Fat to Fit

This is it -- a one-page flash story! There's nothing groundbreaking or earth shattering here, just a story of two people learning to deal with new experiences in their lives, and what happens when one doesn't handle it very well.

As always, my stories are complete works of fiction, and all persons are of legal age. Your votes and comments are important to me, so after you read it, please share with me!

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The Uber driver dropped me off in front of our house and I went inside. I knew there would be nobody else there. That's because the only other person that lived there with me was my wife, and she had decided to stay at the party even though it was past our pre-arranged time to leave. Sounds innocent, until you realize that there were at least three or four good looking men standing around her the entire time she was there. Normally that doesn't bother me, because normally she doesn't attract men like that...well, at least not in the past. Recently however, she's had no problem finding guys that loved to talk to her and ogle at her.

I first met Stacy when we were set up on a blind date, since both of us had problems getting dates on our own. When we were in high school, we were both fat -- I don't mean a little pudgy with cute little baby fat, I mean really fat everywhere. So the blind date was a mercy date for each of us.

But it worked -- I found out that she was one of the nicest persons I'd ever met, and we had so many things in common that we were able to look past the fat on our bodies and enjoy each other's company. Soon we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and it progressed to the point that between our sophomore and junior years of college, we got married.

I know, we were that special fat couple that found each other, and the world was good with it since we wouldn't be bothering the pretty people. We didn't care about how we looked, but we did get quite the wake-up call when we decided that we needed to get life insurance policies on each other. The doctor at our physicals made it clear -- time to lose weight, or face a shortened life of unfulfilled dreams.

So we made a new commitment to each other, to hit the gym and follow a balanced diet. It wasn't easy. Both of us were ready to quit at one point or another, but the encouragement we gave each other allowed us to push through those tough times. And it didn't hurt when we started seeing changes in our bodies, especially when people started noticing.

It was an amazing time for us. Even though I didn't think we had a self-esteem problem before, we suddenly started feeling better about ourselves, becoming more confident when out in public around friends and family. The constant congratulations and comments like "You look great!" didn't hurt either. Our daily workout time together was precious to us, and it became the symbol of our success.

And to be honest, our sex life improved as well -- improved dramatically! I discovered that when a guy loses weight, it includes the fat buildup around the base of his penis, which meant more of my cock was visible and it looked like I had grown a couple of inches! Stacy could tell a difference, as well as the fact that our fit bodies were letting us try new positions that were physically impossible before. We did things we had never done prior, and loved every one of them.

It was about that time that other people started looking at us with different things in mind. Neither of us had ever experienced compliments like the ones we were getting. We discussed it at length, and decided that as long as we remembered that we loved each other when nobody else wanted us, it would be fine to enjoy the looks and comments of others. If one of us thought someone was coming on too strong, the other one could come in and put a stop to it, and we would go home and discuss it and try to figure out how to deal with it when it came up again.

I enjoyed the comments of women who were seeing me now as somebody that was attractive and fit, but it was easy for me to remember when those very same types of women would have nothing to do with me when I was fat. So I never really had any desire to take it any farther with any of them when they started sending compliments my way. I was happy with my bride -- I married her for better or worse, and if being healthy was better than it was before, I was still there for her.

I can't really say that the compliments went to Stacy's head either, but I know how amazing she felt when good looking guys came up to her and flirted. I don't know if women looked at new-found attention any differently than men did, but it seemed to me that instead of discouraging comments like that, she almost encouraged them. More than once I saw her blush when she was talking to someone else -- usually a good looking guy. I let her have her fun because she wasn't straying from me - she was just enjoying feeling something she'd never felt in her life.

That was until tonight. It was a reunion of college friends of hers that had been in the same degree program. It was the first time Stacy and I would be with these particular friends since we had lost the weight. We had decided together that we would stay until about 10:00 p.m., and then leave and finish our evening together at home. She was looking forward to the evening, and I thought I was as well, since it was bound to be a very positive experience for her.

As we walked in, the expected compliments started being offered right away. These people were friends of both of us but they were closer to Stacy since they had studied and gone to classes with her, so she received the majority of the attention. For most of the evening, I was always with her, but it seemed that I was always standing a couple of steps behind the group of people with which she was conversing. We sat together as we ate dinner, and her attention was to her friends more than it was me, and that was fine. But it was certainly a different dynamic that at other places where we would both receive compliments.

But I didn't say anything -- at least until I realized that a couple of the guys had spent the better part of their time after dinner dominating her attention. I went to a bench out in the yard and sat down to watch. The attention she received wasn't blatantly offensive, but there were plenty of touches from the guys that Stacy seemed to enjoy, including several hugs that were very close and looked to be awfully tight. It was the first time I'd seen someone else put such an effort on Stacy to attract and maintain her attention, and I wasn't handling it well. She seemed to have forgotten about me, and for the first time in a VERY long time, the old "self-doubt" I carried around as a fat person was creeping back in.

I was never more relieved to see 10:00 on my watch than I was then. I stood up and walked over to Stacy and her friends. As calmly as I could, I touched her arm and said, "Honey, it's 10:00, and it's time for us to leave."

She looked at me like I had just told her that her cat had died. Clearly she wasn't ready to leave. "It's already 10:00? Where did the time go? Can we stay for a little while longer? I feel like I've only talked to a few of my friends. There's more I want to see!"

I wanted to tell her that if she hadn't been paying attention to those two assholes so much, maybe she could have talked to more of her other friends. But I was polite without being demanding when I replied, "Honey, we decided before we came over that we would leave now, so I think we should honor that and go."

Before she could say anything in response, one of the assholes looked at me and smiled as he said, "Don't worry, Tommy -- Brian and I will take care of her and make sure she doesn't get into trouble."

I may have been a fat guy before, so lines like that may have never worked for me in the past. But I knew what a double entendre was when it came to hitting on beautiful women. Obviously Stacy didn't see it that way because her face lit up with a big smile as she said, "See, honey -- Brian and Dennis will be my guardians and won't let anything bad happen to me. You take the car on home, and I'm sure one of them will give me a ride."

How much to you press when you know your wife is not thinking about the motive of those two guys to "protect" her and "take care of" her? I'd never dealt with this before, but I knew I had two options -- first was to be the man of the house and protect my wife from the unhealthy attention she was receiving from long-time friends for the first time in her life, knowing that she would be furious at me for embarrassing her in front of her old friends by dragging her out to the car. The second was to stuff my man card in my pocket and meekly walk away, hoping that sooner or later she would come to her senses and remember that I loved her before she was thin and fit and sexy, while these two assholes never thought of her in that way when she was fat.

So that's what I did, and regretted it as soon as I made the decision to leave her there. I handed her the keys to the car and said, "You drive home, I'll catch an Uber. Please don't stay too long."

She kissed me on the cheek as she took the keys, and then turned immediately back to her friends and picked up the conversation again. There was no, "Thank you, honey, you're the best" or not even a soft "I love you" to go along with the kiss. In fact, it was the way she so easily dismissed me without trying to get me to stay that was the most painful. As I walked to the front of the house, I realized that this was the lowest I'd felt since I'd married her. The self-doubt ramped up to a very high level as I stood and waited for my ride. Did I do the right thing? Was my wife now interested in exploring what others were like since she was more sexually attractive to them? Did she want to stretch out her new "fit and sexy" wings to see how high they could take her?

Those questions and others clouded my brain on the ride home, and continued as I went inside. There was no way I was going to be able to sleep, so I simply sat on the couch and stared into the darkness. If there had been unhealthy snack food in the house, I might have consumed it all, since I was looking for any form of comfort at the moment, and until I had gotten healthy, it was food more often than not that provided that comfort to me.

Sometime later I heard the car pull into the driveway, followed by the keys in the lock. Stacy fumbled for the light switch before finding it and flooding the room with light. I covered my eyes and looked at my watch, which told me it was 1:15 a.m. The despair deepened -- if she had been out that long, it only increased the chances that one or both of the guys had found success with my newly-sexy wife.

Stacy was struggling with two sacks from the grocery store. In the midst of my despair, I could not for the life of me figure out why she was out buying groceries that late at night. Was this a ploy to silently explain to me one of the reasons she was out so late? As impractical as that explanation was, it was the only one I could think of at a moment's notice.

She shut the door and tossed the keys into the bowl on the lamp table. She brought the sacks over to the chair next to the couch, setting them on the floor. Kicking off her shoes and sitting on the chair, she proceeded to pull her purchases out of the sacks. Included in her purchases were a couple of bags of potato chips, a packages of Oreos, a half-gallon carton of rocky road ice cream, a box of Cheez-its, and a couple of bags of candy bar assortments. She had filled the two sacks with food the likes that hadn't been in our house in nearly three years.

With all the groceries out in the open now, she grabbed one of the bags of potato chips and opened it. She leaned back and reached inside, getting a handful of chips out. One by one, she started eating them without even looking at me. I still had no idea what she was doing, but I didn't interrupt her.

Finally she looked at me and asked, "I fucked up tonight, didn't I?"

I wanted to hug her and rage at her and go away from her, all at the same time. But none of those were great options at the moment, and since I really didn't know what do to, I decided I wanted to hear her side of it first. So I looked at her and said, "Tell me how you think you fucked up, and then we'll talk."

She crunched on another handful of chips before saying, "You knew what Brian and Dennis were up to -- what their motivation was in spending so much time with me at the party tonight, and you tried to save me from it. But I was so wrapped up in the attention they were giving me that I basically sent my rescuer away and continued down the destructive path I was on. The swell of my ego because those two were paying so much attention to me effectively shut off any common sense I ever had.

"And you had to sit there and watch that all night, knowing that they weren't suddenly interested in me as an old friend. They were only interested in me now that I was fit and sexy. If we had gone to the party before we lost all the weight, they would have never come over to talk to me, and they might have even worked hard to avoid me, since in their eyes I wasn't worth befriending. It would have been the same tonight as it was in college ten years ago.

"So when they paid so much attention to me the entire night, and since my common sense generator was disabled by my own stupid vanity, I ignored what they were trying to do. Instead, I lapped up the attention those two good looking classmates of mine were giving me. In my mind, it was another benchmark of the success we've both had in losing the weight and becoming healthy, except I was enjoying it by myself without you. Tommy, I have NEVER felt before what I was feeling tonight, and I became drunk on it -- drunk on the fact that I could now attract the attention of two classmates who would have never given me the time of day before."

By now she had put the bag of chips down. She stared off into the distance while she paused her story, as if she were reliving it in her mind. She was silent for over a minute, and I did not try to respond to her, because I knew she wasn't done telling me of her evening's adventures, although I still wasn't sure yet how much more she had to tell.

She looked over at me again and continued. "I did talk to other friends, just like I told you I was going to. But everywhere I went, those two would follow, and horn their way in on my conversations. Truthfully, I started getting a little annoyed, even though I was still enjoying the attention. I think they sensed that because they backed off and left my side while I continued with my other friends. We chatted a lot about our weight loss, including me getting some nice compliments on my now sexy husband, which made me feel good inside.

"As the party started to break up, Brian and Dennis were back on me again. It was Dennis who put his arm around my waist and asked if I'd like to continue the party with them, since you had left me behind. They were planning on heading to a local club to which they belong, and they wanted to show me a few steps on the dance floor. When he leaned in to give me a kiss on my cheek, I realized that I should not be there, and I wasn't going to go with them.

"I was so glad that you left me the keys to the car. I told them politely that I had no interest in going anywhere with them. Dennis showed me their true intentions when he laughed and said, 'Damn, Stacy, if you aren't going to have any fun with your new sexy body, you should have just stayed fat.'"

Her eyes started to tear up a little as she paused again. I knew at that moment that she hadn't cheated on me, and that she was beating herself up for brushing me aside when I had stepped in to save her from what could have been an ugly mistake.

She looked up at me one more time and said, "I'm sorry, Tommy. I let the attention I was receiving from those two assholes interfere with any good judgment I had. I'm still adjusting to our new bodies, but obviously I'm not where I need to be yet. I've learned my lesson -- if you will forgive me, I promise it will never be a problem again."

I believed her -- I didn't even have to make her picture some hot chicks fawning over me and wanting me to take them somewhere to play, so she could experience what I was feeling at the party. She had tasted a little of the excitement when people pay attention to the new you after you have lost so much weight, and fortunately for her and me both, she stepped back before she got burned.

But I was curious about something. "So what's with all the junk food? Why did you think you needed to buy that on your way home?"

She let out a half-grin and said, "Because I wanted to show you that if I needed to, I'd gain my weight back just so you'd see that I don't want to be the center of attention for assholes like Dennis and Brian. You loved me when I was fat, and since I need your love more than anything else in the entire world, I'm ready to go back, just to keep you."

I got up and put the junk food back in the two sacks and took them straight to the garbage can. I walked back over to where Stacy was still sitting and helped her to her feet. With my arms around her, I said, "That's okay, I'll take the sexy you -- in fact, I'll take the sexy you right now."

We kissed and headed to the bedroom. She lay her head on my shoulder and said, "I'm sorry, Tommy. Thanks for giving me another chance."

I held her tighter and replied, "Next time, I'll drag you out of any situation like tonight, and I won't worry about embarrassing you in front of friends."

As we turned into the bedroom, she kissed me again and said, "I'm not worried about that -- there's not going to be a next time."