Virginia was hot.
That was what you thought when the plane landed, and it was what you thought two hours later as you sweated through your shirt in the car park. The sun beat down mercilessly, not a single cloud in sight to give even a hope of reprieve. You went to take another sip from your water bottle, realised it was empty, and dropped it in your bag. One of several surrounding you. Three travel bags, four large cases, the rucksack you had been wearing, and Tara's handbag, all grouped together to make an impromptu fort.
Tara still hadn't joined you. She had elected to let you take the bags outside whilst she called her parents and went to "powder her nose" in the nice, cool airport. You doubted there was any malice in the request. Tara was too naive and good natured to consider it, and if you had pointed out that you were being left with an annoying level of work she would have lent a hand. But you didn't. There was no reason both of you should suffer out there.
"Its too damn hot." You muttered to yourself as another car drove past you.
You were happy to meet you in-laws, but why did it have to be in summer?
You distracted yourself by recalling your wedding, that Tara's family had been unable to attend. You had sent them the recording, but you both knew there was regret there. Especially after they financed the whole thing. You had known you were marrying into money when you proposed, back in that tiny apartment you had bought together after college, but before the wedding you didn't quite grasp how much money. Your own parents had been blown away by the extravagance, your mother in a rare moment of stunned silence. Hell, most passers by could tell that there was some cash being thrown around that day.
Your own jaw-drop moment had come several weeks earlier, when you had a surprise visit from a woman Tara introduced as "her maid" Nina, and her daughter Roberta. The two of them, apparently, had been sent on her father's behalf, armed with a credit card and Roberta's fashion sense to help get your wife ready for the big day. Tara, for her part, seemed initially uncomfortable with the idea, trying to insist on paying her own way. It had taken both Nina's stubbornness and your own gentle encouragement to get her to go along with it.
"Just something basic!" She had said as they left for their first shopping trip. "I'm not going to overdo it."
Of course, that was basic for her family. The dress she had ended up wearing cost about half your yearly wage. That was your first clue that maybe Tara was more than "a little well-off", as she told you a year ago. Although, truthfully there were other hints before that. Like your different reactions to the dishwasher in your apartment. You were thrilled not to be cleaning by hand anymore. Tara had needed to ask what it was. Which made sense if there were maids in the family home. Your time at college had been full of moments like that, you recalled. Trying to buy a pack of instant noodles with a $100 bill. On the day you met her, you needed to show her the ropes of a bus timetable, and that was how you learned that she was attending your college. And from there, you made it a point to meet every time your schedules lined up. And then when they didn't. You very quickly fell in love with the naïve, chubby, busty blonde with the southern twang. And you very quickly learned that she was more than a little coddled growing up. At first she tried to put on an act around you, but it wasn’t exactly convincing. She was smart enough for her college course, but in terms of common sense, your ten-year-old cousin had her beat. After you stopped her following a group of guys into an alley because they told her that they had “a really good job” for her, you sat her down and gave her a big, long talk about how she shouldn’t trust everyone she met.
And that was when she teared up, leapt into your arms, and asked you in the quietest, most vulnerable voice you had ever heard if you would keep her safe. And of course, you did. Looking back, that was really the night the two of you began dating for real. It was like she lead a double life, in a way. On campus, she was top of her class, a buxom beauty with a mind of gears. On your dates, she was a bouncy blonde who loved ice cream, hot wings, and threw childish tantrums when she didn’t get her way. Luckily, you knew how to calm her down. You would wait until she finished stomping her feet and was looking up at you with a pout. And then wrap an arm around her, and bribe her with candy. It was cheap, and your youngest cousin wouldn’t even fall for it, but it worked. Tara would cheer up, take the bribe, and happily let you deal with whatever had caused her problem. On rare occasions, it would be something more important than not being able to buy a new dress, and those were the times when you had to teach her how to cope on her own, which she would always learn, however grudgingly at first.
A year after you finished college, you had proposed, and you moved in together. Despite your better judgment, you found yourself coddling her just a little too much. By the time you got married, her chub had developed into a well-endowed, round-bellied form. That might have been when you realised that she was looking better with the extra pounds, and took your steps on the discovery of your fetish for bigger girls. Tara wasn’t happy about it, mostly because she had outgrown the cute outfits she brought from home. But she also never managed to stay on whatever fad diet she tried longer than a week. At your wedding, her gut had been packed into the dress so tightly she could barely move, and it still bulged out substantially. The dress also gave her some insane cleavage, enough that you had trouble maintaining eye contact during your vows.
“Daddy says the car’ll be here soon.”
The voice from behind you pulled you back from memory lane. You looked behind you to see Tara coming towards you, phone still in hand. The wedding was three years ago, and she had definitely gained weight since then. Stripes were supposedly slimming, but the pale blue and white pattern of her sundress did nothing to disguise the wobble of her bulging rolls. With the memory of her on your wedding day fresh in your mind, you could really appreciate the stark contrast that the three years of marital bliss had caused, now that Tara, two hundred and forty pounds then, weighed…….
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