Quentin was somehow relaxed and overbearing at the same time. He would always tell people to go with the flow, but once he had an idea, he wouldn’t let it go. On Jed’s birthday, Quentin’s idea was apparently to get the birthday boy plenty drunk before he left the apartment, and he wouldn’t let anyone get in his way. A few people tried to get Quentin to slow down, but he effortlessly brushed past them when they would try to keep him away from the liquor. He was one of the few people around who was taller than Jed, and he had a pretty thick build. He liked to joke that he would have made a great football player except for the minor problem of having zero coordination. He was a force of nature, and he swept his roommate through the apartment as he searched for more booze.
Jed was starting to feel more than tipsy when he was ushered into the kitchen. Someone had bought a large cake, and he wasn’t sure how they had smuggled it in without him seeing. The words ‘HAPPY 21st JED’ adorned the cake in bold blue script, and 21 candles lined the edge of the cake. Sam lit the candles as everyone started singing Happy Birthday. As the song ended, just before Jed blew out the candles, someone called out, “Make a wish!” It was the oddest thing, but in Jed mind it sounded like a shout and a whisper at the same time. It was a silly superstition, but Jed found himself closing his eyes and wishing before blowing out the candles. One candle was stubborn, and Jed wasn’t sure he would be able to blow it out without taking another breath, but finally the flickering light gave way to smoke. Suddenly the noise of 15 people gathered in the kitchen faded away.
181. Well, it was a start. Jed hadn’t really set any goals for himself, so he supposed he should be pretty proud of gaining 35 pounds since starting college. Back in his bedroom, he started pulling on a pair of jeans without thinking only to discover that he had to suck in to button them up. He wondered how that pair had ended up among his newer pants, which were a size larger, but he smiled as he folded them back up. Sometimes he was disappointed with how much—or in his mind, how little—he had gained, but it was gratifying to know that he had irrevocably outgrown his old jeans. He doubted he would need to go up a size in shirts any time soon, but he noted with pleasure that even his loosest shirts showed the outline of his small belly.
Jed wasn’t as large as Quentin or some of his other friends, but he couldn’t really be called slim anymore. It was a small victory. He had learned to celebrate those rather than taking them for granted. For a while he had worried that he wouldn’t be able to gain at all until his metabolism slowed down around age 30, but that fear had clearly been unfounded. At this rate, he would be well over 200 by the time he reached that age. He wasn’t really sure how large he wanted to grow in the long run, though. Sometimes he thought he’d be happy just hitting the big 2-0-0, but other times he imagined himself growing far larger.
“Happy birthday!” Jed’s roommates said in unison as he walked into the living room. Quentin clapped Jed on the shoulder while Sam flipped bacon in a skillet.
“Since when do you cook?” Jed asked his thin roommate. At the moment, Sam wore an apron over an otherwise bare torso. Jed’s practiced eye noted the slight bulge under the apron. Sam was very small, both in height and weight, but Jed’s eating habits seemed to have rubbed off on him a little. Sam’s designer jeans looked brand new and they seemed a bit roomier than what Sam usually wore. Jed wondered if maybe he wasn’t the only one who had recently gone up a size.
“I love to cook, but I’m a broke college student,” Sam replied. “If I have to choose between spending money on clothes or food, I’m going to choose clothes. Anyway, we never seem to have real meals at this apartment, so I thought a good breakfast would be a good start to your 21st birthday.”
Jed certainly wasn’t going to pass up a home-cooked meal. In fact, he wished this sort of thing would happen more often. He was really surprised by how much food Sam had prepared. When Jed mentioned it, Sam replied, “I couldn’t let the birthday boy go hungry, now could I?” Still, there was way too much food for one person, and Jed wouldn’t have time to finish it all before class even if he had room.
Birthday wish
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