HANNA
By Stew Borne

A lot of my friends said that it was her looks that I fell for - they were so obvious - the classical lines of her face, the long blond hair, her slender and well proportioned body with a firm bosom and a slim waist. In short, she was a classical beauty.

But my friends were wrong. Of course, I did find her beautiful, but, frankly, it was her remarkable joy for life that was her key to my heart. She had decided to always love what she did, a philosophy that meant that she consistently chose what she found most exciting whenever there were a choice. So she did what she loved, and she loved what she did, and she was always close to a, "Oh, I love this," and a, "Boy, isn't this great?" or simply that glittering laughter that could make an iceberg melt.

We met during our last year at University. Her name was Hanna. She was studying Economics; I was just about to finish off my Master's degree. We both felt that this was so much more than all those spring romances that we had both experienced before. This was for real, and we knew it.

If you think about later events, it is quite funny that we first met at an aerobics class. She loved the aerobics and went three or four times a week. I hated it, but still, one has to stay fit and I went there once a week in between regular visits to the gym - that is, once I had managed to make contact and flirted a little with her after the aerobics class, I started going there more often.

The spring went by, our relationship blossomed and developed. We finished our studies in early June and had already decided to take a well-deserved vacation throughout July and August before starting to find ourselves our first real jobs in autumn. Summer came, and it was a beautiful summer in many ways. It was a sunny summer; it was a frying hot summer and when I look back, it was as if we did nothing for a few months than going to the beach, playing outdoor games with our friends - well, except going to the occasional aerobics. She did, that is. I had stopped going, and when the summer turned into fall, I noticed that the pants that has suited me well three months earlier, before shorts-and-T-shirt-season had started, had become a little difficult to button.

Hanna, on the other hand, could as happily as ever keep showing off her little tops and tight skirts that she were so fond of, without a single excessive pound visible. Ice cream, and barbecue parties seemed to have very little effect on her, or more correctly, they were balanced by her spending more time at aerobics.

One day in early September, she called me on my cell phone:

- Honey, I got that trainee job at TCN. Darling, isn't this great!

It certainly was great. TCN was a multinational company in software, and her pay was very good. Only a few days later, it was my turn to get the job I had sought - indeed things were going great. We spent autumn working hard, as junior employees wanting to make that brilliant talented impression on our respective employers. When Christmas came, Hanna had gained a position as a favorite of her superiors. I, on the other hand, had gained a good position, too - but also 11 pounds, in addition to the 8 I had gained over summer. At work, it had been fast food for lunch, and when returning home tired after a long day, Hanna and I often ordered pizzas or simply went out for dinner together or with friends. I think Hanna did put on a few pounds, too, but it was not much and it was barely noticeable - she insisted on keeping up her aerobics. I never really understood how she managed to squeeze it into her schedule.

And Christmas and holidays were not very kind to my weight either. While dressing up for New Year's Eve, it turned out that I couldn't possibly get into my tuxedo. Hanna, while herself slipping into her brand new tight, stunning red dress, noticed my problem and started laughing.

- Hey, looks like my darling's been gaining a bit. Well, I don't mind, you're pretty cute with that little gut actually, she said, and to my amazement she started unbuttoning my shirt. I was rather turned on by seeing her in her tight foxy dress. I squeezed her butt, a little rounder than it had been half a year ago, and felt her breasts, slightly fuller than before, against my chest. We arrived rather late to the party.

Our merry (and nourishing) autumn together was followed by a winter and spring apart. In early February, Hanna was informed by her boss that the company wanted to send her to Italy for four months, mostly in Venice. It was a great opportunity for her, and although we both felt sad about having to be apart for such a period of time, there was not much hesitation. She left in March. As we kissed farewell at the airport, she apparently felt how my belly was protruding even further than before and patted it with a wink in her eye:

- Honey, it sure is sad that we are going to be apart, but think about the good side - you'll have more time for exercise, she said with a wink. I then and there quietly decided that, yes, I was going to take this opportunity of getting rid of the 31 pounds that had been piling up around my waist over the last year. When we met again by late July, I was going to be back in great shape - that was a pledge to myself.

Odd, I thought as I watched her walk to the plane, how she seemed unaware that, although far from gaining as much as I had, she had definitely become a little rounder herself this last year. Well, I thought to myself, once in Italy, she'll no doubt get back to her aerobics schedule that had been slipping somewhat lately. As I watched her butt wiggling a little as she entered the plane, I strangely felt that that was a sad prospect.

The four months went by faster and easier than I had dreaded. We had almost daily email contact, and she kept praising wonderful Italy. She was totally in love with the country, as she used to be in things wonderful. She loved the people, the language, the food, Venice ("how could you possibly NOT love that city") the climate - everything. She told me she had made some Italian friends and often went out with them, or home to them.

I struggled on at my job and was rather successful. But I grew rather tired of it, as I didn't feel I was getting to do anything new while having to work much more than I was told initially, so I was happy switching to another job in May. As anyone could have guessed, all this working didn't leave much room for exercise, so instead of losing any weight, I had actually put on another 8 pounds by early summer. And then it was barbecue season, and by mid July I reached the 200 pounds mark, a total weight gain of 45 pounds since I'd left University. My friends made a little fun of me for this, especially John, whom I had told (silly me) of my promise to slim down to my old match weight.

- Look at that gut of yours, he said. A fine diet of ice cream and pizzas you've been sticking to, fatso. What do you think Hanna will think when you arrive in Venice looking like a cherub from a renaissance painting?

To be honest, I was a little worried that she'd tease me too when we met, but it was no more time for fast slimming as the next week I went to Venice to meet her, and then we would spend two weeks in Italy together before returning home.

She met me at the airport, noticed me before I noticed her, yelled and started jumping up and down so that I would see her. Dear reader, let me put it this way...there was a lot of her jumping. And I could not possibly have missed her, anyway - she was wearing a green T-shirt that was probably meant to be tight, but hardly THIS tight. Her boobs had grown truly huge and all that jumping made them bounce, way out of control. As I came closer she ran towards me, and before she threw herself around my neck, I noticed that she had developed a fat belly with a deeply set navel. During her rush towards me, her T-shirt surrendered to the wobbling belly and breast and crept up and folded over a roll of fat that was formed by her way-too-small shorts digging into the flesh. Not until she had kissed and hugged me for quite a while did she adjust the T-shirt, tug at it in vain to stay down over that belly roll.

As we left the airport in a cab, we chatted and kissed, and she enthusiastically told me about all the good of Italy in general and Venice, in particular. I thought to myself that a lot of that good seemed to center around the Italian food, restaurants and eating out at nights with her Italian friends. For a welcoming tête-à-tête she had made reservations at her favorite restaurant, and this was where we were going next.

As the taxi stopped and I was stepping out of it with Hanna behind me, I felt her hand patting my butt, and as I turned to her she caught sight of that fat gut of mine that I, in vain, had tried to cover up in a black loose fitting T-shirt (that admittedly was not as loose fitting as when I had bought it a few months earlier).

- Woah, look at this, she said and grabbed a substantial roll of fat in my side. Looks like you've been packing on the pounds, instead of losing them, honey!

Although she teasingly kept pinching my love handles as we walked into the restaurant, she didn't seem too disapproving - which was quite a relief for me. As she must have gained at least 30 pounds herself during her months in Venice, she was really an easy target had I wanted to return her teasing, but the funny thing is that she didn't seem to realize this. Her ignorance of how chunky she had become was further underlined by the fact that she kept wearing the tight clothes that had always been her hallmark. Her legs were filling out her pants; her belly was divided into two fat rolls, one lower part that seemed likely to be forcing the button of her shorts to pop at any moment, while the upper half was folding above the waistline. She didn't seem aware, or at least she didn't care. And her hips had become very wide indeed, and only the fact that her butt had expanded rearwards correspondingly, made her proportions look a lot like before - only... a lot more voluptuously.

We had a fabulous dinner that night: antipasti, pastas, meat dishes, cheese and a huge ice cream for dessert that we both had a lot of problem getting down as we were totally full. Naturally we had a lot of wine as well, and we both got a little drunk. As we sat stuffed after the dinner, I remarked:

- Gee, this Italian food doesn't do much good for one's waistline, obviously.

I looked meaningfully down at her belly that had now folded into three distinct rolls of fat, but she either refused to take the hint or simply didn't get it. She looked around.

- Yeah, look at that fat couple over there. Oh well, they're pretty cute. Ooh, I'd better unbutton my own pants by the way or they'll burst. But hey, judging from your own expansion, food back home seems to have been just as nourishing as well.

I couldn't find anything to say, and suddenly she attempted to lean across the table to kiss me, which was not such a good decision since her huge boobs tipped a glass of wine, and the belly she had just released from their imprisonment in her too small shorts took the liberty of diving into her empty plate. Her impulse was clearly the result of too much wine, unawareness of the exact limits of her new body - anyway, it rendered us being more or less thrown out of the restaurant, which we both found completely hilarious. So we went home to Hanna's apartment laughing. We then had the best sex we had ever had - as I found it extremely arousing to explore all the newly formed riffs and ridges of her voluptuous body - and she clearly enjoyed that, as well as other things.

Oh, well, there is not much more to say about our two weeks in Italy, except that it was a great holiday and that I asked her to marry me by the Fontana di Trevi in Rome and she said yes and then we kissed for ten minutes. I suggested that we bathe naked in the fountain to celebrate this, but she didn't think it was such a good idea as I did. I was feeling a little horny at the thought of Hanna wading through the water like an even fuller version of Anita Ekberg, but, unfortunately, Hanna was impossible to persuade, and so we never got arrested in Rome.

When we returned home from Italy, I discovered that another 6 pounds had attached themselves to me. As for Hanna's gain, I did not know, as she never weighed herself, as far as I know, and it was not possible to ask her as she always changed the subject when I brought it up. And besides, I couldn't care less; I thought she was perfectly beautiful. And, for that matter, so did she.

We spent early autumn planning the wedding for mid June. Hanna ordered her wedding dress in October as she wanted the best tailor in town and reservations had to be made well in advance. Her instructions to the tailor were:

- Don't make a stupid boring dress, I want something really sexy, lots of fluffy stuff on it, that's fine but make it foxy.

As the tailor took her measurements, Hanna objected that the size sounded too big, but didn't insist on it being made smaller. I took the opportunity myself of ordering a new tux several sizes bigger than my old one. That old one had given Hanna a good laugh when I had tried it on a few days earlier. I was now struggling to stay below 210 pounds, and the shirt to said tuxedo couldn't even be buttoned around my fat belly anymore, not without me sucking in the gut as much as I could, and when I let it out, the shirt was stretched to its very limit. Not to mention that my neck had grown so much that the uppermost button was half an inch way from reaching around it.

As for Hanna, I think she did gain a few more pounds, too - at least I noticed that at a cocktail reception at the Spanish embassy in early November, she was literally bursting out of a dress that we bought in Milan three months earlier. Especially her hips and bust seemed to be constantly growing. That Milan-dress, for instance, now seemed to creep up and start digging into the rift above her hips, so she had to tug at it to stay down. She made quite an appearance, by the way, at that cocktail party, which was arranged by her company as an attempt to secure a large contract with the Spanish government. Hanna had the Spanish minister in charge of the entire deal literally spellbound. Her busty appearance, her tugging-in-vain of a dress that insisted in revealing a little too much of her soft and rounded thighs, and the minister was more or less drooling over her. When Hanna inadvertently bumped into the minister while trying to reach for the snacks, first her butt and then - when she turned around trying to avoid falling - her huge boobies bounced right into the blushing face of the minister. The minister's wife didn't look happy at all, but in the end it turned out that TCN did indeed get the contract after, as it was rumoured, the direct interference from the minister.

Christmas came, and, just like last year when the holidays were over, I had put on quite a few pounds. So did Hanna, but as always, she either didn't notice it or she didn't care. She loved her body. I bought a membership at the health club and actually managed to start exercising a few days a week, firmly determined to get back on the right side of the 220 pounds mark. Hanna got excited to join me right away and said she did miss aerobics. It was nearly a year since she last attended. I convinced her that at least she had to get herself some new training clothes before joining, as I realized that there was not a chance she could fit into her old one.

- What do you mean fit into them? But, I guess, they look rather old fashioned. Let's go shopping, honey.

It was quite a show, and I found it very sexy to watch her trying out all the tights and tops and sport pants of the shops. It turned out that none of the most modern and trendy clothes were in Hanna's current size, a fact that she found very strange, but as she refused to buy something bulkier, she bought the trendiest she found, even though it was at least two sizes too small for her.

She only lasted for twenty minutes at the aerobics class before retreating exhausted to the locker room - but my, what a twenty minutes! I stood a couple of steps behind her, somewhat to her right. I was now sure she must have gained nearly 50 pounds all in all since we left University. Her tight bicycle pants dug into her fat legs. Her belly protruded far out in front of her - I could watch this from the side - and when she sat down, it formed a fat roll. Even the double chin that had started to encircle her (still very pretty) face was shaking as she bounced up and down as best she could during the class. Speaking of bouncing - her breasts and butt were shaking wildly during the exercises and I noticed in the angle of my eye how the aerobics trainer, who had not seen Hanna for a year, was staring at her formerly slim, now really plump pupil with a combination of disgust and fascination. Not to mention the other male members of the class, most of which had NOT seen her before but now were watching this jelly-like, yet sexy and pretty woman with no apparent intention to hide her wiggling butt or bouncing boobs or fat legs.

It turned out that she only went to aerobics once before there was a new turn of events. The manager of the Italian division of her company suddenly resigned and Hanna, as very talented and well acquainted with the Italian affairs was offered the job as his replacement for half a year. She said yes and was all joy over being given the chance to return to her dear Italy. True, it would be another half year for us apart, but then she would return just in time for our wedding. Or maybe I'd move to Italy, too. I had been mulling over an offer to work in Canada during spring anyway, and so this was an excellent opportunity for both of us to get an interesting working experience before the wedding.

And so another five months went by. Do I need to say that since I traveled a lot in my new position, spent a lot of time in airplanes, chewing down fast food, snacking at the hotel, eating dinner with customers at night, I quickly gained back the 5 pounds I had managed to get rid of after Christmas - and had added another 25 before it was June? They piled up fast this time, and I was too busy to notice until one day in early June, two weeks before the wedding, I stepped on the scales a little too clumsily and the spring in the scales snapped. I had become too fat for the scales, which had a limit at 250 pounds, so in a state of shock I decided that I wouldn't buy a new one until I was certain I was back under 250.

Meanwhile, Hanna was enjoying Italian food again. And when she enjoys something, she enjoys it in fullest. By the time she stepped out of the plane from Italy, a week before the wedding, she had developed a huge belly, a pair of hips that must have given her significant trouble in the cramped airplane seats, and a butt so fat that I could hardly believe my eyes. Given past experience, I had not expected her to lose any weight, but I was none the less amazed at how much more she had gained this time. And her breasts... those breasts seemed to be everywhere and when we hugged, the combined size of my fat 250-pounds gut and her enormous breasts and fleshy belly made it hard for us to grab around each other - not to mention that rolls of fat were expanding from her back to her sides as her bra (I'm sure she must have had difficulty finding one of that size) dug into her fat.

We spent a week fully absorbed by two things: making final preparations for the wedding and having sex. We had been without each other for so long and loved the new size of our partner's bodies so much that for a week we, I do not hesitate to admit this, were like rabbits, or like teenagers. I could get horny at the sight of her fleshy and dimpled butt as it filled out the chair when she sat down and we had sex then and there. Another time, I fed her at a restaurant and then we went together to the men's room, excused ourselves to a shocked elderly gentleman who stood in the way - and then had sex then and there. While discussing some details at the wedding church, we suddenly had to excuse ourselves to the priest, went out, found an office room that no one seemed to be using and... well, you know... We were like crazy, and we enjoyed each other in full.

And then came the wedding day. We had planned everything so well, we were certain that we had not forgotten anything.

Then Hanna started to put on her wedding dress.

None of us had thought of this potential problem, especially not herself. Even though she was now aware that she had "become a little fuller", as she put it herself, she was clearly in no way aware that she had probably gained 40 pounds since the dress was ordered (in addition to the 40 or 50 before that). And I? Well, I just hadn't thought about it. Damn, I had simply not thought of it.

Hanna got angry.

- Alright, so I've gained a few pounds, but God damn it, this damned dress, I am going to wear it! There is no way a new dress this nice can be found within a few hours time. Come on, help me with these buttons while I suck in my stomach.

I do not believe we actually sorted this out, but we did. She got into the dress. The fabric was fortunately reasonably stretchable, and although her fat arms and double chin and practically every possible part of her body tried to burst out of it, she did get the gown on. The dress had no less than 30 buttons along the back and front, and it took us (me and her younger sister who found it quite appalling) an entire hour to finish off the job of getting her into that dress.

As for my own suit, it was tight indeed, but I managed to put it on. My belly flowed out in front of me like a huge bag of fat and was stretching the buttons of my shirt to an extent that I was a little worried for a while. That shirt also dug into my second chin like never before and I suddenly realized that gee, I'd really become fat. But hey, I was going to marry the most attractive and wonderful woman I know, so I couldn't care less.

The wedding ceremony went oh so well and everyone were so happy for us - well, except for my aunt Nellie who asked loudly enough for Hanna to overhear it, where on earth I had found such a plump girl and how I could seriously get so fat. Hanna just smiled her most disarming smile and said that she'd rather be a little plump than an old poisonous snake, and everyone chuckled because Aunt Nellie did indeed look rather snake-like. Nellie did shut up for the rest of the night.

And then came dinner, and we and 85 guests had the best of food and the best of wine and um... lots of wine and lots of food, and by the time it was time for dessert, I was involved in a very deep discussion about 19th century art with Hanna's sister who sat in front of me. Hanna to my right, meanwhile, was being entertained by my father who really knows how to tell a good story, and I heard her laughing and giggling at his stories.

That's when it happened. I heard a sudden and distinct "pop!" from my right, followed by a series of pops and rips. I turned to Hanna and only then fully realized what had happened. Hanna, stuffed with the delicious food, the filling desert, slightly too well supplied with wine for her to realize the danger, had laughed and let her belly go its own way, which definitely was onward, out of the dress! One of the front buttons had popped and landed in the remaining ice cream in front of her. And with that 30th button gone, nothing could stop her belly from making room for itself at the expense of the remaining front buttons, especially not when her breasts joined in on this effort. Liberation! was the cry of her body and liberated it became. Her belly started flowing out of the gap that had formed in the front of her dress, and as Hanna realized what was about to happen, she leaned forward to cover her fat bare belly. This only resulted in her hips, unfairly squeezed in between the arms of the chair joining the ranks - Equality! - and so the rear buttons came under attack as well.

Hanna, at first shocked and dazzled, now realized that nothing could save the day for her. Her new husband could not come and - if you forgive the expression - save her bacon, no one could. She then started giggling. By now everyone in the room had silenced and were looking at the well exposed, and well cushioned, bride. Hanna then stopped giggling, took my hand and used her other one to keep the remains of her wedding dress from exposing the full glory of her immense bust. I rose quickly, my belly bumped into a glass of brandy, but nobody took any notice of that because everyone were still staring at the white flesh of the bride's belly, breasts and love handles. I helped her, keeping her dress together as best I could, and gracefully we both retreated, hardly able to keep our giggles back. We then dashed into the ladies room, locked the door and burst out laughing hysterically. I suddenly stopped.

- Honey, we've forgotten something, I said.

- What?

- It is unfair to abandon the hero of the day, I said. Wait, I'll be back in a moment!

Hanna looked confused as I dashed back into the dining room. I returned half a minute later, triumphantly holding the button that had first raised the flag of rebellion in front of me. Hanna smiled.

- At first I was only going to rescue the hero, I said, but then I realized the ice cream that it had landed in and hey, honey, you didn't finish your dessert.

I brought up the plate of ice cream from behind my back. Hanna laughed, and we dug in on the remaining ice cream together.