Full Figured 13

Book 13: Full-Figured Series

by Mona Love, Katt

Genres: African American Urban; General Fiction; African American

Synopsis

A Million Dollars Worth of Fat by Mona Love: Keisha Long is cute, funny, and is always the life of the party but she is also 320 pounds and lonely. She's tried dating apps, blind dates, and everything else she can think of, but nothing has gotten her further than the friend zone and more "I like you like a sister" speeches than she can count on all her fingers and toes. Things change for Keisha when she buys a winning lottery ticket worth 54 million dollars. Suddenly, she has more suitors than she can keep up with. Darius, Wilson, Tony, Keith, and Malek all come knocking on her door, but are any of them interested in the real her, and not just her newfound wealth?

Release date: February 26, 2019

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

I laughed at myself, but wasn’t a damn thing funny. It was all I could do to keep myself from crying. Not only was I embarrassed as all hell, but I was seriously hurt. The way the ripples of pain rocked through my entire body, I felt like someone had beaten my ass with ten baseball bats. But nothing hurt worse than my left ankle. It was literally screaming, if that makes sense. I blinked a few times and tears eased out the sides of my eyes.

Do you know what it is like to be 320 pounds and bust your ass in a crowded mall after the cute, slim-heeled sandals you wore buckled under your weight? Of course you don’t! But that’s what happened. One minute I was getting my plus-sized-model walk on, heels just clacking, ample hips swaying sexily, and the next minute I was crashing to the floor like a brick building that had been hit with a wrecking ball.

Screech. Boom. Splat. That’s what it sounded like.

So there I was, lying flat, staring up at the ogling eyes and contorted faces of all the mall hood rats and shoppers amused by the beached whale on the floor. You’d think all the fluffy cushion I had around my ass and midsection would’ve helped. Nope. I was hurting. I was hurting bad, physically and mentally.

I heard the groans mixed with snickering as soon as the sickening screech of my heel against the mall floor tiles let me know shit was about to get ugly. I imagined that my shoe had one last holler from the thin heels, saying, “Bitch, you knew damn well I wasn’t strong enough to hold up all that ass!”

I was laughing to keep myself from crying. And then I heard it: a deep baritone that made me want to melt into the floor and disappear. “Miss, are you all right?” the voice asked.

I didn’t even have to look to know that the owner of that voice was sexy as hell. And just like I suspected, within seconds there was a handsome face hovering over mine. Dayum! I stared up at the gorgeous man and the gawking crowd, feeling like a circus sideshow.

“Let me help you up,” he said, as he spread his stance wide like he knew he’d have to dig down deep for strength to get my big ass up.

“I . . . I got it,” I managed through fake chuckles. If I weren’t embarrassed before, I was hot with shame now. My face felt like someone had lit it with a torch. But I was kind of used to stuff like this. I had been dealing with this all my life.

Just keep laughing, Keisha. You know the drill. Laugh at yourself first. Keep laughing. It’ll make the pain and embarrassment less, I told myself. It was the same thing I’d been saying since I was the chubby girl in elementary school. I learned early on that if I laughed at myself, that would make everyone else’s laughter null and void. Or so I always hoped.

“No, you could’ve seriously hurt yourself. Let me,” the man with the beautiful voice said.

I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, I didn’t look at him. But I took his hand and let him help me up. I got to my feet. One foot was still in the other high heel, and the other was throbbing from being twisted by the disloyal heel.

“Keep on walking. Y’all standing around watching and recording, but this woman is really hurt,” my sexy-voiced Good Samaritan barked at the group of teens who remained for the show. They scattered, taking their mean comments and laughter with them.

“You really didn’t have to,” I said, my voice quivering with nerves. Now I had no choice but to look at the man who possessed that soul-stirring deep voice.

“I know I didn’t have to, but common decency is something we need in this world,” he replied.

I felt something flutter inside of me. It wasn’t that usual flutter like tiny butterflies. This was more like huge winged bats banging around inside my stomach. There was definitely something different and special about this man.

Finally, I took a good look at him. Lawd! My heart sank immediately. This man was fine. He was Michael B. Jordan fine. He was Chadwick Boseman fine. He was Wakanda warrior fine. Right away I knew, like he’d said, that he was just being a Good Samaritan, because a fine-ass man like him would never want a thicker-than-a-snicker chick like me.

“Well, thank you,” I said, unable to hold eye contact with him. “I appreciate the help.”

“Andre,” he said, extending his hand.

The heat that engulfed my face made me feel like I’d just stuck my entire head into a fire pit. I swallowed ten times before I was able to speak. “Kei . . . Keisha,” I managed, accepting his hand for a shake.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Keisha,” he said with wink and a smile. Then out of nowhere, he bent down and unbuckled my other high heel shoe, slipped it off of my good foot, stood up, and handed it to me. “I think you should just go without these. I’ll run to the Target and grab you some flip-flops. Be right back.”

Before I could protest, this knight in shining armor was on the move. I flopped back on the mall bench, pinched myself, and looked around to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I felt like it was my lucky day. And trust me, I’d never felt lucky my entire life.

Dating and men . . . hmmm, where do I start? Let’s just say I hadn’t been lucky. Dating apps had resulted in dudes who acted like I had catfished them whenever we met up in person. There was this one guy who yelled out, “You big as fuck!” when I walked up to him in front of the restaurant. There had been many missed and failed dates: dating apps, speed dating, friend hookups, stranger approaches, and none had resulted in love. Forget about the “friend zone.” I’d been told, “I like you as a friend,” so many times that I stopped counting around the age of 16. That sentence really meant, “You’re too fat for me, but I think you’re crazy fun and nice and I don’t want to let you down too hard.” I’d also had the occasional, “I’m not ready for a relationship,” only to see the dude in the next week or two canoodling with the next bitch. The next skinny bitch.

Okay, okay. Let me admit that I’m five feet nine inches tall, 320 pounds with size 44F breasts, and a waist that decides to show up when it wants to. But I am also a sexy caramel-skinned, almond-eyed beauty who has learned how to carry her weight in the highest BBW manner. I’ve been told I should do plus-sized modeling so many times I can’t even count. Beautiful in the face does not equal beautiful to the world. Society is a cruel fucking place for thick girls. The beauty standard is and always will be some skinny bitch who, in my opinion, needs to eat a whole box of crackers and five sandwiches.

“Here you go, beautiful,” Andre said, snapping me out of my own thoughts.

“Thank you so much.” I was blushing, I could tell. There went that face flame again. My heart was hammering like I was running.

“Let me help you to your car,” he said, flashing a megawatt smile that made me hot around the collar.

“Oh, um, okay,” I stammered. I knew the confusion showed on my face because I was thinking, what else can this day hold for me? Because this shit right here is straight out of a romantic comedy movie!

“Yes, bitch, a total stranger lifted my big ass up off the mall floor, helped me out of my damn other shoe, and bought me a pair of flip-flops. He got the right size, mind you, and let me lean my big ass on his shoulder while he walked me to my damn car,” I rambled into my cell phone, telling my best friend, Leitha, the story.

“Biiitcchh!” Leitha screamed into her phone so loudly that I pulled mine away from my ear for a minute. “Get theee whole fuck outta here!”

“I’m so serious right now, LeLe. I mean, it was like some fairytale shit, but the fat girl version. When I say this man was fine as shit, he was fine as shit. Why me? It’s like he looked at me like I was a skinny bitch with a new wig and butt implants. You know that look dudes give them Instagram famous bitches? Yeah, mmm-hmmm, that look,” I continued.

“Girl, what? Shit! This is your lucky day. Carry your ass to the store and play the lotto or some shit. My grandmama always said that if you get the stroke of luck, ride that bitch ’til the wheels fall off,” Leitha said with feeling.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how the saying goes, LeLe,” I said and busted out laughing.

“It don’t even matter. Take your ass to the store and play the lotto and like ten scratch-offs. And, bitch, if you win, you better come get me so I can disappear with you,” Leitha said jokingly, although I knew she was dead-ass serious.

“Girl, bye. I’ll call you when I get home.”

As soon as I hung up with Leitha I took her advice. I headed to the store to play the lotto. I mean shit, what did I have to lose? The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about Andre. His beautiful mocha skin. His strong hands. His white-ass teeth. But most of all, his muscular body. He looked like he worked out seven days a week. I hadn’t seen a gym since that one time I tried to combine Weight Watchers with intense HIIT workouts and damn near had a heart attack and a breathing tube. I ran my ass out of that gym so fast, never to return. Every New Year I say I’m going back. Emphasis on “I say.”

“You one dumb ass, Keisha. Why in the hell didn’t you get his number?” I grumbled to myself. I could’ve shot my shot. What’s the worst that could’ve happened? He could’ve said he was married and I’d be in the same boat I was in now: no number! But what if Leitha was right and it was my lucky day? I might’ve had that man’s number and in six months been his lucky bride.

“Bitch, please,” I scolded myself. “He helped you, but he don’t want you.”

“Ms. Keisha!” Habeeb, the store owner, sang as I walked into the bodega on the corner of my block. “You want ham and cheese hero, a lot of mayo, lettuce, tomato, oil, and vinegar?”

“Ugh, Habeeb. How come every time I come in here you think I’m about to buy food?”

He raised his eyebrows at me knowingly.

“Just because I’m three hundred pounds don’t mean I eat all the time. I’m big-boned, and it runs in my family,” I hissed and rolled my eyes.

Habeeb just smiled. He was thinking some slick shit, but he ain’t want to say it.

“Let me get ten Mega Millions Quick Picks,” I said, flustered as I slammed down my twenty-dollar bill.

Habeeb was about to type in the order.

“Wait, no. Let me get five Quick Picks and let me pick the rest,” I corrected.

He slid me the card to pick the numbers.

I picked up one of the little pencils he had on the counter in an old-fashioned matchbox. I closed my eyes and pictured Andre again: his neatly cropped hair, his thinly trimmed goatee, and his eyes, those piercing, attentive eyes. Then, I used my cell phone keypad to spell out his name with numbers.

A: I colored in the number two on the card. N: I colored in the number six on the card. D: I colored in the number three on the card. R: I colored in the number seven on the card. E: I colored in the thirty-three since I had already used the three for the D. For the Mega Ball box, I colored in the eleven, since that was the date I met Andre.

I looked at the numbers one more time. I felt stupid, and I started to rip up the card. Playing letters associated with a total stranger’s name? Who does that?

“You ready?” Habeeb asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yeah, just do it. Shit, what I got to lose?” I said, pushing the card across the counter. Within seconds I had my Mega Millions ticket. I shrugged and stuffed it into my pocketbook.

“Now, give me my damn hero, Habeeb,” I said.

He busted out laughing.

His towel-head ass knew damn well I came in there for my usual hero. Shit, a girl got to eat.

The usual rotation of dates in my life was exhausting. This time, I sat across from my “date,” Darius, thinking, Keisha Long, just what the fuck are you doing here? And I use quotes on purpose. I could hardly call Darius a date. I didn’t even know what the word date meant anymore. He was the fourth dude in a month, and if you looked up “total loser” in Webster’s Dictionary, Darius’s face would be the whole page.

“So I’m saying you cute for a big girl. Where you work at?” Darius asked after licking Buffalo wing sauce off of his thumb like he had way too much experience sucking something.

I closed my eyes for ten seconds and swallowed hard. It was all I could do to keep my composure. Did this dude just ask me where I work at? Jesus, be an invisibility cloak.

I stared at him for a few more long seconds. Yeah, I was stupid for even being at some damn Buffalo Wild Wings with this jank-ass loser. I had met Darius a few months before while I was clubbing and had gotten pissy drunk. Six drinks and he’d looked like a black Norse god at the time. I’d stumbled out of the club on his arm and into his car. Well, what I thought was his car. Anyway, Darius and I had had some sloppy one-night-stand sex. I didn’t remember much about the details, but I did remember that his dick was just like that gotdamn eggplant emoji and I wanted more. That night he’d promised to call me, and after five or six failed attempts at calling him, I had given up.

Lo and behold, three damn months later and there I was. Darius had called me with the “Hey, bighead” line and asked if I wanted to hang out. I didn’t think anything of it, and if it meant one more personal eggplant Friday episode with him, I was down.

Through sober eyes, Darius was just average: fade haircut on some nappy-ass hair with some fake-ass waves, full beard, which is the way these dudes these days try to make themselves look sexier than they really are, and his clothes, um, he definitely wasn’t dressed to the nines like he was the night I met him, which made me believe he had borrowed that Gucci belt and those Balenciaga sneakers he had on that night.

“I work. I think that’s all that’s important,” I said dryly as I used my fork to push around the dry-ass bag salad this Buffalo Wild Wings had tried to pass off as gourmet cooking.

“Okay. Okay. I hear you. Independent woman, just what I’m looking for,” Darius said.

“So you’re looking for a woman?” I asked, baffled. First date in three months and he was looking for a woman? “Interesting. Very interesting.”

“Well, you know, it’s getting cold, and I was kind of thinking you’d be the perfect person for this cuffing season that’s coming up,” Darius replied with not one ounce of shame.

“Wow, okay. Let’s just get right to the point why don’t we?” I grumbled.

Just when I was about to call it quits, Darius hit me with, “I thought we was feeling each other that night. You know, feeling each other,” he said, parting a sly smile.

Next thing I knew, I was on my knees with my big ass in the air with Darius’s face wedged between my ass cheeks, eating my pussy from the back. When he was done doing that, he flipped me over onto my back as if I weighed a hundred pounds and not over 300. He laid that dick on me with so much skill I was yelling out, “Yes! It’s cuffing season! You can cuff with me! Yes! Oh, yes!”

Took me almost two months to get him out of my house. He didn’t have a job, a car, a house, decent clothes, and to top it off he had several (too many to count, so I’ll say several) children and baby mamas. After I dodged that bullet, I had to ask myself, why it is always the ones with the good dick who ain’t got shit? Thinking about his dick still made me shudder though.

“Yes, LeLe. I am going on a date. Yes, another date,” I rolled my eyes, and my best friend sucked her teeth. This was my life: a proverbial Ferris wheel of dates. ’Round and ’round I went, each time hitting the bottom and letting the next no-good nigga off the ride and another half-no-good nigga on the ride. ’Round and ’round some more.

“I’m so over this shit, Keisha. Why don’t you just give it a rest? You’re beautiful. A man don’t define you,” Leitha said sincerely. “I think if you just wait and pray, God will send you the right man at the right time.”

I sucked my teeth and kept on applying my makeup. That was easy for Leitha to say. She had a man. Everyone needed someone. In my eyes, human companionship was just as essential as oxygen. I wanted to tell myself I didn’t need a man, but deep down it was ingrained in me that I did.

I sighed and threw my makeup brush on the vanity. I closed my eyes for a few long minutes and thought about what Leitha was saying. She was right. A man didn’t define me, but something about getting men’s approval seemed to haunt my life. I wanted to be accepted and loved and taken care of. Wasn’t that what all women wanted? Maybe it was because my father had walked out on my mother and me when I was eight. I’d always blamed myself for being fat as his reason for leaving. After his abandonment, I’d eat and eat and grow bigger and bigger. That was my comfort. No matter how hard I tried, I loved food . . . oh, and men. So I ate to comfort myself after the rejection from men, but I kept pursuing men in my need for their approval and the sham of comfort it provided. Do you see how that could end up being a crazy way to live?

My mother struggled, and she always preached about how much easier raising me would’ve been had she had a man. She couldn’t keep one either, which was why we had a revolving door in our house. I saw man after man and watched my mother suffer disappointment after disappointment. Sort of what I was doing to myself now. I once went to a psychic who told me I would have all of my heart’s desires one day, including a good man. I wanted to slap that bitch and ask for every dime of my money back. How could she possibly believe that I was worthy when even I didn’t believe it? It was crazy. I was crazy. But that didn’t change shit. I was still on every dating website, dating app, and social dating scene around.

“I just do it for fun, LeLe,” I lied, snapping out of the sad memory of my childhood. Fuck it! What did I have to lose? Self-dignity had been long gone. When you’re a big girl, everyone (women included) will make you feel like you don’t deserve shit in life but a tub of chicken and a girdle.

“Whatever. Just keep my number on speed dial in case your speed date is a serial killer,” Leitha half joked.

“They only kill skinny bitches, remember,” I joked back. We both laughed and eased some of the very real tension in the room.

I cannot lie, my heart slammed against my chest bone like the beater inside of a bass drum. I smoothed down my bright yellow Ashley Stewart sundress to make sure my Spanx weren’t rolling in the middle, and I shimmied my ample hips over to the next table. Oh, God! He was ugly as hell. This was the second table in the speed-dating cycle, and I was already ready to run for the door.

You ain’t pay a hundred dollars to waste it. Stick with it, Keisha.

The pep talks I gave myself were real at that point. I had to keep my head in the game. What if this place held my diamond in the rough?

As I moved from table to table, looking in the face of man after man, I had to really ask myself again why I was there. At this point, I had received more than one gawk and gasp at my size from the shallow bunch of stuffed suits who were there trying to find dates. And then finally . . .

I plopped down in the chair in front of a beautiful chocolate warrior. Instead of gawking or acting disgusted, he smiled. Not only did he smile, but he smiled like I had made his whole day.

“Hi, I’m Wilson,” he said, still smiling. His teeth were beams of light they were so white against his dark skin. His accent was noticeable ri. . .