Fat Everywhere

“Uugh. Unnggh” Leigh grunted, Monday morning 30 March 2020. “Keep tugging with me, and eventually we’ll get all of me into these.”

“If it’s this tough to get you into your panties, how in the world are we going to get you into your pants?!”

“My black leggings stretch more than these.”

“More than underpants?!”

“Oh yeah. At least these. Ready?”

“Better give me a count, so I can tug up when you’re in the downward descent of your jump.”

“OK, you tug up when I say three. Ready?”

“Yes.”

She made preparatory jumping motions with each count, to get herself in sync, “One. Two. Three!”

RRRRRRip!

“Oh well” she said with amazing nonchalance, slipping the shredded bikini briefs off. “Guess I’m going to have to go commando.”

The bugle in his pants compelled her to caress it. “Need to drop your pants and get off in me somewhere with your extra-special neat and clean neener, Neener?”

“Tempting as that is, I thought you might want to have me next to you woggle toggle waggling as you wiggle wobble shimmer.”

“How sweet of youuu! (kiss). Yes, I would like that, please. OK, let’s get me packed into my super-stretchy pants so I can get some shoes on and we can get this woggle toggle wiggle wobble waggle shimmer show on the road.”

Seeing his cruise wife’s fat bulging and bobbling every which way in its? their? vain attempt to escape the cloth’s mild confines nearly made Clark forget to take his mask.

The hallway adjacent to Leigh’s and Clark’s stateroom was bustling with generally happy voices of people freshly freed from lockdown, sounding like they might be smiling even though it was not possible to see the mouth portion of their expressions behind their face masks.

Leigh and Clark were assuredly smiling, feeling the love as they wiggle wobble woggle toggle waggle shimmered their way along the hall.

Having spent so much time looking at each other, both of them focused on those around them. Even without having met any of these people (so far) nor having previously studied their physiques, it was obvious to Clark and even more obvious to Leigh (thanks to her greater fashion awareness) that the majority of people had fattened out of the intended range of the clothes they were wearing. Some subtly (noticed mostly by Leigh), others moderately, and a few extremely, even if not as extremely as Leigh herself. Who, while not out of her clothes, was obviously pushing their range and undeniably very fat. Clark couldn’t help noticing that other than a couple of generously-padded BHM, who may have been like that before the lockdown, nearly all the moderately to extremely fattened people presented as women.

Leigh didn’t mind Clark’s eyes on other women. Any time she wanted his back on her, all she had to do was squeeze his held hand more firmly and turn his way with her masked smile. {We know each other well enough now that I can tell when he’s smiling and he can tell when I’m smiling even with our face masks on.} This realization made her smile even more.

Off-putting as having to go through health checks was, the ones they encountered at the approach to the elevators on their Upper Promenade deck then again exiting the elevator on the Sky deck were swift and friendly. The elevator ride itself was unexpected: a hotel department staff member was inside operating it manually, with colleagues on Upper Promenade grouping and packing elevator riders based upon their COVID-19 class (asymptomatic or recovered) and their destination. Mostly on account of Leigh’s size, only one other couple plus the operator rode with her and Clark.

“Most fattening cruise I’ve ever been on, that’s for sure” the woman of the couple, by appearances roughly a decade younger, shared with a smiling voice from behind her mask, patting her then her companion’s mildly bulging bellies. “But whatcha gonna do during lockdown, with no opportunity for exercise and all this great food on board?”

“I forgot all about exercise once they closed the Fitness Center. I love eating and he loves me fat, so we’re living the dream.”

The couple didn’t need to see their mouths to know that Clark and Leigh were smiling, given the inundation of the elevator car with invisible yet palpable love hearts, the way Clark’s from-behind cuddle and gentle hip fat squeezes came off far more affectionate than sexual, and the smile in Leigh’s eyes when she craned her neck to gaze slightly up and behind her into his.

Rendered speechless at the thought that someone could be OK being as fat as Leigh had become and that someone else would love her more for being that way, the couple, too flustered to introduce themselves, made a little trivial small talk about the weather to keep the remainder of the ride from becoming awkwardly silent.

Once they passed the outbound health inspection and got a good look around, Clark and Leigh both readily saw that there were even more newly-fat people on the Sky deck than in their hallway. This ought not to have been any sort of surprise, given that they were at the second half-hour seating at the only major full-service buffet open to those in the virus-recovered class: the most compelling option for the foodie members of this virus class.

Experimentally, seatings at Jimmy’s Buffet were on the half hour, with the expectation that most diners would stay between half an hour and an hour. By design the booking system kept 2 to 4 tables open for each time slot, to allow for those who may prefer to slow dine, or long dine. Other restaurants on the ship were experimenting with entirely different scheduling, in a crash course to try and suss out what was most workable.

“Hhhhmmm. Oh gosh” Leigh nearly drooled, piling on a pair of the avocado tortilla breakfast mini-burritos she loved, plus sausages, toast, scrambled eggs, and hash browns, before running out of plate space. Had it not been for the mask she still wore, everyone looking her way would have seen her foodie-lusty tongue poked out of her mouth.

“I’m quite sure they’ll let you come back for seconds” Clark assured her.

“They better! I’ve missed too many cruise days unable to partake of this, or unable to taste anything when I could partake.”

With plates loaded up, they sought out a free table.

“Hey hey team!” a happy, bold and brassy voice from a familiar face not wearing a mask called to them. It was Beryl Beech. “Come each gimme a quick hug, then park thee plush and plain posteriors punctually at this here table, and let’s share our experiences.”

Fat as Leigh had become, she was wholly taken aback by how much more of Beryl there was. Clark was more aroused than surprised, knowing of Beryl’s hardcore gainer proclivities. She fully needed two of the movable round padded stool seats to hold her huge hindquarters, which were far from her fattest parts.

As they hugged, Leigh became outright nauseous seeing how profoundly much boob flesh Beryl had: each of her breasts looked about as big around as either of Clark’s thighs, and over half as long! So rattled was she, she barely noticed the cheek kiss Clark gave Beryl, at her request.

Beryl was less than impressed with Leigh leading herself and Clark to the diagonally opposite corner of the rectangular roughly picnic-sized table. {At least she’s letting him sit inboard, hence closer to me.} “You don’t have to social distance from me if you’ve recovered, and if you haven’t wrassled the beast and recovered, you’re on the wrong deck.”

“I thought that given how much you’re clearly having and how much I intend to have, we’d be better off spaced apart to allow for more plate space.”

“Brilliant! Kiss her for me would ya please, Clark?”

He took the opportunity to remove and stow his mask, then gently ease hers off her right ear to enable a true lip to lip kiss.

“Mmm… murrmpf” Beryl mumbled as she chewed, eventually swallowing to clearly say, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

“Thank you for unleashing my lips, Neener” Leigh replied with a kiss, fully removing and tucking away her face mask. “Now to redirect them towards their other primary life purpose.”

Which was, of course, acting as gatekeeper and comestible retainer for her mouth, opening up wide for her first bite of breakfast mini-burrito for the day—nearly her first ever with full senses of taste and smell.

Too busy eating her own breakfast to respond verbally, Beryl gave her a thumb(s)-up.

Leigh nearly choked on her first bite of mixed scrambled eggs + hash browns as a barely-familiar gigantically fat female form wobbled and sloshed into view. Making things worse for her was the hard banana-up Clark instinctively gave the newcomer upon sight, compelling her to scoot closer to him with her right hip fat lifted, then plop that part of her down atop his turgid lap.

The magnitude of Rebecca Davidson’s fattening since the last time Leigh and Clark had seen her was truly breathtaking: she’d been supersized back then. Now, like Beryl, beyond question she was ultrasized. As was typical for her body she fattened all over, though far and away mostly at upper chest level and nearby. Each of her enormous upper arms looked about as big as either of Leigh’s thighs, back when she’d been merely plump, flattening even wider when her arms were at rest, as Leigh’s thighs did when she sat. More shockingly eye-catching to anyone who looked, each of her breasts looked about as big as either of Leigh’s thighs right now, all fattened! Maybe not quite that big if measured, though through Leigh’s raging breast jealousy goggles, they sure seemed that way! By any measure or lack thereof, they were clearly and obviously the biggest at the table—saying a lot, given Beryl’s breasty hugeness!

“Hey squish sister!” Beryl chirped, “No need to look so lost: you’ve found us!”

The other starkly visible aspect to Rebecca beyond her dramatic fattening was her hollow shell-shocked look, experiencing some other reality somewhere deep inside her own mind far more than being present in the moment. She seemed to be in a trance as she sat across from Beryl on the same side of the table with Clark (nearest her after the gap between them) and Leigh.

She looked equally vacant and terrified to her table mates as she slowly panned her head and scanned their faces. “What is this wretched thing?” she asked in a weak voice whose tone sounded as far away as her gaze appeared.

“It’s a potent one, that’s for sure” said Beryl, popping a fried potato pillow (often trademarked with the word “tot” in its name when made and sold by other companies) into her mouth. “But you survived it, as did we.”

At least some of the terror inside Rebecca came tumbling out, loud and frantic, “It came for me and took my breath!” she breathlessly gasped, “And I’m coughing and coughing up stuff—vile stuff!—and it’s goin’ for my lungs, and I’m wheezing and coughing and cookin’ ta death of fever, and I’m feelin’ the tightness! It’s goin’ for me!—It’s goin’ for me! And the Infirmary can’t take me and they’re overbooked and there’s no ventilators on board! No ventilators!”

Everyone else at the table plus others nearby were drawn into Rebecca’s dramatic retelling of her experience. “So what did you do?!” asked Clark.

“What could I do?! We were in lockdown already! I ran ’round and ’round in my stateroom in a total panic, beggin’ Gaia not to die! Running and running—weaker, faint, hot, can’t breath! Throwing up, coughing up, having tea and throwing it up! Taking vitamins and throwing them up! Can’t sleep! Can’t breathe! No help! Gotta run away from this! Gotta run awaaaay!”

Deeply moved, as were the others, by instinct far more than thought, Clark reached over and gently caressed Rebecca’s upper arm, “It’s OK Rebecca—it’s OK! You survived!”

“Clarence Jefferson didn’t! Miles Wilson didn’t! Uncle Abe didn’t!”

“Who’re those first two?” Beryl wondered out loud, between bites of breakfast nothing and no one was going to keep her from enjoying.

“My ex-boyfriends from long ago, from my ’hood and still livin’ there! Dead! Dead from this COVID-19!”

Clark wanted to hear the rest of her story. “So you ran around and coughed stuff up and otherwise got phlegm and things out of your system, and did the breathing get better then?”

“No! It was terrifying! I cried and screamed with no breath! No one around to be with! All alone!”

“What did you do then?”

“I took a handful—a frickin’ handful!—of vitamin C pills and some Calm Clouds tea because I didn’t have any Stress Suppress. Just sipped it and cried!, because I didn’t wanna die!”

Again he instinctually caressed her arm, “You’re here with us! You’re alive!”

She collapsed in a pile of tears atop the table, letting out what had to come out. Being able to share with others and having one-off lover Clark lovingly and soothingly caressing her was part of Rebecca’s healing that she didn’t know she needed.

As suddenly as she’d collapsed, she snapped back upright. “I wanted something else something or someone else soothing—I wanted my Daddy! Or Mommy! The only thing like candy I had were some of those big zinc horse pills, and they’re supposed to be good for colds and now they tell us common colds are coronaviruses after having told us before they were rhinoviruses, and maybe if you put a crown on a rhino or give the rhino the right brand of Mexican beer they’re the same thing but whatever. I figured it couldn’t hoyt ta suck one like for a cold, and it might help. So I sucked it and cried, struggling ta breathe, sipping tea. And you’re not supposed to suck more than one zinc tablet every two hours, but I did, and I’m not sorry.”

“Thankfully that doesn’t apply to penises.”

Others around the table glared at Beryl as though she’d just dropped the N word or put on a Third Reich arm band.

Clark prompted Rebecca to get her to continue, “So did the vitamin C and zinc and tea help?”

“Apparently but I donno” she shrugged her shoulders and held out her open palms. “Not a doctor. It’s not like I got all better right quick—oh hell no!” She drifted back into reliving the traumatizing experience, “My fever was high, and I thought ‘This is it. I’m dyin’ here. Dyin’ on this cruise ship, alone’.”

She needed to sniffle, then decided she ought to blow her nose, doing so.

“I’m on fire. I can’t breathe. And I’m gonna die! So I took the chicken way out: tried to O.D. on sleeping pills.”

“Hhhhh!” Leigh gasped.

“They weren’t real sleeping pills, hun. Hug her for me, will ya Clark?”

Having someone ask him to do what he wanted to be doing anyway sped up and lengthened the sitting side embrace.

“They’re those Trader Joe’s ones, with the L-theanine, 5-HTP, and melatonin and stuff. Prolly not good ta take 10 at a time instead of 2, but it didn’t kill me. Thought it was, given how tranquil-dazed-pass-out it was makin’ me. Cuddled up under every blanket, sitting up against a stack of pillows so I could barely keep breathing. Drifting off, giving in t’ the land of never existing any more.”

Beryl repeatedly and insistently pointed towards Rebecca’s getting-cold breakfast.

She shook her head, continuing, “I didn’t die, obviously. Woke up drenched in sweat. Drenched, people! The band around my chest—lungs—feeling was gone, and my breathing was a little better. Still wheezing, still coughing, still had a fever.

“Got into the shower and had a nice long hot one, upset for bein’ too fat ta fit in the tub and soak. A little light-headed delirious in there, but kept it together. Shower felt good. Getting the sweat off felt good. More vitamin C, more tea, sucking more zinc tablets, but this time per instructions. Had room service bring me a new set of bedding—sheets, blankets, pillowcases—the whole nine—and put them on myself, as much ta have something ta do and keep my mind busy as to protect the ship’s staff, but obviously that too. Ordered a big bowl of chicken bone broth, which tasted great!”

This caught Leigh’s attention. “You could taste things during your illness?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you?”

“No! And it was awful! Everything tasted like cardboard! Or like anything else with different textures and no flavor whatsoever.”

“Same for me” said Clark.

“What about you?” Rebecca asked Beryl.

“Almost total loss. Didn’t stop me from eating, obviously”—blomp blomp she patted her huge belly, then briefly hefted her breasts slightly.

“So the soup was great and then what happened?”

“You really want ta know, don’t ya, Clark?”

“I’m fascinated and I care about you, so yes.”

“Days more suffering, sssllloooowwwwly getting better. It’s that thing where you’re better in the morning, then worse again later in the day.”

All 3 of her table mates nodded, each happening to have a mouthful of breakfast at that moment.

“Something like 3 days after the night I thought for sure I was gonna die, the wheezing stopped. Still coughing, but not coughing stuff up. Still feverish, more so at night. Depressed as fuck from all I’m reading about this disease—then through now. More chicken soup yes, but with my appetite coming back and feeling like it’s the end of the world or at least the human social world—the real one, not the bullshit can’t touch online one—I said ‘Screw it. I’m eatin’’. And eatin’. And eatin’. Sorry not sorry: I don’t care.”

Beryl swallowed quickly to exclaim, “That’s the spirit!”

“But whaddo we have left, Beryl? Maria Mercader died yesterday, alright?!”

The others looked at her and each other, uncomfortably lost.

“CBS News reporter, alright? Younger than me!… a little. Dead! Whacked by COVID-19! Cancer didn’t take her out, other diseases didn’t take her out, but COVID-19 did! In New York City alone we’re losing 300-some people a day to this thing—a day! Death toll is something like one thousand seven hundred! They’re puttin’ the dead in refrigerator cars!—the semi trailers, the trucks, whatever! Packing dead people in refrigerator trucks in NYC because there’re so many! How is this happening?! This should be stuff from the Middle Ages! Or Ancient Babylon or somethin’!”

“What’re the numbers where you’re calling home now? I haven’t looked.”

The wind vanished from Rebecca’s wound-up distraught sails. “You’re gonna take my Cali Girl cred away, aren’t ya, Native Son?”

“Not me” Clark smiled. “Can’t speak for others here.”

“You a Cali native, Beryl?”

“Nah, I’m from Ohio. Akron, specifically. Rubber Capital of the World, at one time.”

“That leaves you, Leigh.”

“I’m Cali born and bred” she modestly replied, on the soft side.

“Whereabouts?”

“Inland Empire. Born in Riverside, but my family moved around the area a couple of times.”

“Are you revoking any or all of my 20 years of living in L.A. honorary Cali Girl cred?”

“There’s a moratorium on those revocations until after this whole COVID-19 and any future related SARS-CoV-2-based illnesses are resolved” she riffed.

“Whew! I know I’m a New Yorker through and through, but I really wanna be a laid-back Cali girl.”

“Can’t find anything for City of Los Angeles, but for the entire County of Los Angeles, we’re at 37 dead as of yesterday, cumulative total.”

“Alright” Rebecca loudly and longly sighed. “Guess I should be glad to be out on this coast, working on my Cali GhD. But they’re my homies!” she whined. “So many… still live in the ’hood.… Or did.”

“Even if you’re not diabetic—and I hope you’re not, you’ll assuredly feel better about life with more food in you” suggested Beryl. She focused intensely on the troubled woman she considered her friend across the table, “Here’s a thought for you: none of us can bring them back—anyone who matters to you, or any of us, who’s died from this disease. But you—a survivor, remaining alive—can honor them. They can’t eat any more food ever again—but you can. Think what they’d want. Would they want you to be sad? Would they want you to mourn? Or would they want you to celebrate life—theirs, and yours which you’re still living, as happens at wakes?”

Rebecca felt a deep connection to this quirky woman (and in some ways competitor for love interests), feeling loving energy coming across from her gaze, of an other-worldly magnitude. It was almost as though Beryl Beech was in some way connected to a spirit world in which Rebecca told herself she didn’t truly believe. Very, very powerful! “They always talked about how they loved my softness… every single one of them” she said in her distant voice, as much to herself as anyone else.

Beryl maintained her gaze, smiling and nodding ever-so-slightly, subtly encouraging her acquaintance-friend to stay with the thought process, similar to how a parent might subtly encourage their child to take its first steps.

“I’m alive. And I won’t be, forever. And I’m made to be soft and fat.”

More subtle nods and ongoing eye contact.

Her voice regrew in strength, “And I love to eat. And this is great food! And I’m on a cruise ship, with you all. And we’re all loving food and getting fatter together like we did at Samoa Cookhouse, and it’s not costing me more ’cause I’m on the Pampered Gem package!”

“So am I” Leigh quickly added.

Beryl’s food-unencumbered right hand shot up, “Pampered Gem.”

Rebecca grew more excited, “And I can eat for myself, and those who aren’t with us any longer, and we stick together and surround ourselves with fat admirers who love us, and celebrate lifffffe!”

“Yes! Celebrate with us! You in on this, Leigh?”

She could only nod, given how her mouth was currently filled with breakfast mini-burrito.

Celebrate they all did. The table fell silent, giving way to the sounds of happy, calm, relaxed eating for all 4 of them, voraciously so for the 3 women of abundant soft size. Conversations from other nearby (but not overly nearby, with the social distancing adjustments) tables drifted through, often fragmentary and mostly unnoticed by the now-contented friends.

Having let go of so many pent-up emotions absolutely helped move Rebecca Davidson to a more balanced, serene space. So too did the food. Eating on her own whether in public where she might be judged or alone in her stateroom where she tended to feel like an addict shooting up on her drug of choice tended to be stressful and shameful for her. Here with Leigh and Beryl so happily and freely eating, she once again had one of those very rare for her opportunities to feel protected from external and internalized shame as part of a shameless group. Beyond her still-new fat female friends, her one-off FA lover Clark measurably added to her sense of security and shame-free serenity. Representing far more than merely himself, in her mind he was the living channel through whom friends and lovers past no longer amongst the living who’d always appreciated her plush softness (and very big boobs, in most cases) remained connected to her, through him, here and now in the present. She saw their smiles in his, along with his actual own. His occasional upper arm touches and caresses earlier conveyed love beyond that of a singular human, she now realized.

Leigh might well have been contented and OK happily eating with gusto had it been just herself and Clark. Much as she felt a competitive tension with far fatter and bigger-boobed Beryl and Rebecca, Clark was seated under her right hip, cuddling into her, with his arm around her, in every way fulfilling the role (in her world view) of a loving, caring, passionate husband, cruise or otherwise, no matter who in the moment may be making his carnal chemistry banana him up. There was tension within her between her romantic partner competitive sense and the wholly honest fat foodie friendship bond she could not and would not deny existed strongly between her and Beryl, and her and Rebecca.

Emotionally well-balanced, innately strong of personality and positive, and wholly owning her love of food and fatness and erotic plus purely non-erotic pleasure of fat gain, Beryl Beech was fine in nearly all circumstances, whether on her own or with others. She was a social being, so all else being equal (which it almost never is), she preferred sharing her life joys with others of a similar mindset and compatible world views. Allies were always good to have, given that even the strongest personality can have the occasional off day. For her, all of them having come out on the living side of this often-intense illness was reason for celebration, and renewing their shared interests bond.

“Anybody want anything while I’m up?” Clark asked as he gently and sensually caress-moved Leigh’s right hip fat off his lap so he could get up.

“I’ll take some more of the Bramble Scramble” said Beryl.

“The what?” Leigh questioned.

“The sweet-savory scrambled eggs with fruit. I don’t know what they’re calling it here, but that’s what Chef Lindgren called it at Glissando, based upon the the blackberries in it.”

“At what meal was that served?”

“Sunday Brunch in San Fran. Great meal, and great day overall” she grinned, recalling all the food and sex fun she’d had.

“I’d like some.”

“Me too, please” added Rebecca. “And if you could, a nice hot toasted bagel or two, please.”

The thought excited Beryl, “Oh yes—I want in on that, please!”

“I’d like one too, please, Neener. If there’s choices of type of bagel, you know what I like.”

“OK, let me go fetch and deliver those, and then if there’s more, I’ll go back for a second round.” He hadn’t been consciously aware that he’d had a hand on Rebecca’s shoulder as well as Leigh’s until he removed them as he departed.

All 3 women watched him walk away towards the buffet as they munched.

“There goes someone else we all have in common” Beryl noted.

“Present tense?” Leigh suspiciously questioned, raising an eyebrow.

“Well I guess that depends, doesn’t it? Maybe we’ll get into that later. What I meant was we have in common—present tense—that we’ve all had at least an intimate taste of Clark Barr—past tense for me, likely Bec, and apparently present tense for you. Is it OK if I call you Bec, Rebecca?”

“Sure. Fewer syllables for the win.”

“Saves mouth time for more eating” she smiled before taking another bite of sausage.

“Yeah, it was a time alright” Rebecca somewhat wistfully shared. “What did you call Clark just now, Leigh?”

“Neener. My pet name for him, for the obvious reason.”

She looked towards Leigh, quizzically.

“Did you forget already?” asked Beryl. “He’s part of the upward banana clan. Banana baneener, neener, I’m guessing.”

“Exactly” said Leigh.

Rebecca averted her eyes towards her frontmost plate, “We didn’t get into that.”

“Oh really? So you don’t know about the modification?”

“What modification?” asked Beryl.

“The surgery mod that gave him retrograde ejaculation. All of the hardness and then some, none of the mess.”

Her blissed-out lost to lust smile shook up Rebecca.

Beryl, it made more curious. “What does it matter if he’s in a condom anyway?”

“Doesn’t, maybe, as long as the condom doesn’t break or no one’s fertile. I find it quite wonderful that he can stick it pretty much anywhere he wants on me, per his and my prior discussions, agreement, and consent arrangements, almost any time I’m awake and good with that and he can get all the way off with no mess. My navel’s not big enough so far to take anywhere near all he has for girth in much at all just yet, but fat folds, the bagpipe thing I think it’s called under the arm, or his favorite and becoming mine slipped between my plush buns in my crack, and I can thrill to his hardness and he can get off and there’s no cleanup. Last I checked those aren’t significant STI risk areas since there’s no fluid sharing, especially with no fluid coming out of him.”

“Hold up!” exclaimed Rebecca. “Are you saying that when you put him in your mouth and he gets off that there’s nothing to choke on?!”

“We haven’t really gotten into that because it’s not anything either of us especially want to do. I guarantee you when his neener’s all the way engorged, I’d have to open full-wide and there wouldn’t be even half of him in my mouth before he’d be far enough back that I’d be gagging. But yeah, if we did that with him far enough out so it’s comfortable for me, he can take it all the way and there’s nothing squirting or dribbling out of him to gag on.”

Annnnd guess who was back. He’d not heard their conversation, even Leigh’s last few words, due to his focus on delivering the correct items to the correct recipients. “Ohhh kaaay… one egg one salt bagel for you” he narrated as he slid them off his carrying plate onto one of Rebecca’s empties, “with a large communal bowl of cream cheese for sharing, once you’re done with it. I went with the everything bagel for you” he explained to Beryl, “since you seem to like everything in many aspects of life. You, Chonky, get the garlic bagel.”

Rebecca had trouble believing she’d heard him correctly. “What did you just call her?”

“Chonky. It’s my pet name for her” he punctuated with a kiss on Leigh’s lips.

“They’re getting serious if they’re at the pet name stage” said Beryl to Rebecca.

“I quite like being his chonky lover” Leigh explained, encouraging him back down cuddled next to and underneath part of her, now that he’d finished serving. “If he called me that before I got to know him and know how deeply to his core he’s a fat admirer, I’d have been insulted. Knowing that a chonky woman is the only sort that gets his juices flowing, it’s absolutely a term of endearment.”

All the kissing, cuddling, and related affectionate PDA canoodling between Clark and Leigh was beginning to deeply upset Rebecca. Even Beryl was getting a little annoyed.

“Looks like I’ve come to the best place.”

“PERrrrrr!” Rebecca wide-eye exclaimed, severely jolting the big, sturdy, heavy table in her rush to get up and bear hug him.

The profoundly soft, deep impact nearly bowled him over, though given how swiftly she threw her arms around him and how tightly she held him, she likely would have held him up all on her own if it had come to that. She unleashed several passels of all-out ravaging sloppy passionate excited upset desperate kisses, drawing the attention of many at several nearby tables, and the arousal of a few.

“What happened?!” she cried out during a kissing break. “We were talkin’ an’ typin’ all the time, then nothing! I thought you were deaaad!”

A fresh round of kisses ensued, after which she dragged him over with her to the table, sitting him down cuddly-close next to and into her, nearest Clark after the one-average-width-person gap between them. Still overwrought with emotions, she crushed him deep into her left side, wantonly smashing his hand onto her fat breasts, caring not one whit what anyone else thought about it, frantically kissing him some more.

The others at the table snickered and smiled at each other, each feeling the heat of passion and being reunited with a love presumed permanently lost.

“I think she’s glad to see him” Beryl teased.

Her comment broke Rebecca out of her kiss-fest. “Hell yeaaah! He’s my guyyy!” She faced him, caressing his face, “My cruise honey!”

Leigh decided she needed kisses from her own cruise honey, especially when Rebecca went back for more soon as she finished speaking.

Beryl shook her head slightly and contentedly ate.

“So what happened?! Ya couldn’t-a gone out with another girl, all locked down and stuff, could ya? Ya didn’t, didja?!”

“No, not at all. I’ve been alone in my stateroom like you and the rest of us.”

“Clark got himself quarantined with Leigh, lucky devil” noted Beryl. “Though it may have cost him his freedom.”

“Why did ya stop talkin’ ta meeee?! Not even a text!”

“This is highly embarrassing for me to admit, especially given that I’m in tech.”

“What what what?! Out with it, ya cute, sexy bub!”

“Device slipped out of my hand and fell in the toilet. And the water wasn’t in any way clean, so it took awhile for me to decide whether or not it was worth retrieving. Once I did so, it was too late: bricked it, totally.”

Others around the table other than Rebecca struggled not to laugh. She stared and blinked in disbelief, still latched onto him and not letting go.

“That was the point where I regretted not packing a spare. Had I had one, we could have remained in communication. Had I had any other form of backup digicam, I’d likely have taken a picture of it floating in the bowl with everything else, scatalogically entitled ‘Bricked it and shit’.

“Please tell me ya washed yer hands after that.”

“Absolutely! Thoroughly and multiple times as part of that event, and many dozens of times since. Obviously with lockdown and everything else, I haven’t been able to get another one, hence the reason I fell out of communication.”

“They’ve got phones on this ship, ya dummy! Oy! All ya had ta do was pick up the phone and key in my stateroom number, and we coulda talked!” She again smashed him all the way deep into her side with her thick, strong, motivated left arm, “And I wouldn’t have been so flippin’ worried! I really thought ya died, hun!”

“It’s been so long since I’ve used a corded phone, I didn’t even think of it.”

“Isn’t it right there by yer bedside?!”

“Put it in a drawer when I boarded and forgot about it.”

“Oy vey! You owe me some lovin’, sir!”

“How’s he going to have the energy for that if you don’t let him get some breakfast?” Beryl pointedly asked.

“Getcher food an’ come right back here an’ siddown with me like this, alright?”

“Anything you want while I’m up?”

“More bagels, please. If they have them. Here’s your kiss, so you’ll come back.”

Most who witnessed the latest passionate kiss Rebecca unleashed on Per considered it closer to a marriage proposal or confirmation than a come right back send-off.

“Anyone else want anything else to eat at this time?” Clark asked the remainder of the group, again lovingly extricating himself from under Leigh’s right hip fat.

{A sample of your apparently-special neener} thought Beryl, {though that’s likely not in the offing right now}. She opted for more hash browns.

Leigh asked for more sausages.

“Please don’t give me grief about the mishap” Per preemptively asked of Clark as the latter approached him at the buffet.

“Not at all why I’m here, curious as I am how it happened.”

“Should’ve gone with a stickier case, is all I have to say about it. What’s this Bramble Scramble about?”

“Sweet and savory fruit and scrambled egg mix that the high-end restaurant was serving.”

“D’ja try it?”

“I’m not a sweet and savory person. The others all liked it.”

He went ahead and dished some up, as Clark was doing with his delivery requests.

“What I really wanted to do was congratulate you on finding your way into Rebecca’s heart.”

“Truth be told, it’s news to me that I’m there. We were getting on OK before the lockdown, but it ran hot and cold, and I didn’t think it was going to amount to anything of any significant time duration. The lockdown and world events obviously have her spooked, so I think that’s a large part of it.”

“A lot of people in her life from her childhood and in her family have died from it in New York City, so it’s a lot more personal to her than many of us.”

He nodded, taking note of this point.

“How do you feel about her?”

“Heaven on earth” he sighed. “I’m in her camp for as long as things work out. “How’s Leigh as a lay and in every other way?, if you’ll pardon the alliteration.”

“Epic in every way, including the lay, and far beyond physical stuff.”

“You two sure seem to have the love chemistry going on, from what I can tell.”

“Strongest I’ve personally felt” he smiled.

Both men knew they needed to get the food back to those they loved, while it remained fresh and hot.

Seeing the smiles on the fat foodies’ faces as the new noms were delivered, plumped-up women at a couple of other tables elbowed their significant others, urging them to be equally nice as those gentlemen and fetch them additional yums.

“I want ya ta eat, ya sexy rail, but I also wanna know what happened with the course of your illness” Rebecca asked of Per, once he was back into her side. “We’ll do yes/no for awhile, so you can eat. Didja have trouble breathing?”

He shook his head.

“Wheezing?”

Shake shake shake.

“Coughing?”

Nod nod nod.

“What kind? Oh never mind, that’s not a yes/no.”

“Let me just tell you. The course of my illness since we last communicated was dry cough, fever including a high fever for a night or two during the peak of the illness, and feelings of being dazed or in a light malaise fading in and out. That’s about it.”

Leigh leaned over past Clark to make eye contact, “No loss of smell or taste?”

“Maybe partial. Certainly not all the way. Honestly other than the high fever or maybe including that, without all the worldwide attention on it, I’d have assumed it was seasonal flu that ran longer than usual for me.”

“Lucky you” replied Rebecca. “It came for me, Per: came ta take me! Like all the others!”

“Tell me” he urged her.

The others focused on their food and each other as Rebecca reprised her NYC losses for her Love.

Per did an excellent job of being present with and connected to his love interest. Feeling his love and presence soothed Rebecca and gave her shards of hope, leading to a less dramatic repeat presentation.

“Stay with me tonight, please?” Rebecca begged Per as she wrapped up her presentation, preventing his immediate answer with several kisses.

“Absolutely, if you’re good with that.”

“I need it.” Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss

Over at the opposite end of that same side of the table, Clark and Leigh were mixing up nose-rub and mouth kisses, lost to each other as Per and Rebecca were.

“Well, guess I’d better heft myself up and get a little exercise, along with my next round of numminess.”

Beryl’s show of getting up and slowly waddling back over towards the buffet succeeded in briefly drawing the attention of her two one-off lovers, in particular to her wildly wobbling massive hindquarters as she wobbled away. Each of Rebecca and Leigh had no trouble whatsoever immediately recapturing the full attention of their chosen love interest, regaling them with their own compelling charms, not all of which were physical by any means!

With everyone’s COVID-19 sharing out of the way, conversation flowed and flitted between lighter topics. All 3 women continued light, restful noshing, at this point more for the pure pleasure than any burning hunger.

Leigh was amazed with how she wanted to keep eating, and with how despite the significant amount she’d already eaten, she comfortably had room for more, and was actually still just a touch hungry. {Hope I can get this under control before life resumes normalcy. Or maybe Rebecca’s correct and there will be no more normalcy. Hmmm… I need some more potato pillows in me.}

The sight of a long, flowing salt-and-pepper-haired SSBBW heading towards their table caught the eyes of Clark and Per seconds before Leigh and Rebecca, out of Beryl’s line of sight from behind her. As flowed her hair, she wore a long, flowing, loose full-length pastel floral dress with many orange and brown hues on a cream background, plodding along in gold sandals. Despite her dress not being form-fitting, her breasts were so huge and bralessly free to roam and her belly and to a lesser extent hips and thighs so wobbly fat, it was as easy to see their general shape and magnitude as it was to see her fully exposed fat chins and thick upper arms.

“Is this the table for fat failures?” the woman asked in a sad, plaintive voice.

“Nope, sorry hun: this is the rad fab fat foodie babelicious and those who love us table.”

Looking even more distraught and as though she was going to cry, the woman sadly turned and started shuffling away, behind Beryl, seeking her place.

“Geeeet over heeere” Beryl called out, hefting herself turning around just in time to loop the woman with her arm and stop her in her tracks. “What’s your name, darlin’?”

Deeper sadness and upset filled the woman’s baggy, forlorn eyes.

Clark could not believe what he was hearing. “That’s our DJ Swash Buckle!” he exclaimed, stunned that none of the others seemed to recognize her. “From Club Troposphere, right over there!” he pointed. “The one who played all that great dance music from across the decades, including things I’d never thought of as dance music! The one who had us all shaking our stuff and so flirty that in various combinations on different nights, we excused ourselves to go off together and get to know each other better!”

“Oh you wonderful man!” she exclaimed, nearly tossing her plate onto an empty area of the table on Beryl’s side, rushing around the end of the table where Leigh was—her fat, sexy body parts very much bouncing all over the place—throwing her arms around Clark on his right side (opposite of Leigh on his left), squishing into him for a deep, very affectionate standing-sitting side hug. “You recognize me and remember me!”

“I don’t know why the others aren’t.”

“Prolly ’cause I’m hella fatter and look like shit and my hair’s all white.”

“But you still have your same beautiful face with your sunny marble green mischievous eyes and your squared-off jaw line, which for lack of a better term I’ll call the rocker chick jawline.”

He didn’t just call it that, he tenderly caressed her there. She very much wanted to kiss him.

“Hey hey hey!” Leigh objected, reaching over and forcefully pulling his hand away. “Aren’t you forgetting something, cruise husband?!”

“Awww, Claaark!” Beryl double face-palmed. “What sort of monog ridiculousness did you get yourself into?!”

“It’s like going steady for the duration of the cruise” he elucidated. “Didn’t I mention this already?”

“Not that I remember.” She tossed a potato pillow over her head in frustration, “There goes our orgy.”

“What orgy?!” Rebecca shot back, once again pulling Per tightly back against and into her.

“The celebratory one I was going to suggest we all get into once we’re done here, with this celebratory foreplay munch-fest.”

Still steamed, Leigh kept her man pinned against her as well.

“I apologize for touching you without your consent, Swasssh….”

“I’m Jayne” she sadly barely smiled, limply shaking his hand, then Per’s. “With a Y, as if that or anything else matters any more.”

“I apologize to you, Chonky, for unwittingly going outside our cruise marriage boundaries to ensure that Jayne knows that at least I recognize her and know who she is.” He emphasized his apology with a long, tender kiss.

“You looked vaguely familiar soon as you arrived, but my mind’s image of you is as you appeared on stage” shared Per, with Beryl and Rebecca nodding.

“That’s all gone now (sniff). Along with everything else (sniff).”

“Why?” asked Clark.

“Is there some part of cruise husband you’re not understanding, Jayne?!” Leigh glared at her before she could answer or anyone else could say anything else.

Beryl couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. “How possessive are you, Leigh?! Jayne’s obviously hurting, she’s over there with her clothes on—her not especially form-fitting clothes, not her steaming sexy pirate’s outfit—sharing a hug with Clark. Whatever the hell a ‘cruise marriage’ is, does that mean you have him so chained down he can’t even hug other people with everyone having their clothes on?!”

“She’s too sexy! Her boobs alone will carry his instincts off and away!”

“So given that she and I look to be close in size in Breasticle Chesticle No Bird’s Nesticle Land, are you saying he can’t hug meee? ’Cause if that’s so, I have a problem with that.”

“How about you, good sir?” frustrated Jayne asked the gentleman to the right of Clark whose name she did not know. “May I hug you?”

“Yes.”

“Uncle Abe!” Rebecca yelled out, her arm still nearly squeezing the wind out of him.

“No.”

“Aaaauh!” Jayne groaned, standing back upright and shuffling around the table back towards where she’d been. “I’m not trying to be sexy!” she whined, taking a seat across from Leigh, opposite end of the table from Beryl on the same side. “These things don’t have an Off switch!” she referred to her boobs, momentarily tossing each up in the air slightly with her hands. “Sometimes a hug is just a hug—affectionate, not meant as sexy!”

She got into her food and soothing hot tea, on this yet another of a series of cold wintery days in what by the calendar was already springtime. The entire table ate or rested quietly for several minutes.

“Apologies to all of you” Jayne broke the silence. “I am not functioning well. The entire world I knew is gone (sniff), and I haven’t slept in well over 2 weeks.”

“At all?!” surprised Clark asked.

“Correct (sniff), between the illness and my entire life being over (sniff). Well OK, maybe a few minutes here and there, but not much! How can I sleep when the world is collapsing all around and I need to find a way to surviiiiiive!”

“Are you from the City, hun?”

“She means New York City” Clark clarified.

“Yeah whatever. ’Cause if you are, I feel ya. Hundreds dead, since yesterday! People I know, gone! At least one close relative, dead! Is that what it is, Jayne?”

“Truly sorry for your loss, uhh…”

“Rebecca. But I’ll answer to Becca or Bec too, long as no one else is using those.”

“It’s bad there I know, but I’m from this coast.”

“Whereabouts?”

“I’m a Cali girl, from L.A.”

“Oy! All you natives comin’ outta the woodwork, after years of my not crossin’ paths with any of ya. Sorry; you tell your thing.”

“Everything I’ve known and worked for is destroyed. The cruise industry already had to watch its step after decades of norovirus outbreaks, on-ship crime, breakdowns leaving cruisers stranded, and more. We were getting a handle on it—we were!—but this is the death blow. Diamond Princess, Grand Princess, Ruby Princess, now us.”

“But those were the Princess Cruises line, and this is Royal Prince” Clark objected.

Her voice became more animated, “Yes, but it’s the cruise industry that’s dead. People were already wary and calling us floating petri dishes before COVID-19. With something like 60 cruisers dead already across all cruise lines and over a thousand infected that we know of, who’s going to go on a cruise ship after this?! Look at what’s happened to us, just on this ship!: 12 dead last I checked, including one of our Infirmary nurses in her 30s with no underlying health conditions, way over two-thirds of the ship infected. It’s everywhere! Captain Cranch got it, other deck officers got it, it’s all over the hotel staff. Dancers, entertainment—you name it, that department’s got it. And we’re stuck in limbo in a commercial port that doesn’t support cruise lines and very much does not want us here, with the authorities holding everyone hostage such that the whole world knows of the ill-fated Sapphire Prince cruise ship rather than letting people off to repatriate and go home, which I completely do not understand, given how the world already went through this on this coast with the Grand Princess weeks ago!”

“There’s a lot I don’t understand about what’s happening. But you’re here, alive and on this deck with us, so that means you survived COVID-19. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“What for?! I lost everything and everyone! Peeties’s deaaaad! (sniff)”

“Awww hun” Beryl tried to comfort her, along with a friendly seated side hug. “Was he the love of your life?”

“Yes! There’s never lived another Turquoise-fronted amazon parrot like Peetie!” Her tired eyes lit up, “He was a rescue parrot, saved from an out-of-business pet shop when the owners skipped town and left all the animals behind, uncared-for! The local SPCA got the building owner to open the store on animalitarian grounds. I’d just gotten my pirate’s hat that day and I had it on when we amongst the public were allowed in to claim an animal. I went up to the parrot cage and said ‘Arrre ye me parrot?’ and some of them looked at me and a few squealed or chirped, but Peetie said ‘Arrrre ye me pirate?’ and I said Aye! and he flew over and tried to get to me through the cage, and they let him out and he landed on my shoulder! Right here on my left shoulder!” she excitedly pointed out, obviously very worked up. “I took him home and cared for him and he cared for me and I love him so much and he’s dead now!”

“What from?”

“COVID-19! I’m sure of it!” Her sniveling returned, “He caught it from me—had to have! (sniff)”

“How would you know?” asked Clark. “I wouldn’t even know what a bird’s symptoms would be.”

“He was trying to keep me happy when I first came down with it, after several sleepless nights watching my life implode. Then a day or so later he started acting all lethargic: far less active than usual, barely ever screeching or saying anything. Kept getting worse, kept getting worse, like me for awhile. His… his last words were ‘Feeling hot, hot, hot’ from the Arrow soca song of that name, that he loved to sing and dance to with me. But he had no energy, the way he usually did! He didn’t say anything after that for a whole day—not even a squeak! It was, it was as though he was trying to make sound, but he couldn’t! I stayed with him—I couldn’t sleep anyway, and this my Peetie! His eyelids grew heavy, then he closed his eyes and wasn’t responding at all to me. Then… and then it was about 10 minutes later he just fell over: fell off his perch and crashed to the bottom of his cage!”

Unsurprisingly, she needed some time to cry, to grieve.

“I’ll never forget Peetie (sniff).”

“How did he get his name?” asked Per.

“He named himself! Soon as I took him home, I asked him, ‘What be yer naaame, pretty parrot?’ and he said Peetie! Peetie! Peetie! Peetie! all fast like that. And I said, ‘Hi Peetie!’ and he replied ‘Hi!’ and paused, then ‘Hi!’ again.”

“Could he say your name?” asked Leigh.

“He didn’t really like Jayne, prolly because he knew I didn’t especially and still don’t like my given name. He preferred Swash Buckle, though he ran it together so it sounded more like ‘swashbuckle! swashbuckle!’. When I first started with him here on the Sapphire Prince, he and I would do a little talking intro thing where I’d introduce him and he’d say my name. But people had trouble understanding him and he got bored with it, so we stopped doing that.”

“Maybe once you’re past the rebound time frame you’ll get another parrot” suggested Beryl.

“No” Jayne shook her head. “They’re a lot of work to properly care for. I didn’t mind with Peetie, because we truly loved each other and even by the end when he was an adult when they often get aggressive, he’d still cuddle with me. That chapter of my life’s over. All chapters of my life are over!” she whimpered, pushing her plate out of the way then collapsing down atop the table.

“Why do you keep saying that?” asked Clark, in a tone sweet enough to annoy Leigh. “You ought to be able to fill the dance floor of a land-based club every bit as well as you do over there in Club Troposphere.”

“Thank you; you’re too kind. It’s not like that on land, unfortunately. Too many DJs as good or better than me. Too cutthroat. There’s competition for cruise ship jobs but there’s less of it—was less of it, when we still had a cruise industry. Fewer qualified DJs are willing to sign on for weeks or months at a time out at sea. Also the mix of people in cruise ship clubs is a better match for those like me who prefer dancing across the decades and genres with our dance music. As you may have noticed, land-based DJs tend to have tighter niches: one or maybe two of genres like house, reggaeton, breakbeat, drum & bass, Detroit techno, electro, jungle, dubstep—on and on and on, but only specializing in one or two. I’m good with most of those, but I’d rather mix it up: more of a challenge for me, and I think it’s more fun to hear.”

Most of the others nodded. Beryl and Leigh seemed lost in different thoughts.

“Besides, will we even still have any dance clubs going forward?! The way people are writing and talking about permanent changes freaks me out! I’m a people person: I thrive around people together in real life, as we all are right now.”

“Thank you for that!” said Rebecca. “This whole society’s too carried away with filtering life through technology. In my opinion.”

“Tech filters can be helpful” Beryl countered. “I use them liberally, for winnowing down the men I want to get with.”

“Can’t cuddle through tech” noted Jayne, catching a clear spark of understanding from Clark’s momentary direct glance. “No, I think life as we knew it is over. Not only is my DJ career here dead, I’m now sitting on right about 50 thousand dollars of inventory I can’t move.”

“Of what?!” asked Per.

“During the day most days when we’re at sea and tax laws are less messy, I run Gold ’N’ Gems, the jewelry store in the shopping district on Grand Promenade. Normally I’m pretty good at reading what people want and keeping the inventory flowing, but not any longer” she ended with a big sigh.

“Sell it online.”

“Oh no. That world’s even more cutthroat than land-based live DJing. Fewer people in it, but the serious players have more resources. Trust and branding matter, particularly when there’s big money involved.”

“I thought nearly every town and city of every size below huge metropolitan had its own independent jewelry store, where people actually go in and look and try things on.”

“Had them, Clark. That’s not going to be happening if social distancing becomes a permanent way of life. Not that I could survive that” she ended in a mutter.

“I’m reading that someone needs to feel better about herself before she can feel positive about life at all” Rebecca posited, in a more friendly Jewish mothering tone adding, “So ya fell a little behind on the hair dye thing—that’s reversible, easily. Life’s different in your 50s.”

The sudden look of shock then umbrage on Jayne gave Per an idea. “Since this is supposed to be a celebratory COVID-19 survival meal, let’s play a party game.”

Clark snickered and occasionally snorted, seeing what Per was pulling out of his pockets. “Do you usually carry around little sheets of paper and small mini golf pencils?”

“You and everyone other than Jayne at this table know why!”

Beryl leaned over and whispered the explanation in Jayne’s ear. It was the first time she’d smiled or laughed all morning.

“Dead tree and processed carbon technology is the fallback.” He handed each of them a small piece of paper and a pencil. “This game is called Guess and Tell Ages. Write down everyone’s first name on separate lines, including your own. Write your actual age next to your name. Write down your prediction of every other person’s age next to their name. Go for accuracy, not flattery.”

“Where in the world is this a fun party game, mister?!” Rebecca ranted.

He folded his arms, looking at her defiantly, “In my homeland. We do not have to do this if it’s a problem.”

“Do you not already know that in this culture, women are devalued once they hit 30? Thus we may tend to be sensitive about perceived age?”

“Colder winters make for thicker skin, I suppose. Go ahead and vote on whether we’ll play this game or not. I’ll abstain, so there can’t be a tie.”

Jayne raised her hand first, “I need to know.”

The vote was 4 to 1 in favor, with Rebecca being the 1. “You owe me an extra-special massage, mister Haugen” she commented as she filled out her paper, along with the others.

“OK, circle your name and age, so we know whose paper is whose. Now we all put them in the middle of the table together where we can all see them.”

With everyone having randomly ordered the names, it took awhile to parse what each person had written down.

“Whaaat?” Jayne screeched (not unlike Peetie might have), hurling her upper body down prostrate atop the table.

“Really?!” along with a brief huff was Beryl’s response.

“I’m good with this” Rebecca smiled.

Leigh gleefully grinned. “I like this game.”

Jayne sat back up to rant, “I’m only 47, but I already look 59?!”

“Someone put that as a high number” noted Rebecca. “Your average is lower.”

“I’m getting 54.5, averaged” said Per, who’d scribbled through the math.

“Seriously people: my hair just went white these past 2 weeks!” Jayne whimpered. “I only had a few white strands before that, not a dye job!”

“Severe stress can do that” noted Clark. “Think about U.S. presidents, and what their hair looked like going in versus coming out.”

Per didn’t understand the upset. “Why get worked up over appearances? It’s not like you’ve developed early-onset dementia.”

“Were you not listening?!” Rebecca chided her lover. “We. Get. Judged on our appearance. Harshly. It’s wrong, it’s bullshit, but so far it’s reality. Maybe we can convince COVID-19 to kill that too? Anyway… thank you all for the span of 42 to my actual 56. Stop it with the giggles Leigh, and tell us how you pulled off a low of 38 and high of 51 when you’re actually 62.”

“Fat to fill out the wrinkles and otherwise keep my skin moisturized, coconut oil on my face once a day at home for years, sleeping well more often than not, loving Clark Barr” she cuddled into him.

Beryl pulled the distraught whimperer into a side hug, “I’m only 4 years older than you at 51, but they put me between a low of 52 and high of 59, so we’re very definitely cruising on the same ship. Have some more food, get some sleep, and you’ll be fine.”

“It’s not just my hair and appearance stuff, shitty as that is: my eyes can’t focus up close any more!”

“Welcome to presbyopia” said Rebecca, slipping her reading glasses out of her bra and waving them back and forth.

“Not so fast” Clark interjected, asking Jayne “May I please tell you about when that happened to me at age 23?”

“Twenty three?!”

“It wasn’t permanent! May I tell you?”

She nodded, a faint glimmer of hope briefly twinkling through her despair.

“I was standing with my then-love, early in the morning before sunrise, after an all-night argument, which for her and I were far too frequent. Standing right in front of her, faces a normal close embrace looking into each other’s eyes distance apart. Could not focus on her face! Upset, started crying. Know what it was?”

She shook her head.

“Severe lack of sleep. With sleep deprivation, the body has to prioritize its functions, to keep the organism—you, me, anyone—alive. Eye muscle focus wasn’t a top survival priority. After a night’s sleep, my eyes could focus up close again.”

She blinked innocently, somewhat like a frightened girl being told a happy story by her older brother.

“Yeahbut you were 23 and she’s 47” countered Rebecca. “Mine started to go around then. 47, 48… somewhere in there.”

Jayne dropped back down onto the tabletop, again feeling defeated and hopeless.

To Leigh’s annoyance, Clark claimed and held one of her hands, “If it happened suddenly, it’s the lack of sleep. If it’s been getting gradually worse, that’s likely presbyopia. There are now ways to handle that too, other than reading glasses.”

“Bud thus cus mrnr.”

“Sorry, can’t hear you.”

She dragged herself back upright, speaking normally rather than into the tabletop beneath her arms. “But those cost money. And I’m not going to have money. No career, no income, no hope, no future.”

“Insufficient logical thought processes without sleep.”

“How can I sleep when the world is crashing and burning all around me?!”

“What do you normally accomplish when you’re sleeping at night? From before all this pandemic stuff started happening?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Worrying and productive thinking and more than that taking productive action are very different things. I lost a number of nights of sleep in my 30s, sitting starkly wide awake in bed at night worrying and waiting, just in case there was a major earthquake. Total waste of time! Earthquakes still can’t be predicted more than some number of seconds in advance last I read, and they couldn’t even do that back when I was losing sleep over the fear of one rumbling through in the deep of the night and totally crashing my entire life, maybe even life as we knew it back then.

“Eventually I figured out it was a waste of time and stopped losing sleep over it. The sensible response was imagining an earthquake happening right now—during the daytime on a weekend or other day off, when I had the time and mind focus to act. What would I do? What would I need? Then I could make rational decisions about emergency flashlights and toilet paper and water and other supplies. Then I could actually in reality do something: obtain the supplies I didn’t already have, relocate some of them to be more readily accessible in case the house collapsed, and so on. Years later, a moderate earthquake rumbled through. No issue, but I again feared a bigger one. I realized most of my fear at that time was that my water plans had proven unworkable. Instead of bottles of water I never remembered to change or integrity verify often enough, I needed one of those filters that hikers and those in areas with no clean water use to process brackish water into potable water in the moment, rather than depending solely on stored water. Researched them during the day, ordered one, received and tested it, stowed it away in an accessible location, and again stopped worrying about The Big One.

“Put bluntly and more succinctly, fear and worry do not lead to solutions to problems. Losing sleep creates a slew of additional problems, including some of the un-health issues you’re currently experiencing. As run-down as you seem to be and tell us you are, your most impactful immediate option for your future is as much healthful, restful sleep as you can manage, as soon as you can arrange for that.”

{If you didn’t have a jealous cruise wife, I’d be taking a nap cuddled into your side right now} she thought.

Per hoped to be more helpful with his comment than with his age guess of 59 for her when he said, “It’s not just you who has to deal with this, Jayne: the whole world is in chaos right now over this disease. OK, the whole industrialized world… or at least most of it. I don’t think they’re sweating it much in Africa right now.

“Anyway, the point is that you are far, far from alone. I have several things going, so I will probably have work, but I can tell you right now that at least 2 of the projects I’d hoped to get going when I was making connections a couple weeks back when we were in San Francisco are now not happening at all. Dead, like the people and Peetie who’ve died. While not as tragic as those deaths, it’s partial economic death to me. I am far from alone, and doing better than some, or many. You are far from alone having possibly lost it all, depending what happens going forward, which none of us know yet.”

“Wouldn’t you agree, Per, that given that so much of the world remains closed up and that we in particular on board the Sapphire Prince are in a special kind of advanced limbo that Jayne can take a breather from worry and get some sleep without any additional shoes dropping?”

He gave Clark a confused look. “Shoes?”

“It’s an idiom. Pretend I said ‘without any additional problems?’.”

“People are afraid, and people tend not to spend money outside of essentials when they’re afraid, so even if your jewelry store was open, sales might be awful” he told her. “Now if you could get some nice-looking inexpensive pins in the shape of that SARS-CoV-2 spike ball illustration that we cannot seem to escape which is somewhere on nearly every web page discussing COVID-19 and have a banner on it that says ‘I Survived COVID-19’ or similar, maybe you could have a plastic box of those you carry around to places like this on the decks for recovered people where we can actually interact from sub-social distance, and sell them.”

The idea excited Beryl, if not so much Jayne, “Wouldn’t that be great? To have something more interesting than some stupid arm band or felt pen mark on the arm or similar to show who’s in the Recovered class, instead of having to be tested each time?”

“How would you prevent fraud on that?” asked Rebecca.

“How would you do it with a felt pen mark or cheap plastic arm band, as I’ve heard discussed as options?”

“All sorts of bar and QR-style coding options for the arm bands, as in hospital settings” noted Per. “If we’re going for ID rather than something Jayne can sell, that’s a different topic. If the ship has a 3D printer and enough raw materials, the Infirmary or whomever’s doing the testing could just as well print out a pretty pin, or most of it other than the pin mechanism, with an individual’s embedded code. If it looks nice people might be more inclined to wear it and do so prominently, unlike an icky arm band that might remind them too much of a past hospital visit, or a present pandemic.”

Clark was skeptical. “They lack the personnel and probably the scanning hardware to implement that with either bands or fancy pins.”

“Fancy Pins was a neo-folk-psych band I appreciated, of whom too few people are aware” the new voice of a lanky younger middle-aged man in a maroon t-shirt and dark blue jeans with obviously thinning light brown hair declared as he approached, pulling up directly behind Jayne.

Looking even more tired, Jayne tilted her head slowly backwards, eventually making eye contact. “How benevolent of you to mention something outside of your usual EDM universe.”

“Not everyone feels the need to reach back to the ancient melodies of pre-electronic music yester-millennium. Of which, good day, Sunshine.”

“Wasn’t it Good Morning, Starshine?”

“Five points for Leigh” Jayne announced.

The man politely dipped his head in Leigh’s direction, as an affirmation in place of a formal introduction.

Jayne wasn’t done with him just yet, “Electronic music was for sure born by the 1950s, arguably earlier.”

“Yes, but it didn’t dance for a few decades after that.”

“Perry & Kingsley! 1960s! One decade later!”

“I won’t argue with somebody who so severely outweighs me” he evilly grinned, poking her belly fat. “Boobs be boomin’ though.”

He reached for her right one, swatted away by her before he made contact.

“I take it you know him?” asked Rebecca, noticing that he didn’t move away once his hand was swatted away.

“This is Brent, my ex-boyfriend. Known in Club Troposphere as DJ Alien Groove, looking as he does with his alien head off.”

His evil grin returned in part in the form of a cheeky half-smile, “Oh I’m your ex again now? You sure about that?”

She again tilted her head up and made upside-down eye contact with him, looking at him and sighing dejectedly. Next she redirected her gaze towards Clark and Leigh. Then she panned over to study Per and Rebecca. Sensing no give between those couples, she let out a very deep, long sigh, gently and tentatively wrapping Brent’s arms part-way around her. “We’ll talk.”

“About your impending diet?”

She tossed his arms aside, jabbing him with her elbows almost immediately thereafter.

Beryl directed a confusing mix of smiling friendliness and harsh intensity Brent’s way, “This is a body autonomy and positivity table, for those interacting with us as well as those seated here.”

“The only body positivity he recognizes is positively huuuuge boooobz” Jayne harshed.

“Then he’s missing one third of his potential.”

“What do you mean?” Brent questioned Rebecca.

“Whaddaya think, Team Succulence? Is he qualified to know about the Third Boob?”

Clark giggled. Beryl grinned along with Rebecca. Per pretended he knew, his smile growing. Leigh knew. She pursed her lips, struggling to stifle a laugh.

{If this is something else I lack, I am going to cry for a week} thought Jayne. “No. He hasn’t earned it.”

“Thanks, Squish Buckle. How’s Peetie?”

“Dead!”

For the first time since his arrival, Brent’s smugness vanished, replaced by a look of genuine concern. He shifted around to her side towards the ground, kneeling down so that they could be nearer the same height without him having to negotiate for a seat. Looking as if he truly cared as he looked into her eyes he said on the soft side, “I’m sorry”, touching the back of her hand.

Their wordless gazes with subtle movements akin to tics communicated in a way familiar to certain groups of loving intimates who’ve gotten to know each other on a deep enough level that words aren’t always necessary. At the end of this mysterious exchange he stood back up, returning to where he’d been standing behind her, this time massaging her shoulders.

Jayne looked relieved, even if not entirely satisfied.

“How hard did COVID-19 hit you, Brent?” asked Leigh, out of curiosity.

“Asymptomatic: didn’t even know I had it.”

“Then what the heck are you doing up on this deck with those of us who’ve recovered?” Rebecca challenged him.

“Tested by the Infirmary: I have the antibodies, but no active disease, so I’m not contagious. Ergo I had it and didn’t know it, thanks to my pumped immune system.”

Jayne rolled her eyes, invisible to him.

Leigh struggled to figure out what he meant. “Your immune system works out?”

“Basically yes, in a way. Maybe more accurately I give it all I can that it needs to do its job. Exercise is a part of the equation to be sure. Vitamin D generation from sunshine when we have that and if necessary from a supplement when we don’t is critical, with annual blood tests to ensure it’s north of 60 nanograms per milliliter and for sure under 100, with some sources advising 80 tops. Balanced diet with healthful foods goes without saying.”

She more gently removed his hand when he grabbed and shook some of her belly flab, because he’d done so in a kinder, gentler manner.

“Supplementation may be necessary if what’s available to eat is substandard, and is necessary for nutrients not found in food, or at least not readily absorbable. I’m currently looking into the best way to ensure my melatonin level is optimal, given that I just learned how dramatically it declines from a surprisingly young age: adolescence.”

“Bully for you, Mercola-breath” Jayne taunted.

“He’s not my only source, even though he’s a good one.”

“He’s quack-blocked!”

Brent pulled his hands off her shoulders, “Those who believe that Alphabet slash Google and their big corporate and government cronies should be ultimate arbiters of truth get what they deserve.”

“Truth is truth!”

“Gatekeepers like that fall under the logical fallacy of Appeal To Authority. I prefer using my own mind to process information from disparate sources, none of whom are always correct, including Mercola.com. Each of our immune systems is going to be way faster and better-equipped to deal with SARS-CoV-2 and anything else that has already come along and assuredly will continue to come along than any lab anywhere in the world making druuuuugs. We wouldn’t be in this mess if we promoted health rather than having a pharma-based sick-care system.”

“Not everyone is capable of having a ‘pumped’ immune system!” Rebecca raged.

“Understood. But if those of us who have that option and can optimize our health and immune function do so, there’ll be far fewer illnesses going around, thus fewer people jamming up the orthodox medical system, thus space in that system for the unavoidably immunocompromised: beds, ventilators, and so on.”

“They need a vaccine!”

“Oh don’t get him started!” Jayne pleaded, double face-palming.

Too late.

“Think about how crappy the annual flu vaccine works!”

“Oh bullshit!”

Jayne continued to face-palm, shaking her head in her palms as Rebecca and Brent went at it.

“Consider: for adults over 50, the 2018-2019 flu vaccine overall adjusted effectiveness was 24 percent against all influenza types, and a whopping 8 percent against the most common A(H1N1)pdm09 that season. Those don’t sound like winning numbers to me.”

“What’s the harm?!”

“If you want to spin the vaccine roulette wheel and find out if you’re the lucky winner getting Guillain-Barre Syndrome as a result of your next flu shot, be my guest. Odds are low, yes: 1.7 in a million, but for a 76 percent or higher chance of failure of the flu vaccine to prevent the flu, not a gamble I personally wish to take.”

“Then whaddo we do?!”

“I just shared that: enhance the immune system. Get detailed blood tests, find out what’s missing or otherwise out of range, talk with your doctor if your doctor is woke about this and you feel the need, do what you need to do, and stay healthy and out of hospitals.”

“The experts tell us this quarantine stuff can’t end until there’s a vaccine!”

“You already know my opinion of experts: respect their expertise, listen to and thoughtfully consider what they have to say as being an informed opinion, but treat them as fallible humans, not Gods Who Must Be Obeyed. Yes sure, by all means pursue all reasonable options, with researching a vaccine being one of them. But for the whole world to be held hostage waiting for The Doctors to Saaaave us all with their heroic Vaccine as the One And Only True Solution to this pandemic is a steaming mountain of bullshit!”

Several around the table huffed, hemmed, and hawed, their minds busy assembling cogent counterarguments.

Jayne surprised everyone when she said, “I think we have to take him seriously, at his word.”

“Why?!” Rebecca shot back.

She looked skyward, not truly attempting to make eye contact with him, “Brent’s Ph.D level at generating steaming mountains of bullshit.”

“Consider who amongst us was asymptomatic and my approach, versus what each of you did and how you fared. The truth will become self-evident.”

“May we change the subject, please?” asked Beryl.

Rebecca immediately yelled out “Second!”

“All in favor?”

Unanimous, including Brent.

“Are we all certain that the fun, playful orgy I believe we all need is wholly off the table?”

“She can’t be a part of it” Brent smirked, patting Jayne’s shoulders.

“Why not?”

“Crew and staff get fired for getting it on with guests. Except when they don’t” he added with intense bitterness, clearly from his gaze directed at Jayne.

“Who amongst us even has a job here any longer, fool!”

“We do, or at least I do, ’til the end of this cruise at a minimum. Did you not get the memo that we’re being compensated as though things are going normally?”

“That doesn’t apply to my inventory I can’t sell at the store.”

“Yeah, well, if you want a reason to be sad, you’ll find one.” He resumed massaging her shoulders, “I understand about Peetie: that’s a legit reason to be sad and grieving. Physical retail has been in a Twilight Zone for years now, so the fact that something would take it out ought not to be a big surprise.”

“Cruise ships are—were—great for in-person retail: captive audience! Amazon never made it to the point of dropping packages from drones shipboard.”

“Thank goodness for small favors.”

“So OK, maybe the rules mean you two have to do your own thing and the rest of us stay amongst ourselves rather than including either or both of you. But wouldn’t it be fun to at least watch?”

“Oy! Let it go, Beryl!” said Rebecca. “Is the concept of ‘couple’ meaning two not getting through to you?!”

“Why not have your own orgy with others not amongst us?” suggested Clark.

“Female-attracted FA shopping has been off-limits until this morning, and remains partially clamped down. Either of you two have any buds of whose existence you’re holding back on sharing?” she motioned towards Per and Clark.

Both men looked at each other, then shook their heads. Clark suggested “Ask Brian O’Brien maybe?”

For the first time any of them could recall, a pallor came over Beryl’s face. “No one’s asking Brian O’Brien anything about anything, ever again. He was one of the first off the ship, last time we pulled into this port.”

The entire table (including Brent) grew quiet.

“COVID-19?” Rebecca softly asked.

Beryl nodded. Color slowly returned to her face as she said, “All the more reason to celebrate life and love together, don’tcha all think?”

“Just leave this one out” Brent patted Jayne’s shoulders, “and me too. Much as I might want to get to know at least a couple of you intimately better, in a limited upper-deck context.”

“Since you’re so health-conscious and clearly well-connected to those sorts of resources, please consider reviewing the composition of human female breast tissues, then consider opening your mind to analogous body parts. You might find worthwhile excitement on other decks.”

“Never found any on this here vessel in front of me” he grinned, grabbing Jayne’s belly fat from both sides from his position standing behind her until she again tossed his hands off and attempted to elbow-jab him. “You do realize the elbow jabs are actually kinda pleasant with all the fat padding you have around there.”

“G’bye Brent. Maybe you’d better go find out if Bassnectar has dropped anything new today.”

“After his last ‘non-political’ screed in which he reiterated the Two-Party Myth, I’m taking a break from him.” He took his maybe-ex’s suggestion, waving and saying as he departed, “Nice meeting you all! Stay healthy!”

The table again fell silent as they variously ate and/or watched Brent disappear off in the distance. Jayne again looked sad and tired, letting go of yet another deep, long sigh.

“Why do you bother with him, when he treats you so badly?” Rebecca asked with gentle sincere curiosity.

“He’s all I have” she sighed anew.

“Buncopasties!” exclaimed Beryl. “Where’s your self-esteem, girl?! Did you pack it away with your sound gear after your last show?!”

She didn’t respond, spinning her now-cold toast fragment on her plate with her index finger.

“You can and will do better than him! You’re on a damn cruise ship!”

“She can’t get with passengers” Rebecca reminded her.

“There’s a whole thousand-something staff and crew here!” She turned back to Jayne, “Or are they technically off-limits too?”

“No actually we’re encouraged to be open to romance amongst crew and staff, prolly to keep fewer of us going for passengers, or in my case passengers repeatedly and vigorously trying to get with me… hhhhhhhh… back then. No passenger would want me now.”

“Wrroonng!” Clark and Per responded in unplanned unison.

Beryl bit her tongue so she wouldn’t laugh out loud watching the insta-hot umbrage from Leigh and Rebecca towards ‘their’ respective man play out. {Elbows be jabbin’ today! Wonder if anyone would even feel either of my plushly padded elbow bones any more?}

“Sorry for being the source of trouble yet again. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. What I meant to finish saying was that besides crew and staff new romances, marriages and married people are encouraged when appropriate for the individuals involved. Families where the children are adults or nearly so are encouraged to all be part of the team, as those in charge know that life at sea for long stretches of time can be rough when… separated….”

She was again getting tearful. Beryl and others silently urged her to go on.

“From loved ones.” As the tears rolled out, her gaze and voice became distant, “No hugs. No cuddles. No kisses. No one real… to feel. They know that. They know it hurts, so between that and preferring that staff and crew bang each other rather than passengers, those are the rules.”

“Per the 0.7 percent rule of FAs amongst the general population, if there’s how many staff and crew on this ship?”

“I don’t have that number. Last I checked it was around 1100.”

“OK, so point zero zero 7 times 1100 gives us mmm mmm mmm mmm 7 point 7 and one quarter of those will be male-attracted FAs, so that leaves us right about 5 or 6 female-attracted FAs amongst the crew.”

“Where’d you get that point 7 percent rule?”

“Experienccccee!” she gleefully replied to Per. To Jayne she asked, “So out of those 5 or 6, how many are being ridiculous and going monog with someone other than you, or otherwise out of your playlist?”

“Monogamy is legitimate, wonderful, and safe” insisted Rebecca, New Yorker burn-staring across at Beryl for emphasis.

“Let’s stick to Jayne’s situation. Too bad Brent had to turn Squish Buckle into an insult. I think it has a nice ring to it.”

“I don’t mind being squishy!” Jayne clarified. “Left to my own devices, I don’t mind being fat—and this certainly isn’t my first time, even if it’s far and away my biggest-ever peak. Whether any of you noticed or not, I was past plumper or thicc or any other sub-BBW size category into fully BBW fat at the start of this cruise. Seriously, I like my curves. Most of the time I’m good being a sex symbol and most of the time I’m down with having huge boobs. Boobs are power and hella fun to have and play with, as we know.”

Leigh bit her lip, feeling one of her self-esteem crash buttons being pushed.

Jayne noticed. Unable to think of anything to say or do to walk back her comment in Leigh’s mind, she plunged ahead, “I just wish the sexy had an Off switch, so I could be the non-threatening friendly affectionate person I truly am inside and feel the love without it having to be about sex!”

The sympathetic understanding look she received from Rebecca helped. {She knows} thought Jayne. “There are a few things you’ve gotta know about Brent. First of all, he’s insanely jealous that I’ve been sexually intimate with 12 passengers and 11 crew members during our not-exactly-matched-but-close careers on this ship, and his score—as he frames things—is 2 and 6.”

Beryl couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “That’s all?!—either of you?!”

Neither could Rebecca. “That many?!”

“That’s over the past 3 years, not all on this trip! He’s one of my 11 and I’m one of his 6. Beyond the jealousy and despite both being DJs, we don’t have a lot in common. Or at least not enough. Or at least not enough of what’s important. But he’s alright, so, hhhhhhhhhhh, I go back to him. He gets his gropey boob fondles that I truly don’t mind unless he’s overly pinchy—and I do make him stop… usually—and I get survival-level cuddles, enough to get by.”

“Well he’s obviously not amongst the 5 or 6 woman-attracted FAs on the crew and staff, so back to my question: how many are actually available to you?”

“I don’t know who any of them are, Beryl.”

“Oh come on! You never see anyone looking lustily at you below upper chest level?”

She shook her head.

“Average statistics tell us nothing about the actual number in a given specific instance or context” noted Per.

“That may be, however it’s damn hell not zero out of 1100! If things were normal in terms of being close to strangers, I’d already be scoping the decks for prey– uh, I mean fine Fat Admirers!”

“You have a nice voice, Jayne. Doubly so to be able to sing that well after weeks of no sleep!”

Clark’s sincere comment and his endearing smile made her again weepy. They made Leigh decide she needed some kisses and her own cuddle, which did nothing to improve Jayne’s mood.

“Are we quite 100% double-donkey sure there’s not going to be a healthful, healing, wonderful, loving, sexy, cuddly orgy amongst us?” Beryl prodded, with her usual smile. “Eh? Eh?”

“No!” Leigh and Rebecca shot back.

“Alright. You know what that means, don’t you?”

The others shook their heads, Jayne just barely and sadly.

“With no extant immediately available cuddle options to heal squishy cuddly Swash Buckle, we have to work with what we have… at this table.”

Leigh immediately slid further atop Clark’s lap burying that much more of it under her warm fleshy softness. Taking no chances, she additionally slipped his left hand down under her waistband atop her fat belly.

Rebecca squished Per deeply against and into her yet again, plunging his right hand deep beneath her waistband, where she’d never, ever let him nor anyone else go in any recent decade, to his shock. Taking no chances, in his ear she whispered, “We’re going there when we’re alone in private. You’re my man.”

“Listen up!” Beryl raged. “We are Team Succulence. We are all in this together” she banged her fist on the table. “Just like rice and flour and toilet paper on land, there’s currently a shortage of male FAs until we can identify more and replenish stock.”

“Toilet paper?!” Clark exclaimed in umbrage.

“OK, bad analogy: male FAs are valued people just like female FAs and BBW and BHM, none of us disposable like toilet paper or any other use-once-and-discard item.”

“That’s not how I heard it” he suggestively grin-glared at her.

“I’m still open to sex with you!—you too, Per. I just don’t want to spend all my time with any one person.”

“Unavailable!” yelled Rebecca.

Leigh waggled her finger and shook her head towards Beryl with a stern glare to convey the same message.

“Moot! Back to the present! In a sane world we’d already all be at least heading to one of our staterooms for the celebratory orgy I firmly—no, squishy succulent softly—believe we all need, if not already there and naked and consensually doing it and each other. But obviously we’re not in a sane world, which explains why we’re all still confined here on this ship when other cruise ship passengers who aren’t actively ill have been let off and transported home. Everybody including my potato pillows both eaten and as yet uneaten know that you two”–she pointed to Leigh and Clark–“are going home together, by which I mean to one of your staterooms. You two”–she pointed towards Rebecca and Per–“explicitly arranged to go to her stateroom right in front of all of us within the past half hour. Jayne, a Team Succulence member in good standing, as we all are so far, needs hugs and cuddles. Having personally tested my own on her and with you all as my witnesses, we know these need to be male FA hugs and cuddles, and we of Team Succulence do not judge! At least not amongst our own. Unless absolutely necessary. Restrictions may apply void where prohibited which isn’t here ask your doctor if Team Succulence is right for you blah blah blah.

“She can’t turn off her sexy! None of us can! Jayne: get up, get over there, and sit down between Clark and Per. I’ll slide your plate over. Platonic hugs and cuddles, With. Clothes. ON!”

Jayne started to make her move.

Beryl continued, “I do not want to hear, see, nor otherwise sense one solitary gripe out of either of you scintillating SSBBW currently seated on that side of the table! No hoarding in the midst of a pandemic-induced shortage: share your woman-attracted male FA resources!”

Jayne felt even better than either Clark or Per had imagined: on par with the amazing women each of them loved. Feeling all their affection pouring over and into her (and vice-versa), Jayne wondered whether she’d ever been with a real FA in the past.

Even though at hip level they were all in intimate contact, and even though she’d fattened on her upper body proportionally to the rest of her body (and not just her breasts up above), there was enough space that she could only be in upper body contact with one or the other of Per or Clark at a given moment—especially the deep contact she craved.

Per felt nice: a far sight better than Brent, or any other regular lover in her life for a long, long time. He absolutely knew how to cuddle someone like her.

Clark felt magical!: everything she wanted or needed in a cuddle lover! She could feel that he almost certainly loved cuddling as much as she did.

Beryl watched over the group like a hawk. Thankfully for everyone, Per and Clark were on top of their game in terms of equitably splitting their affection energy focus between their main woman and Jayne, keeping Leigh and Rebecca resigned to their situation, even if not happy about it.

Jayne softly peep-sighed a few times, sinking further into a deeper cuddle with Clark, still in right hip contact with Per. Finally having found peace after far too many days, she quickly fell asleep, gravity pulling her into the deepest-possible lean with everyone in those positions. Her very soft snore and gentle restful sleeping look were adorable.

“Put your arm around her” Beryl near-whispered.

Leigh shot her a glare of rage, which she returned with an upheld warning index finger. That finger and that hand slid Jayne’s plate around Clark over to Leigh, who immediately scarfed down everything on it as her only immediate recourse to get back at Jayne for stealing some of her cruise husband’s loving affection.