Clueless (Patreon)

If you haven't voted in the poll for chapter 18 of Like Mother, Like Daughters, you still have until the end of the week! Veronica is currently in the lead to be the biggest of our three beloved Emple sisters, but it ain't over 'til it's over and Ms. Veronica has lost an early lead before. 

Also, don't forget to take advantage of the Prompt Pool! I realized it's been a hot minute since I promoted it, and I know there are some new folks around who might have an idea to throw into the pot.

***

It was almost too easy to get away with it. Two months and he’d never caught on. Melissa wondered if he ever would.

“I’m heading to the gym, babe! I’ll see you in a couple hours.” She made sure to jingle her keys loudly to be certain he could hear.

“Have fun!” she heard him call from his office at the back of the house.

She practically skipped out to the car. She would have fun, but not at the gym, even though that was what it looked like she was dressed for. This whole thing only worked because she kept up appearances.

She headed straight to her favorite drive-through and ordered herself a double burger meal with a shake. Even after all this time, she still got a sneaky little thrill knowing there was still a chance her husband could catch her. Thankfully, Mícheál wasn’t the suspicious type, and he always stuck to his schedule. He never stopped working before 5:30, and he’d never been a gym-goer, so a whole lot would have to go wrong for him to find out she was skipping her workouts to sneak her favorite junk foods.

After she got her food, she found a spot in the parking lot. She picked up the paper bag of fatty goodness and took a deep inhale. Melissa felt lucky she had such a good metabolism. She hadn’t meant to make this a habit, but as she bit into the burger (extra cheese, extra sauce, extra pickles, no tomato or lettuce) she knew exactly why she kept spending her afternoons here instead of running on the treadmill. She’d never gotten this kind of satisfaction from the gym. She didn’t really need to work out, anyway—she was naturally slim, and she wasn’t even thirty yet and had always been healthy, so she couldn’t care less about any of the other health benefits.

She took a long drink from her chocolate shake and then took another bite. So much better than a workout. Way better stress relief, too.

The burger disappeared, along with a mixed order of fries and onion rings. The shake was last to go, every drop drained until her straw was only sucking up air. She gathered her trash and climbed out of the car to throw it away in the closest trash bin, smirking to herself as she thought sarcastically, That’s plenty of exercise for one day!

***

Six months later and she was no closer to being caught. She worried a little bit about her husband. He was way too trusting. Melissa was not self-aware enough to consider that perhaps she shouldn’t take advantage of that trust. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

She pulled on her workout gear and was so busy trying to decide what food she would sneak that day that she didn’t register the extra effort it took to get dressed. Her workout leggings hugged her more tightly than they were designed to, size small fabric going transparent over an ass and thighs that at minimum required a forgiving medium, if not a large. The thick control top band of her leggings that hugged Melissa’s middle hid her own sins from her, making it easy to miss that she had a belly pooch where there’d once been nothing but a flat stomach and a pair of hipbones. Her crop top compressed her in and smoothed her out, reinforcing the illusion that pigging out instead of hitting the gym was having no effect on her figure.

She was so busy playing with her long brown hair in front of the mirror in the bedroom, trying to arrange it into a perfect workout-appropriate high ponytail, that she didn’t notice Mícheál leaning against the door frame to admire her for a moment before he got back to work.

***

A year later, Melissa was wondering if maybe it was time to give up her ruse. She was halfway through a six-piece spicy fried chicken meal, dipping a drumstick into gravy and of course dripping a little onto her top by accident—she wasn’t sure how she’d explain that—and wondering if maybe she’d overdone it a little.

She’d upped her “workout days” to five times a week, and sometimes six if she had a craving on the weekend for a place that was too out of the way to get to during the week. Her meals had also gotten more extravagant. It was just so hard to deny herself! The food itself was so good, and the thrill of being “bad” and getting away with it had never gone away.

But, pleasure aside, even Melissa had to admit it was all starting to show on her figure. She couldn’t actually acknowledge just how much her body had changed, but if she had, she would’ve realized that her new habit had made her nigh unrecognizable. Her hipbones and collarbones and any other sign of her “natural” thinness were long since buried. When sitting in her car, her rump spread out toward the edge of the seat. Between that and the hefty gut sitting in her lap, and the binge-enhanced rack sitting on top of it, it had started to get a little challenging to buckle her seatbelt. She was still making the effort to put on workout gear—the finest selection of athleisure her husband had gifted her in a size she wouldn’t admit was starting to get snug—every time she trotted out of the house.

She had just bit into another piece of gravy-soaked chicken when Mícheál called. She panicked, answering too quickly even though she hadn’t finished chewing. She hoped he wouldn’t notice the sound of her swallowing. “Hi babe!” She tried to sound breathless, like he’d caught her mid-push-up. Not that she had to try very hard—she was so full it was a little hard to breathe. “I’m just finishing up and about to head home. Sorry it’s taking so long today—it’s really busy, so I had to wait to use a lot of the machines.”

“Don’t worry about it, love, I know you’re working really hard. That’s why I called, actually—I was trying to figure out what to do about dinner. I’m sure you’re starving.”

Full as she was, Melissa was more than happy to consider her next meal. “You’re so thoughtful! What are you in the mood for?”

“I was thinking pizza, maybe. I know it’s been ages since we ordered one, and I figured—”

He could barely finish before she enthusiastically agreed and started rattling off her order. He almost broke kayfabe and laughed. He knew she’d eaten pizza just a couple days before, but clearly she hadn’t gotten her fill.  He plugged her order in on her favorite pizza chain’s website, making sure to ask her if she wanted any extras.

“Ooh, I guess I can go overboard tonight and get breadsticks, since I’ve been spending so much time at the gym. I want the cheesy ones and the regular ones—and make sure they give us extra dipping sauce. I like their ranch and the marinara.” And did she want something to drink? Oh, of course, a whole two-liter of her favorite soda for just the two of them made complete sense. And they had to order dessert—she’d exercised so hard that day that she definitely deserved a chocolate lava cake. “To split,” she assured him. As if he didn’t know damn well she’d eat it in three bites and never let him touch a crumb.

“I just ordered. Finish your workout fast and hurry on home so you can eat it while it’s still hot.”

She told him she would and hung up, tossing her phone aside and tearing voraciously into the last of her chicken so she could rush home. God, he really was so oblivious.