riding several inches higher behind him.
It immediately rode back up.
Rhodes looked at her through the mirror.
“Your shirt is losing a fight with you from both directions.”
The poor 5XL had nowhere left to go.
Molly took out her phone.
She found the photograph from five years earlier.
Twenty-two-year-old Rhodes stood in this exact shop holding the same size shirt against his 194-pound honeymoon body.
The fabric had practically swallowed him.
Then she found another picture.
Rhodes wearing the large version of the same shirt, unable to close it over his stomach.
She held the photographs beside the mirror.
At 194, the 5XL had looked like a tent.
A year later, the large couldn’t close.
Now the 5XL itself was fighting for survival.
Rhodes looked from one photograph to the other.
For once, he was speechless.
“You said something that first day.”
“Imagine me fitting into this.”
Rhodes turned. “I said that?”
He looked down at the shirt stretched tightly across his stomach, then reached behind himself and tried unsuccessfully to free the hem from his backside.
“Apparently I’m very goal-oriented.”
Rhodes looked at the photograph again.
“I remember thinking this thing was impossibly huge.”
Rhodes pulled gently at the bottom button.
“Now I’m wondering if they have a six.”
“Remember what else I said?”
Rhodes narrowed his eyes.
“About the first ten pounds.”
“I said maybe some could go back here.”
Rhodes glanced over his shoulder. “All two hundred of them?”
“Apparently they travel in groups.”
Rhodes wore it open over his tank top.
Molly looked at him. “Giving up already?”
Rhodes tugged at the open sides.
“It wouldn’t stay buttoned.”
They went to lunch. Rhodes ordered nachos for the table, a burger and fries. Molly ordered tacos.
Halfway through, she slid one taco toward him.
“You’ve been looking at it for five minutes.”
“Marriage is about communication.”
After lunch they walked along the beach.
Rhodes’s open shirt moved in the breeze over his tank top, the 5XL hem still occasionally catching against his backside.
Molly slipped her hand into his.
“This all started because you wanted ten pounds.”
Rhodes smiled. “I remember.”
“I thought you were joking.”
Rhodes took another step before realizing and turned around.
He smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t know what you’d think.”
“About gaining ten pounds?”
“About me wanting to be bigger.”
“You really had thought about it.”
Rhodes laughed. “Not this big.”
“Two-thirty sounded huge.”
She looked deliberately down at him.
Rhodes followed her gaze.
“So when did you decide on four hundred?”
Rhodes shook his head. “Two-twenty felt good.”
“Two-seventy was pretty fun.”
“Then I hit three hundred.”
“Then bigger was fun too.”
Molly shook her head. “So you just kept going?”
Rhodes looked toward the ocean.
That was perhaps the most Rhodes answer imaginable.
Molly’s eyebrows rose. “Four hundred fourteen pounds.”
“You’ve gained two hundred twenty-nine pounds since we got married.”
Rhodes thought about that.
Molly burst out laughing. “Now it’s a lot?”
“Well, when you say it all at once.”
She put both hands against his stomach.
He looked toward the resort behind them, at the open 5XL shirt that had once seemed impossibly enormous, then at Molly.
“I probably would’ve skipped buying some pants along the way.”
Molly wrapped her arms around him.
They didn’t come remotely close to meeting.
He laughed as she rested her cheek against his chest.
Then Rhodes looked toward the resort.
“You’re looking at the restaurant.”
Rhodes considered that. “True.”
“Those are different things to you.”
“They’ve been different for years.”
Rhodes took her hand, and together they headed back toward the resort.
Five years earlier, Rhodes Mercer had stood in a gift shop holding a 5XL shirt against his athletic body and trying to imagine himself big enough to fill it.
At the time, he’d thought 220 pounds sounded enormous.
Now he was twenty-seven, 414 pounds, dressed almost exclusively in elastic waistbands, carrying an appetite that had become legendary among his family, and wearing that same 5XL open because his belly and backside had collectively defeated its buttons.
He was still the same Rhodes.
Same ability to treat almost anything as though it would probably work itself out.
He had simply become a great deal more of him.
“If I ever tell you to gain ten pounds again?”
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