Game Girl

Game Girl

VIII

“Alright, easy,” Joey said, “easy does it. Watch the door trim.”

“I’m watching the door trim. You watch where you’re going—you’re the one walking backward.”

Bobby adjusted his grip on the unwieldy elliptical machine, carefully maneuvering it through the door to Joey’s place. He’d been a little surprised to learn that Cathy was moving with her new boyfriend after barely a year of dating, but his place was bigger, and having a home gym would be nice. She’d never been fond of working out in a crowded gym, and he could only imagine how much worse it’d gotten as her body grew more… attention-grabbing.

“Why’d you get such a big one?” Joey asked.

“That’s what she said!” Sam called from the couch.

Joey snorted a laugh. Bobby glanced at Cathy, and they shared an eye roll. She said, “I didn’t really have a choice on sizes.”

“It’s from my gym,” he added. “They upgraded their machines and sold off all the old ones that weren’t beat to hell.”

“Nice!” Joey said. “I bet one like this is super expensive new.”

“Literally five times what I paid,” Cathy answered.

Sam let out a low whistle. “Maybe I should start coming over here to work out.”

If he was being honest, Bobby was getting mildly concerned about Sam’s habits. She ate more than he did, and as far as he knew, she hadn’t been in a gym since that hotel fitness center where they met. He guessed the closest thing to exercise she got was climbing the stairs to his apartment. He hadn’t found a way to broach the topic, though.

“I just gotta find some routines that won’t make the girls shrink. That’s what usually happens.”

“Is that a thing?” Joey asked.

Bobby and Cathy answered at the same time.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Me and Bobby did a bunch of research on it when I started growing again.”

Bobby resisted the urge to correct her grammar.

“Just let me know whenever you wanna come over,” Cathy said. “I’m still figuring it all out, but it’s mostly about focusing on different muscle groups instead of just doing cardio.”

Sam nodded. “Makes sense.”

Joey had stopped moving, listening to the girls’ conversation and glancing back and forth. Bobby couldn’t entirely blame him; they were like two different flavors of voluptuous feminine perfection.

While his attention and affection now belonged solely to Sam, he couldn’t deny that Cathy had gotten even sexier since they broke up. Her auburn ponytail danced whenever she moved her head. Her face was a little softer, but her lightly freckled cheeks and expressive eyes made her more adorable than ever. She’d inevitably filled out a little with all the extra food she ate now—it couldn’t all go to her chest. He could tell her jeans were at their limit, but they hugged her hips and bottom in a way that would have been eye-catching if anyone ever managed to look past her chest. She’d proudly announced to the group that she was wearing an M-cup now. They stood out from her ribs like a pair of watermelons, stretching out a T-shirt with some Pokémon character warped over her curves. Only a fraction of her cleavage showed, but even that was more than most women could boast.

Then, on the couch across from her, was Sam.

The de facto “grown-up” of the group, Sam was like a Renaissance painting of a voluptuous woman with a few extra tubes of paint added for good measure. Wavy blonde locks framed her cherubic face, with plump pink lips that seemed always ready to laugh or grin—she would have been flawless with that face alone. Sam liked to talk with her hands, and whenever those hands moved, she jiggled. Her arms jiggled, her shoulders jiggled, and, of course, her boobs jiggled. They seemed to be perpetually in motion. Sitting down, her hips and thighs spread even broader than usual, the black material of her leggings stretched translucent by her chunky legs. She wore a dark pink top that reached to mid-hip when she was standing. It had a scoop neck, showing off almost as much cleavage as Cathy. But even with less visible cleavage, it was easy to see that Sam’s breasts were larger overall, even if they weren’t as jaw-dropping as Cathy’s with her slim frame. Not that Bobby ever thought of Sam as “fat.” She carried the weight perfectly: in her ass, boobs, thighs, with a little bit spread out over the rest. He was sure she outweighed him by a few pounds, but still kept that hourglass shape that made him want her every time he saw her.

Including right now.

With one end of a heavy-ass workout machine in his hands.

“Where are we going with this?” He asked.

Joey seemed to snap out of a similar trance. “Through that door…” He waved his head vaguely to the side. “It might be a tight fit.”

“That’s what she said!” Cathy giggled.

Sam grinned. “Nice!”

Bobby just shook his head.

***

Cathy stood from the last rep in her set of squats, setting a pair of kettlebell weights on the floor.

“And… ten,” Bobby said. “Good work.”

She grabbed a hand towel off the chair and sat, wiping the sweat from her forehead. Having all four of them crammed into what had once been a spare bedroom made the air thick with heavy breath and exertion. Joey stood in the corner doing curls with a set of dumbbells while Sam “walked” at a leisurely pace on the elliptical.

Bobby picked up the kettlebells and started doing reps himself. “Hey, do you guys like camping?”

The question was for Joey and Sam. She and Bobby talked about camping many times while they were dating, but had never managed to actually do it.

Sam looked up from her phone propped on the machine’s display. “I like drinking outside.”

Bobby shot her a glare, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

“Hell yeah!” Joey said. “I haven’t played with fire in ages.”

Cathy pondered the question. She loved hiking and being outside, but was starting to feel like she could take or leave the whole “sleeping on the ground” thing. It didn’t help that any physical activity was getting more and more difficult as her body changed. But she wasn’t even twenty years old—if Sam could handle camping, she sure as hell could.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a hike. Were you thinking of somewhere specific?”

Sam said, “If you all are talking about hauling giant backpacks up a mountain, it’s gonna be a hard pass.”

“There are no mountains in Indiana,” Cathy protested. “Even the hills in the National Forest aren’t that steep.”

“I love you guys, but no thanks. My shoulders already have to carry the girls around.” She glanced pointedly at Cathy but said no more.

The comment irked Cathy. Sam was right, of course; the constant strain of her breasts protruding from her chest was something the hormone therapy hadn’t fixed. She didn’t need a bra quite as badly anymore, but that just meant all the weight pulled on the muscles and ligaments in her chest instead of being carried by her shoulders. Board gaming was a sedentary hobby, but did that mean she was okay becoming a complete couch potato?

Having all this gym equipment set up at home, where she could use it before or after work without having to go out, was huge. Between the noisy gym bros crashing weights on the floor or the constant double-takes and wide-eyed stares she got in an athletic bra, it’d been far too easy to make excuses. She could count on one hand the number of times she went to the gym after breaking up with Bobby and before moving in with Joey.

It wasn’t like her breasts were getting any smaller, either. None of her attempts at dieting worked at all; she just got grumpy when she was hungry. She knew Joey would support her if she was really determined to lose weight, but eating was so satisfying. There was nothing better than the feeling of her belly full and happy. Well, the face Joey made when she took off her bra came pretty close.

She wasn’t going to starve herself, but she still wanted to be able to do things she loved. That meant pushing herself, even when those things were difficult. “I don’t know; a short hike might not be too bad…”

Cathy thought she saw a look of concern pass over Bobby’s face, but it was gone so fast she might have imagined it. “I don’t think we have to go that far. I’m thinking about the State Park, maybe some weekend in April or May?”

“That could work,” Cathy said. “It won’t be too hot yet, but we won’t be freezing either.”

“That’s what I thought. They have trails at the park, so we can hike if it’s nice, but we can drive right to the sites, no giant backpacks required.”

He shot a tender look at Sam that was so familiar to Cathy that her heart ached for a beat.

“In that case,” Sam said. “I’m in.”

“Same,” Joey added.

Cathy nodded.

Bobby said, “Nice. I’ll watch the weather and message the group to find a weekend that works.”

A soft gurgling filled the room, and Cathy’s cheeks heated before she realized the sound wasn’t coming from her.

Sam grinned, shameless as ever. “Do we have a dinner plan?”

“I think we were gonna get delivery,” Joey said. “Cath wants to teach us a new game?”

“It’s not really new, more of a remix. You all know Pandemic, right?”

“Well, this is like that, but it’s WoW-themed.”

“Wow?” Bobby asked.

“I think she means World of Warcraft, babe,” Sam said.

Cathy nodded. “I’ll set it up, but I need a shower first.”

She jumped up, wrapping an arm across her chest to control the wobbles. The guys both stared, and Sam was too busy doing the same to chide Bobby, who recovered first. “Let’s figure out what we want to eat. Indian?”

“Works for me,” Sam said.

“Joey knows my order,” Cathy added, halfway out of the room.

Bobby asked, “Yellow curry with extra jasmine rice and garlic naan?”

“Double rice and double naan,” Joey added.

Cathy’s cheeks flushed again as she fled to the bathroom.

***

She heard the doorknob click open even above the hot water streaming around her.

“Mind if I join you?”

Cathy sighed in relief at Joey’s voice. For a moment, she was surprised at how okay she’d been with the thought that it might have been Bobby—or even Sam. “I guess…”

Joey’s clothes hit the bathroom floor, and he stepped into the tub behind her. “We’ll save time this way.” His hands gently rested on her sides, the touch tentative and questioning.

“I somehow doubt I’ll be done faster with you distracting me,” she said, leaning back into his touch until she felt skin against her bottom.

Joey’s hands slid up her sides, briefly cupping her breasts before prying the loofah gently from her fingers. He ran the soapy puff ball under and over and around them, massaging her flesh eagerly. The treatment had made them unnaturally firm, but they couldn’t defy gravity and had drifted slowly lower as they kept growing. Her skin tingled as Joey’s fingers caressed her body; heat bloomed in her middle even before she felt him rising against her.

“That definitely won’t make this go faster.”

“Maybe not, but it’ll be more fun…”

“Not with my ex down the hall, Joey.”

Joey angled back until his pelvis wasn’t pressed against her. “Sorry…”

She turned around carefully, leaning in to kiss him. “It’s fine, you’re fine. It’s a nice idea, kind of hotter than I thought it’d be, just… bad timing.”

Joey smiled and started climbing out of the shower, but she put a hand on his arm to stop him. “You stay. I’m basically done, anyway.”

When she emerged into the living room, damp-haired but dressed, Bobby was staring at his phone so hard she thought his neck might sprain. Sam caught her eye with a smirk.

“I’ll, uh, get the game set up,” Cathy said.