Big Beautiful Dreamer
ridiculously contented
~BHM, ~MWG, Romance - A young law student tries to balance partying and schoolwork with the help of local gal.
[Author's Note:]My husband and I enjoyed our honeymoon in New Orleans, including a dinner at Bella Luna. I am grieved by the damage that Hurricane Katrina inflicted and mourn the passing of Bella Luna and numerous other homes and businesses and the long-term upheaval and disruption and loss that Katrina caused. In my fictional city, for this brief window of time and place, Katrina never occurred.
They were all against it. Friends, parents, advisers, they all said the same thing: Law school is wicked hard. New Orleans is a city for playing. If you go to law school there, you’ll distract yourself and flunk out.
I was determined to prove them wrong. And after a lifetime of snow and ice and winter winds that brought tears to the eyes, I was more than ready to live somewhere where snow was considered a novelty act.
Big Easy, here I come.
One doesn’t get into law school by being a slacker, anyway. I had diligent study habits, a quick brain and an aptitude for legal arguments, and quickly discovered that, for the serious student, there was little time for play. I could go out late at night with the Southern party boys who’d been weaned on beer and beignets (not together!), or I could pour another cup of sturdy chicory coffee and keep my nose in the hornbooks.
Until February. Tulane Law, in its wisdom, gave students what it called a “Midwinter Break.” It just happened to coincide with Mardi Gras. Those who’d had their fill of the stuff growing up rented their apartments out for obscene sums and flew to Cabo San Lucas. We newbies stayed, eyes huge as dinner plates.
I probably drank more beer that week than in all the rest of my life combined up to that point. Beer and gumbo, beer and po’boys, beer and muffulettas, beer and etoufee, beer and beer.
I didn’t take the drunken encounter at all seriously. A shapely brunette who stumbled into my arms, giggled, “Oop, shorrrry,” righted herself, draped a string of beads over my head, leaned heavily on my hand to get her balance, and staggered off.
She’d pressed her phone number into my hand.
I tossed it onto the night table as I was peeling off my clothes, squinting at the morning sun pushing through the wood-slat blinds. I took a quick rinsing shower to take the edge off the worst of the scent of stale beer and smoke, then collapse into bed.
That afternoon, after three cups of coffee, I reconsidered the tumble of hair, the warmth of her generous chest pressed against me, the softness of her hands, the length of her legs.
I phoned.
“H’lo?” Drowsy. It was only 1 p.m.
“Um. Hi. This is Jake Evans. We, um, met last night. I, um, helped you get your balance. You, um, you gave me your phone number.”
“You did? I did? We did?” Her blurred voice was sludged with the South, thick and drawling, honeyed music in my ears.
“Look, where do you live?”
She gave me an address off Poydras. I hung up and dressed with record speed. Ten minutes later I was knocking on the bright blue door.
Miss South opened up, dressed in a rumpled silk nightgown, that marvelous hair still marvelously tumbled.
“Jake Evans. From last night. You sounded like you could use some coffee.”
Silently she turned and padded into the apartment. I followed.
“Mmmmmm.” She took a deep swallow, then another. The bleared mists began to clear.
“I’m Ashley Boudreaux.” Oh Aishley, Aishley! Never mind that in Gone With the Wind, Ashley was a man’s name.
“Did I really give you my phone ... ohmigawd, Suzanne will die!”
“Um, Suzanne?”
“Suzanne is my co-worker. She bet me fifty bucks I wouldn’t give my phone number to a total stranger during Mardi Gras. Hang on.” She swallowed a beignet in two bites and reached for the phone.
“Scuse me, I have to put something on, Suzanne’ll be right over.”
Aw, did she really?
She returned in a minute. The halter top and jeans were even more promising than the nightgown. The former outlined bounteous breasts; the latter clung tightly to curve of hip and encircled a tanned, little muffin top with a silver stud winking in the navel.
I stood up instinctively at her re-entry. She giggled and pointed.
“You have some beignet on your shirt, sweetie.”
I looked down. My jeans, despite having been worn the night before, were still damnably tight, and all I saw was how my belly pushed over them. I brushed absently and sat back down. My eating habits were atrocious, and I suppose beer does have calories.
Suzanne Tipton was remarkably unremarkable. I told my tale. Suzanne’s eyebrows went up. She stared me up and down.
“Well, girlfriend, you did it.” She fished out a fifty. “Here, take yourselves to Brennan’s.”
“Fifty won’t cover that.”
“It’s a start.” She stepped neatly to the door and was gone.
Ashley put her head on one side. “You been in Nawlins how long?”
“Um. Since August. Tulane Law.”
“Oh, a newcomer, huh? And I bet you haven’t even bothered to acquaint yourselves with our fair city’s dazzling cuisine.”
“You’re right, I haven’t.”
Ashley sniffed. “I can tell. Are all you Yankees so skinny?” She looked me up and down. “Look, here’s a little stake.” She handed me the fifty. “Come back at seven with a tie on, and I’ll let you take me to Brennan’s.”
Brennan’s.
Well.
By seven-thirty I was being introduced to Nawlins haute cuisine. A blend of French and swamp, and I say that with the utmost respect, because I believe that night I sampled some of everything.
It was after eleven by the time I staggered out the door. Despite her intoxication the previous evening, Ashley Boudreaux had dined and drunk modestly, her primary objective being to initiate the newcomer. And she had.
“Honey, you’ve got to try...” became her battle cry, and it was all so fabulously delicious that I did. Over and over. If by the time we left I wasn’t roaring drunk, it was only because I’d eaten enough to soak it all up. My belly felt like an overinflated balloon, bloated and swollen and painfully aching beneath my good white shirt, and I’d unhooked my trousers in self-defense well before the bananas Foster arrived.
“Now that’s how we dine in the South,” Ashley proclaimed, flagging a cab. She took me to my apartment, helped me up the stairs, and cooed, “Call me again, sugar.”
So it was that I experienced my first Mardi Gras with an expert tour guide. Ashley giggled at my lack of knowledge, teased me about being such a grind, and took me to every Brennan family restaurant before branching out. Antoine’s, Gallatoire’s, Bella Luna, and oh by the way, about nineteen po’boy stands a day. Each morning began, about noon, with Cafe du Monde and mountains of beignets.
When the mounted cops plodded along Bourbon Street ahead of the broom-pushers, Ashley draped one last strand of beads around my neck.
“Now,” she said firmly, planting her hands on my shoulders. “You go back to your books, hear? I forbid you to call me until the semester ends. One little e-mail a week, that’s all you can have.” She fixed me with her gaze. “I won’t have my little Jakey failin’ out.” With that, she sealed her instructions with a kiss that left me weak-kneed, then turned and walked away, her backside with a luscious, surely deliberate, swing to it.
I returned to my books. Our weekly e-mails became my breaking the surface for much-needed oxygen and sustained me. I got a summer job doing boring research for a local firm and came home to Ashley every night.
Everything was beautiful until one humid July evening when I was fighting a losing battle with my gabardine slacks.
“Ash.”
She stuck her head out of the bathroom, curling iron in hand. “What, shug?”
“Ash, I can’t fasten my pants.”
She took the ends from my hands. “Suck in. Suck in.” In a trice, the hook was done up, then the zipper, even if it did leave an undeniable spare tire rolling over the straining waistband. “There.” She patted my chest and returned to the bathroom. I vowed to have just a salad.
I had a salad. To start with.
At eleven-thirty (I had to work the next day), I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in my underpants and socks, ruefully contemplating what hath Nawlins wrought. Ashley slid behind me, embraced me, pushing her hands up to my softening pecs.
“Such a big handsome man.”
“What happened to little Jakey?” I grumbled.
“Oh phoo, you’re still my little Jakey. But I like a man of substance.” Substance traditionally has two syllables. Ashley gave it three and an extra diphthong: sub-stay-ince. I tried to stay focused.
“Ashley. Look. I’m getting fat.”
“Why you think we call it the Big Easy? Dummy.” She patted my chest. “Told ya. Sub-stay-ince.” Her hand moved in lazy circles around my swollen belly, tautly distended with the night’s dinner, gently easing my discomfort. “Sub-stay-ince,” she murmured, her lips tickling my ear.
I managed a flying visit home in mid-August, just before classes resumed. My good grades were praised, my tan admired. My parents’ bathroom scale showed that I’d picked up quite a bit of weight, going from one-seventy to one-ninety-three, but no one mentioned it. I supposed that so long as my grades were good, everything else was incidental.
Second year, insanely demanding, I ground away harder than ever. Made Law Review. Kept to the weekly e-mails and forced myself to focus, knowing that Ashley was behind her blue door off Poydras. Her father worked in construction and had more money than God, but Ashley worked in a bookstore anyway because she liked it. The only books I read were textbooks, casebooks, hornbooks.
My second Mardi Gras. Gras means “fat.” Aptly named. But by then I needed a break so badly that I let Ashley grab me by the hand and together we explored, played, ate, drank, grabbed beads, and tumbled into bed every morning for some dawn intimacy and a little sleep before beignets at noon.
My second summer, I had a slightly better research job at the same firm, and there were hints of employment in the future. By now I wasn’t just a little plump. I had put on over forty pounds – close to fifty, if I was honest with myself – and it showed everywhere. My face had two chins, full cheeks, pads of flesh below my eyes. My biceps and quads, still muscled from workouts, were covered with a layer of suet. My broad pecs were cushioned and a double spare tire encircled an ever-broadening waistline and perched above a noticeably wider backside. The scale in my parents' bathroom showed a merciless two eighteen.
Still, my parents said nothing until the evening before my departure. In the kitchen, over coffee, my mom said, hesitantly, “Is the food as good as they say down there?”
“Yeah, it is.” Ruefully.
She looked me over. “You’re putting on a little weight, hon.”
“Yeah, I know.” Still rueful.
“Well ... take care of yourself.” In my family, that passed for a lengthy lecture. I found I’d grown very fond indeed of the contrast presented by Ashley, the enthusiastic running monologue, twenty words where one would do, and punctuated by multiple interjections, dusted with terms of endearment. I was honey, I was shug, I was sugar, I was sweetie, I was Jakey, I was babes, I was dumplin, I was sugarplum, I was “my man of sub-stay-ince.”
Third year. Ashley’s weekly e-mails consisted of cheering sections, prepping me for finals. I pounded on her door after it was all over. She met me with a glare.
“Do what?” A Southernism I quite liked.
“Jakey. Sugar. Bar exam. You can move in here, since your lease is up, but hands off until you pass that thing. I’ll wash your clothes and feed you and fetch you coffee. I’ve been savin’ my vacation days and I’m all yours.” She showed me the third week in July circled in red on the calendar. Louisiana’s bar examination is the longest in the country, taking seven hours each day on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’d be willing to bet that beer consumption goes up on those three nights in Louisiana. Mine certainly did.
Ashley could be all business when she wanted to be. I worked each day at the law firm, which had, in fact, hired me, attended the bar exam prep school, studied every spare minute that I was awake – with Ashley blowing a whistle to institute ten-minute breaks every hour. Then she petted, soothed, read me poetry, fed me, and held my hand while we waited two endless months. She stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders on Friday, September 16 – I’d been given the day off – as I went to the state Supreme Court’s Web site to look up the results.
PASSING APPLICANTS... E... Evans, Jackson Philip III.
The squeal all but broke my eardrums.
“Jakey! Jakey! Sugar! Jakey!” Ashley and I grabbed hands and galumphed around in a wild circle. Finally, breathless and sweating, I dug out two hundred dollars and pressed it into her hand.
“Buy something magnificent.” I had made a reservation at Brennan’s, figuring it could either be celebration or consolation.
Prepared for my signal, a waiter brought champagne and two flutes. I fished a box from Adler’s from my breast pocket. The box contained a three-diamond ring that had cost more than nine thousand dollars. I’d been tucking money aside for it for more than two years, truth be told.
“Ashley Michelle Mignon Boudreaux, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
“Jackson Philip Evans the Third ... Esquire ... I will. On one condition.”
“Condition?” Sweat prickled the back of my neck.
“Promise me that you will always be my man” – may-in – “of sub-stay-ince.”
Twelve months later, I was beaming upon my bride. Her magnificently, professionally tumbled hair, laced with baby’s breath and seed pearls, floated on her bared shoulders, the off-the-shoulder dress revealing rounded creamy beacons. The plunging neckline hinted at her magnificently bounteous bosom and the cream satin engirdled her lusciously padded tummy and brazenly rounded hips, and the slit all the way up one side provided tantalizing peeps of those mile-long legs, all arc and swoop and fleshy curve.
I was perspiring but happy in a gabardine morning suit, the pearl-gray waistcoat arcing over a mountain of belly. Four years ago I’d been a skinny, reserved Yankee with weak eyes and no passions. Now I was expansive, with huge arms and legs, two chins hinting at three, ruddy full cheeks, cushiony soft pecs on which my bride loved to snuggle, and a stomach that, when not stuffed to the gills with good Crescent City cooking, rested as two full spare tires, impressive love handles folding back around to a substantial backside. I'd clocked in on the morning of my wedding day at two hundred seventy five on the dot.
A watch chain glittered; calling attention to my homegrown gut – for Nawlins was unquestionably, now and forever, home. I gazed down at Ashley, smiling at the love that shown in her eyes. I was hers, I was all hers, I had become at last her man of sub-stay-ince.
Off Poydras
By: Big Beautiful Dreamer
By: Big Beautiful Dreamer
[Author's Note:]My husband and I enjoyed our honeymoon in New Orleans, including a dinner at Bella Luna. I am grieved by the damage that Hurricane Katrina inflicted and mourn the passing of Bella Luna and numerous other homes and businesses and the long-term upheaval and disruption and loss that Katrina caused. In my fictional city, for this brief window of time and place, Katrina never occurred.
They were all against it. Friends, parents, advisers, they all said the same thing: Law school is wicked hard. New Orleans is a city for playing. If you go to law school there, you’ll distract yourself and flunk out.
I was determined to prove them wrong. And after a lifetime of snow and ice and winter winds that brought tears to the eyes, I was more than ready to live somewhere where snow was considered a novelty act.
Big Easy, here I come.
One doesn’t get into law school by being a slacker, anyway. I had diligent study habits, a quick brain and an aptitude for legal arguments, and quickly discovered that, for the serious student, there was little time for play. I could go out late at night with the Southern party boys who’d been weaned on beer and beignets (not together!), or I could pour another cup of sturdy chicory coffee and keep my nose in the hornbooks.
Until February. Tulane Law, in its wisdom, gave students what it called a “Midwinter Break.” It just happened to coincide with Mardi Gras. Those who’d had their fill of the stuff growing up rented their apartments out for obscene sums and flew to Cabo San Lucas. We newbies stayed, eyes huge as dinner plates.
I probably drank more beer that week than in all the rest of my life combined up to that point. Beer and gumbo, beer and po’boys, beer and muffulettas, beer and etoufee, beer and beer.
I didn’t take the drunken encounter at all seriously. A shapely brunette who stumbled into my arms, giggled, “Oop, shorrrry,” righted herself, draped a string of beads over my head, leaned heavily on my hand to get her balance, and staggered off.
She’d pressed her phone number into my hand.
I tossed it onto the night table as I was peeling off my clothes, squinting at the morning sun pushing through the wood-slat blinds. I took a quick rinsing shower to take the edge off the worst of the scent of stale beer and smoke, then collapse into bed.
That afternoon, after three cups of coffee, I reconsidered the tumble of hair, the warmth of her generous chest pressed against me, the softness of her hands, the length of her legs.
I phoned.
“H’lo?” Drowsy. It was only 1 p.m.
“Um. Hi. This is Jake Evans. We, um, met last night. I, um, helped you get your balance. You, um, you gave me your phone number.”
“You did? I did? We did?” Her blurred voice was sludged with the South, thick and drawling, honeyed music in my ears.
“Look, where do you live?”
She gave me an address off Poydras. I hung up and dressed with record speed. Ten minutes later I was knocking on the bright blue door.
Miss South opened up, dressed in a rumpled silk nightgown, that marvelous hair still marvelously tumbled.
“Jake Evans. From last night. You sounded like you could use some coffee.”
Silently she turned and padded into the apartment. I followed.
“Mmmmmm.” She took a deep swallow, then another. The bleared mists began to clear.
“I’m Ashley Boudreaux.” Oh Aishley, Aishley! Never mind that in Gone With the Wind, Ashley was a man’s name.
“Did I really give you my phone ... ohmigawd, Suzanne will die!”
“Um, Suzanne?”
“Suzanne is my co-worker. She bet me fifty bucks I wouldn’t give my phone number to a total stranger during Mardi Gras. Hang on.” She swallowed a beignet in two bites and reached for the phone.
“Scuse me, I have to put something on, Suzanne’ll be right over.”
Aw, did she really?
She returned in a minute. The halter top and jeans were even more promising than the nightgown. The former outlined bounteous breasts; the latter clung tightly to curve of hip and encircled a tanned, little muffin top with a silver stud winking in the navel.
I stood up instinctively at her re-entry. She giggled and pointed.
“You have some beignet on your shirt, sweetie.”
I looked down. My jeans, despite having been worn the night before, were still damnably tight, and all I saw was how my belly pushed over them. I brushed absently and sat back down. My eating habits were atrocious, and I suppose beer does have calories.
Suzanne Tipton was remarkably unremarkable. I told my tale. Suzanne’s eyebrows went up. She stared me up and down.
“Well, girlfriend, you did it.” She fished out a fifty. “Here, take yourselves to Brennan’s.”
“Fifty won’t cover that.”
“It’s a start.” She stepped neatly to the door and was gone.
Ashley put her head on one side. “You been in Nawlins how long?”
“Um. Since August. Tulane Law.”
“Oh, a newcomer, huh? And I bet you haven’t even bothered to acquaint yourselves with our fair city’s dazzling cuisine.”
“You’re right, I haven’t.”
Ashley sniffed. “I can tell. Are all you Yankees so skinny?” She looked me up and down. “Look, here’s a little stake.” She handed me the fifty. “Come back at seven with a tie on, and I’ll let you take me to Brennan’s.”
Brennan’s.
Well.
By seven-thirty I was being introduced to Nawlins haute cuisine. A blend of French and swamp, and I say that with the utmost respect, because I believe that night I sampled some of everything.
It was after eleven by the time I staggered out the door. Despite her intoxication the previous evening, Ashley Boudreaux had dined and drunk modestly, her primary objective being to initiate the newcomer. And she had.
“Honey, you’ve got to try...” became her battle cry, and it was all so fabulously delicious that I did. Over and over. If by the time we left I wasn’t roaring drunk, it was only because I’d eaten enough to soak it all up. My belly felt like an overinflated balloon, bloated and swollen and painfully aching beneath my good white shirt, and I’d unhooked my trousers in self-defense well before the bananas Foster arrived.
“Now that’s how we dine in the South,” Ashley proclaimed, flagging a cab. She took me to my apartment, helped me up the stairs, and cooed, “Call me again, sugar.”
So it was that I experienced my first Mardi Gras with an expert tour guide. Ashley giggled at my lack of knowledge, teased me about being such a grind, and took me to every Brennan family restaurant before branching out. Antoine’s, Gallatoire’s, Bella Luna, and oh by the way, about nineteen po’boy stands a day. Each morning began, about noon, with Cafe du Monde and mountains of beignets.
When the mounted cops plodded along Bourbon Street ahead of the broom-pushers, Ashley draped one last strand of beads around my neck.
“Now,” she said firmly, planting her hands on my shoulders. “You go back to your books, hear? I forbid you to call me until the semester ends. One little e-mail a week, that’s all you can have.” She fixed me with her gaze. “I won’t have my little Jakey failin’ out.” With that, she sealed her instructions with a kiss that left me weak-kneed, then turned and walked away, her backside with a luscious, surely deliberate, swing to it.
I returned to my books. Our weekly e-mails became my breaking the surface for much-needed oxygen and sustained me. I got a summer job doing boring research for a local firm and came home to Ashley every night.
Everything was beautiful until one humid July evening when I was fighting a losing battle with my gabardine slacks.
“Ash.”
She stuck her head out of the bathroom, curling iron in hand. “What, shug?”
“Ash, I can’t fasten my pants.”
She took the ends from my hands. “Suck in. Suck in.” In a trice, the hook was done up, then the zipper, even if it did leave an undeniable spare tire rolling over the straining waistband. “There.” She patted my chest and returned to the bathroom. I vowed to have just a salad.
I had a salad. To start with.
At eleven-thirty (I had to work the next day), I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in my underpants and socks, ruefully contemplating what hath Nawlins wrought. Ashley slid behind me, embraced me, pushing her hands up to my softening pecs.
“Such a big handsome man.”
“What happened to little Jakey?” I grumbled.
“Oh phoo, you’re still my little Jakey. But I like a man of substance.” Substance traditionally has two syllables. Ashley gave it three and an extra diphthong: sub-stay-ince. I tried to stay focused.
“Ashley. Look. I’m getting fat.”
“Why you think we call it the Big Easy? Dummy.” She patted my chest. “Told ya. Sub-stay-ince.” Her hand moved in lazy circles around my swollen belly, tautly distended with the night’s dinner, gently easing my discomfort. “Sub-stay-ince,” she murmured, her lips tickling my ear.
I managed a flying visit home in mid-August, just before classes resumed. My good grades were praised, my tan admired. My parents’ bathroom scale showed that I’d picked up quite a bit of weight, going from one-seventy to one-ninety-three, but no one mentioned it. I supposed that so long as my grades were good, everything else was incidental.
Second year, insanely demanding, I ground away harder than ever. Made Law Review. Kept to the weekly e-mails and forced myself to focus, knowing that Ashley was behind her blue door off Poydras. Her father worked in construction and had more money than God, but Ashley worked in a bookstore anyway because she liked it. The only books I read were textbooks, casebooks, hornbooks.
My second Mardi Gras. Gras means “fat.” Aptly named. But by then I needed a break so badly that I let Ashley grab me by the hand and together we explored, played, ate, drank, grabbed beads, and tumbled into bed every morning for some dawn intimacy and a little sleep before beignets at noon.
My second summer, I had a slightly better research job at the same firm, and there were hints of employment in the future. By now I wasn’t just a little plump. I had put on over forty pounds – close to fifty, if I was honest with myself – and it showed everywhere. My face had two chins, full cheeks, pads of flesh below my eyes. My biceps and quads, still muscled from workouts, were covered with a layer of suet. My broad pecs were cushioned and a double spare tire encircled an ever-broadening waistline and perched above a noticeably wider backside. The scale in my parents' bathroom showed a merciless two eighteen.
Still, my parents said nothing until the evening before my departure. In the kitchen, over coffee, my mom said, hesitantly, “Is the food as good as they say down there?”
“Yeah, it is.” Ruefully.
She looked me over. “You’re putting on a little weight, hon.”
“Yeah, I know.” Still rueful.
“Well ... take care of yourself.” In my family, that passed for a lengthy lecture. I found I’d grown very fond indeed of the contrast presented by Ashley, the enthusiastic running monologue, twenty words where one would do, and punctuated by multiple interjections, dusted with terms of endearment. I was honey, I was shug, I was sugar, I was sweetie, I was Jakey, I was babes, I was dumplin, I was sugarplum, I was “my man of sub-stay-ince.”
Third year. Ashley’s weekly e-mails consisted of cheering sections, prepping me for finals. I pounded on her door after it was all over. She met me with a glare.
“Do what?” A Southernism I quite liked.
“Jakey. Sugar. Bar exam. You can move in here, since your lease is up, but hands off until you pass that thing. I’ll wash your clothes and feed you and fetch you coffee. I’ve been savin’ my vacation days and I’m all yours.” She showed me the third week in July circled in red on the calendar. Louisiana’s bar examination is the longest in the country, taking seven hours each day on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’d be willing to bet that beer consumption goes up on those three nights in Louisiana. Mine certainly did.
Ashley could be all business when she wanted to be. I worked each day at the law firm, which had, in fact, hired me, attended the bar exam prep school, studied every spare minute that I was awake – with Ashley blowing a whistle to institute ten-minute breaks every hour. Then she petted, soothed, read me poetry, fed me, and held my hand while we waited two endless months. She stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders on Friday, September 16 – I’d been given the day off – as I went to the state Supreme Court’s Web site to look up the results.
PASSING APPLICANTS... E... Evans, Jackson Philip III.
The squeal all but broke my eardrums.
“Jakey! Jakey! Sugar! Jakey!” Ashley and I grabbed hands and galumphed around in a wild circle. Finally, breathless and sweating, I dug out two hundred dollars and pressed it into her hand.
“Buy something magnificent.” I had made a reservation at Brennan’s, figuring it could either be celebration or consolation.
Prepared for my signal, a waiter brought champagne and two flutes. I fished a box from Adler’s from my breast pocket. The box contained a three-diamond ring that had cost more than nine thousand dollars. I’d been tucking money aside for it for more than two years, truth be told.
“Ashley Michelle Mignon Boudreaux, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
“Jackson Philip Evans the Third ... Esquire ... I will. On one condition.”
“Condition?” Sweat prickled the back of my neck.
“Promise me that you will always be my man” – may-in – “of sub-stay-ince.”
Twelve months later, I was beaming upon my bride. Her magnificently, professionally tumbled hair, laced with baby’s breath and seed pearls, floated on her bared shoulders, the off-the-shoulder dress revealing rounded creamy beacons. The plunging neckline hinted at her magnificently bounteous bosom and the cream satin engirdled her lusciously padded tummy and brazenly rounded hips, and the slit all the way up one side provided tantalizing peeps of those mile-long legs, all arc and swoop and fleshy curve.
I was perspiring but happy in a gabardine morning suit, the pearl-gray waistcoat arcing over a mountain of belly. Four years ago I’d been a skinny, reserved Yankee with weak eyes and no passions. Now I was expansive, with huge arms and legs, two chins hinting at three, ruddy full cheeks, cushiony soft pecs on which my bride loved to snuggle, and a stomach that, when not stuffed to the gills with good Crescent City cooking, rested as two full spare tires, impressive love handles folding back around to a substantial backside. I'd clocked in on the morning of my wedding day at two hundred seventy five on the dot.
A watch chain glittered; calling attention to my homegrown gut – for Nawlins was unquestionably, now and forever, home. I gazed down at Ashley, smiling at the love that shown in her eyes. I was hers, I was all hers, I had become at last her man of sub-stay-ince.
