Like Mother, Like Daughters (2) (Patreon)

“Should we say something? I feel like she’d want us to say something,” Veronica murmured.

“I promise you, she knows. How could she not know? We don’t need to embarrass her right now. Wait until we’re all home alone, at least.” Minnie took a bite of hot dog, slightly charred from the grill. She didn’t understand why Veronica couldn’t just leave well enough alone. She wasn’t wrong, of course – Claire had definitely put on weight. But it wasn’t like she’d become a blob overnight or anything close. If anything, from Minnie’s perspective she looked the way she probably always should’ve. We should probably take her shopping, though, Minnie conceded, noting how high Claire’s tank top was riding up and how tight her cutoff shorts looked.

“I feel like if one of our aunts says something before we do, she’ll want to strangle us both for not bringing it up sooner.” Veronica anxiously undid her high ponytail, then tied it up again. “Wouldn’t you want to be told?”

“Nic. Relax. We are at a family barbecue. Our little sister just wrapped up her freshman year and has been home for summer vacation for about five minutes. Remember what Mom always used to say? ‘If someone can’t fix it in five minutes, keep your mouth shut’?”

“That’s not how she said it, but –”

“My point still stands. Claire’s looking a little chubbier than she was a year ago. Can she fix that right this second? No. We can talk to her about it later.”

Veronica angrily stabbed at a forkful of potato salad on her styrofoam plate. “This better not be you trying to push this off so we never talk about it…” It felt like her duty as the eldest sister to make sure Claire didn’t develop bad habits. Part of her knew a little “leveling out” was to be expected as Claire became an adult, but there was a difference between leveling out and losing control, and Veronica wasn’t sure where Claire was at.

Minnie ignored her sister’s grumpy food-stabbing, instead lifting up an arm and waving Claire over. Claire was standing by the picnic table their family was serving themselves from, catching up with a couple of their younger cousins. “Claire! We saved you a seat.”

That put an end to Veronica’s griping for the moment.

Veronica smiled as Claire sat down with them, squeezing herself in between. It was harder than Veronica would’ve thought to hold back her comments. Claire had almost certainly put on the freshman fifteen during her months away at school. While she was by no means fat, seeing her in person after months apart felt shocking. Claire had been a compact 115 pounds all through high school. She’d always seemed like a little doll to both her older sisters, especially since she was barely five feet tall. Now, she’d gone from doll-like to something much more grown-up. The extra weight she’d put on had given her a substance she hadn’t had before. Even Veronica, concerned as she was, had to admit that it didn’t exactly look bad on her. (And she finally had some actual curves for the first time in her life.)

That said, the clear shift she’d made in her habits was concerning, and with Claire being so short, an extra five or ten pounds on top of her current weight would have her looking chunky. Veronica knew that was the last thing her baby sister wanted.

Minnie seemed to get more unsettled by the whole thing the more she saw Claire up close. Claire had always been the first to chastise her older sisters for what they were eating and whip out the food scale and calorie calculator app when they all lived at home. Seeing her eat a half-rack of ribs and suck the bones clean before she licked the sauce off her fingers was… almost shocking. Watching her tuck into a hot dog afterward, then a couple biscuits, and a hefty mound of potato salad before getting up for seconds had Minnie looking over Claire’s head and catching Veronica’s eyes, both of them realizing they might have their work cut out for them.

***

Claire was not so oblivious to her behavior as she might’ve seemed to her sisters. She knew she was going overboard, knew her appetite must be shocking to them. The whole time they sat together, her brain pinged back and forth between defensiveness (“It’s summer vacation, and the whole family is together! Of course I’m cutting loose!”) and shame (“I shouldn’t be eating any of this – god, I’m such a pig.”).

At school, she’d gotten used to a more leisurely attitude around food. She was still doing cheer, but now that she didn’t have to worry about being too heavy to throw up into the air or rigorous competition, an extra helping here and there wasn’t the end of the world.

Not that she hadn’t still struggled to achieve that leisurely attitude. Years of extreme restriction meant she had no idea how to act around food. The first half of the school year, she was trapped in cycles of binging and starvation, unable to understand her own hunger cues. On top of that, she realized that she’d grown up more than a little spoiled as the baby in the family, which meant she could barely boil water. So instead of being able to cook her own meals in her dorm’s communal kitchen and have some degree of control over what she was eating, she relied on the campus meal plan and whatever she could scrounge elsewhere.

The sheer abundance and variety of food available to her at any given time had been overwhelming. At some meals, she’d been desperate to try as many different things as possible. Other times, all she craved was something that would remind her of her momma’s baked mac and cheese.

Thankfully, she hadn’t been alone. She got along with her roommate and made other friends in her dorm, along with other girls on the cheer team. A lot of the other freshman girls seemed to struggle, too. Claire was glad to have something to compare her own behavior to. The sophomore and junior girls seemed to have things figured out. To Claire’s eyes, most of them ate reasonably, with a few exceptions.

The exceptions had stunned her a little at first. There were a couple girls who lived on her floor who never seemed to eat at all. While Claire’s own dietary habits had been a little extreme in high school, she did understand that everybody needed calories to live. These girls seemed to live off of cigarettes, coffee, and free beer at parties. Just imagining it made the petite cheerleader sick to her stomach.

On the other end of the spectrum were the girls who seemed like they never stopped eating. Claire liked that these girls were fun, at least. They were the kind of girls who’d invite her on midnight runs to Taco Bell or bring freshly baked cannabutter blondies to parties. The gluttony could get more than a little out of hand, though. There had been one morning when Claire had gone to the cafeteria to eat breakfast and seen a girl eating from three different plates of breakfast foods at once. That had been wild on its own, but the really bonkers thing was that Claire left and went to a couple classes, and when she came back the same girl was still there, but now stuffing her face with dinner. By the looks of the rock-hard gut she was sporting, it was clear she’d only gotten up to refill her plates.

By the time the end of the first semester came, Claire felt like she mostly had a handle on things. She was still pretty active with cheer, and she managed to get into the free campus gym at least once a week on top of practices. She was eating more than she had before, but definitely a normal amount. And when she started to put on weight, even though it made her feel a little panicked, she did her best to take it in stride. Pretty much every girl on her team (except the ones who were taking their little podunk team way too seriously) had talked about putting on some weight their first year, and they all brushed it off, so she did, too.

By the time she wrapped up her freshman year, she’d put on a little more than she was comfortable with, but all her friends had reassured her. “You’ll lose some before you graduate,” they insisted, though Claire hadn’t seen any examples of this happening. “It’s just the stress from all the changes your first year.”

It wasn’t until she arrived at home that she realized maybe putting on 17 pounds in less than a calendar year was something to worry about. Her mother was the one who greeted her at the door, and though she’d missed her momma, she’d sort of… forgotten just how big she was. As her mother wrapped her up in a warm, squishy hug, gushing over how excited she was to have her baby back home, Claire felt an odd feeling in her stomach. A thought came unbidden: Remember, she was skinny once, too.

The worst part was that both her parents mentioned how “healthy” and “happy” she looked over and over, that they were glad college was “treating her well.” None of it was intended as commentary on her weight gain, but the word choice made Claire horrifically self-conscious.

Still, the chance to relax at home, put her feet up, and get spoiled by her momma coupled with her new eating habits was seductive. Even though being back home made her extra aware of how tight her clothes had gotten, of the fact that she had an ass where before there had only been pancake flatness, that her stomach had a layer of softness to it now – none of that stopped her from having thirds of dinner that first night, or enjoying a little ice cream afterwards while she and her parents watched a movie together.

Over the next few days, she got comfortable, padding around the house in her comfiest pajama shorts (which she didn’t really want to admit were a little tight in the thighs), eating without much of a routine.

It was only when her mother reminded her that her older sisters would be coming to visit for a couple weeks so they could all spend time together that Claire really started to question herself. Yet again, her concerns didn’t stop her from eating (and maybe a bit too much), but they did cause her to observe herself in her full-length bedroom mirror and poke and prod at herself, wondering what Minnie and Nic might say.

Claire knew from video calls and photos on social media that both her sisters were looking much the same as they always had. Minnie might’ve actually been skinnier after a few years out on her own. Claire remembered that she’d posted “Did I just blow a week’s food budget on these concert tickets? ….maybe, but SO worth it!” at one point. Claire, still the cossetted college freshman, couldn’t imagine making a decision like that. Veronica seemed like she was always at the gym or running drills, which made sense since she’d gone pro, so of course she was as fit as ever.

Claire worried about fitting in with her sisters now. Before, they’d all kind of gone together like a matched set, all slim cinched waists and flat stomachs. Every time she looked in the mirror, though, she was reassured by the fact that she wasn’t fat. She wasn’t even chubby, really. She just wasn’t starved and wiry anymore.

When both sisters met up with them at the barbecue, Claire had intended to be on her best behavior. She’d promised she would keep herself to one plate. Even if she really filled that plate, she would only have one! No one could judge her for that – not even her sisters. Right?

But then she’d sat down next to them. Both their plates were full, but not overflowing. Veronica burned off everything she ate, so she didn’t worry so much about calories, but she also wasn’t going to go overboard, especially in public. Minnie was clearly eating her fill, but Claire knew that single plate was likely going to be it for her. Meanwhile, food was practically falling off Claire’s plate because she hadn’t had enough room for everything she wanted on the first go. And then it was all gone so fast… She spent the last ten or so bites stuck in a debate with herself: was she going to get up and get a second plate? It wouldn’t hurt anything, really. But her sisters would absolutely judge her for it. But she also didn’t get home cooking like this hardly ever…

So she’d gotten a second plate. And, to her credit, she’d stopped there. But the second plate was equally packed, so by the time she was finished eating, her usually flat belly was bowed out, the indent of her belly button visible against her white tank top. She wanted to unbutton her shorts more than anything, but since her top kept riding up, there was no way to do that discreetly.

Amazingly, neither Minnie nor Veronica said a word about what a glutton she was being. They didn’t even mention anything when they were all back at the house and Claire excused herself for a nap, even though she knew Nic was probably dying to talk about how sleeping off a meal was like asking it all to turn straight to fat.

Too bad that couldn’t last.