Turn 16 of 21
Se how much more weight we've gained by next weekend. I am at 270. Lexi at 220. Lexi also starts shitting herself wherever and whenever.
The scale reads 270 and Lena stares at the number with her lips parted, her belly pressed against the cold bathroom tile, her reflection filling the mirror edge to edge. She has gained thirty pounds in a week. Her body has crossed into territory she doesn't have a map for — the belly hangs low and heavy now, a wide, warm apron of flesh that rests on her thighs when she sits and sways like a pendulum when she walks, stretch marks fanning out in silver and purple across the underside. Her breasts are enormous, each one wider than both her hands spread together, heavy and pendulous, resting against the upper curve of her belly when she slouches. Her ass is vast — two broad cheeks that overflow every surface she sits on, dimpled and soft, the crease between them deep and warm. She runs her hands across herself and the terrain goes on and on, every inch softer and wider than the last, and the warmth pulses through her like a second heartbeat.
Lexi steps on the scale behind her and the number reads 220 and she lets out a low whistle that turns into a belch. Ninety-five pounds in five weeks. Her body has transformed from the careful, controlled frame that arrived at the door into something lush and unrecognizable — her belly round and prominent, pressing against the bathroom counter, her breasts full and heavy, her thighs thick and touching all the way to her knees, her ass wide and soft and spreading. The body hair is thick now — dark red under her arms, coarse and curling across her legs, a trail below her navel that has thickened into a visible line. She is standing the way Lena stands — wide stance, shoulders loose, belly forward, the posture of a woman who has stopped holding anything in.
"I shit myself on Tuesday," Lexi says, and her voice carries the same casual warmth that Lena's does now.
"I was watching a movie and I felt it coming and I just — didn't get up. I just let it go. Right there on the couch." She shifts her weight and the cushion groans beneath her.
"It was the best feeling I've had in twenty years."
Lena looks at her mother and sees it — the same loosening, the same warmth, the same quiet voice humming beneath the skin. The couch cushions tell the rest of the story. The brown streaks have multiplied, layer upon layer, both sides of the couch now marked with the evidence of two women who have stopped distinguishing between the bathroom and everywhere else. The apartment smells rich and sour and warm — food and beer and sweat and urine and the deeper, sharper note underneath that neither of them registers anymore because it has become the air they breathe.
They eat lunch on the couch — a delivery of fried chicken and waffles and a case of beer — and Lexi shifts her weight halfway through her third piece and a low, wet sound fills the room and her expression doesn't change. She keeps chewing. The smell rises and Lena feels the warmth in her own belly respond, a pulse of recognition, and she reaches for her mother's hand and squeezes it. The wish hums through both of them, one heartbeat now, and the voice that used to speak only in Lena's mind has become the room itself — the couch, the stains, the smell, the warmth — and it says what it always says. More. Always more. And underneath the word, quieter now, almost gentle: this is what comfort looks like. This is what you asked for. This is home.