Chapter 2: The One-Year Mark
The first thing David registered was the light. Thin, grey, and unforgiving, it crept through the small bathroom window and fell across his face like a cold hand. He blinked against it, his eyes gritty and swollen, and realized he was sitting on the edge of the bathtub. He didn't remember getting up. He didn't remember walking to the bathroom. His bladder was full, pressing against his gut in a way that made him groan—a deep, animal sound that seemed to come from somewhere far beneath the layers of his body.
He pushed himself upright, gripping the edge of the sink for support, and caught his reflection in the cracked mirror. The glass warped his image into jagged, fragmented shapes, so that his face appeared split down the middle like something from a funhouse. His chestnut hair was wild, sticking up at odd angles, and there were creases on his cheek where he'd been pressed against the couch cushion. He looked, he thought vaguely, like a man who had just woken from a very long sleep.
The scale sat on the linoleum floor, an old mechanical model with a dial that had yellowed with age. His grandmother had owned it for as long as he could remember, and it had always sat in this exact spot, tucked between the toilet and the wall. David stared at it blankly, his brain still wrapped in the fog of sleep, and something in his stomach lurched. It wasn't hunger exactly. It was something else. A strange, hollow tightness that he couldn't remember feeling before.
He didn't know why he stepped onto it. Some distant, half-formed instinct, maybe. A flicker of curiosity from a mind that had been quiet for so long. He placed his feet on the cold metal surface, his weight settling, and the dial began to spin.
The needle swung past two hundred. Past two-fifty. Past three hundred. David watched it with the detached fascination of a man observing a natural disaster from a safe distance. His hands rested on the edge of the sink, his shoulders hunched, and he could feel the pressure of his belly against the countertop—a soft, heavy mass that he'd been ignoring for a long time. The dial slowed. It hovered, trembling, past four hundred by a thumb's width. The needle quivered, finding its resting place, and David stared at the number with the faintest frown.
Four hundred and seven. He wasn't sure if that was right. The mirror warped everything, warped his vision, made the numbers swim. He looked down at himself, at the vast expanse of his stomach pressing against the sink, spilling over the waistband of his sweatpants in a pale, soft roll. His hands were resting on the counter, and he noticed, with a distant sort of surprise, that he couldn't see his feet. The swell of his belly blocked them entirely, a round, heavy shelf that jutted out in front of him like the prow of a ship.
He tried to remember the last time he'd looked at himself in a mirror. Really looked. It must have been weeks ago. Maybe months. He'd been so busy with work, so absorbed in the endless flow of data and his grandmother's constant stream of meals, that he'd simply stopped noticing the physical details of his own body. The way his shirts had begun to strain across the chest. The way the buttons on his jeans had left angry red impressions in his skin. The way his feet had grown harder to reach.
He raised one hand and pressed it against the soft swell of his stomach. His fingers sank into the give of his flesh, and he watched his own hand move in the mirror, the motion awkward and unfamiliar. There was so much of him now. So much softness, so much weight. He remembered being lean, remembered the days when he could see his own collarbones and the sharp line of his jaw. That David seemed like a stranger now, someone he'd known a long time ago and lost touch with.
A sound drifted in from the kitchen—the familiar clatter of a baking tray being set on the counter, the low hum of the oven door creaking open. His grandmother's voice followed, warm and singsong: "David? Sweetheart, are you up? I made cinnamon rolls. The kind you used to love when you were little."
David didn't answer. He was still staring at the mirror, at the stranger who lived inside his skin. His hands had fallen to his sides, and he felt the tremor in his thighs, the strain in his knees from standing. The scale creaked beneath him, groaning under the load, and he wondered if it would break. He wondered if he'd hear it snap, or if he'd just sink through the floor like something out of a cartoon.
"David?" The voice was closer now, threaded with concern. "You okay in there?"
"I'm fine," he said, and his own voice sounded strange to him. Thicker. Heavier. Like there was more of him to push the sound out. The words felt weighted, and he realized he'd been speaking less lately, letting his grandmother fill the silences with her soft chatter and her clinking dishes and her endless offers of second helpings.
He stepped off the scale. It wobbled, the dial spinning back to zero with a tired, metallic rattle, and David stood there for a moment, swaying on his feet. His heart was beating faster than it should be, a thick, sluggish pulse that he felt in his throat and in the soft meat of his arms. He pressed a hand to his chest, where his heart labored beneath the layers of fat, and tried to take a deep breath. The breath caught in his lungs, shallow and tight, and he realized it had been a long time since he'd taken a full one.
The bathroom was too small. The walls were closing in, the ceiling pressing down, and David gripped the sink again, his knuckles whitening against the porcelain. He looked at the mirror, at the pale, round face staring back at him, the cheeks so full they seemed to push his eyes into soft, piggy slits. The mop of chestnut hair was thinner now, or maybe it just seemed that way because his face had spread so much. His chin had vanished into the soft roll of his neck, and his shoulders looked like pillows, soft and rounded, curving inward as if they were trying to hide the vastness of his chest.
He tried to feel something. Shock, maybe. Horror. Grief for the body he'd lost. But the feelings were dull and far away, muffled by the warmth of the house and the smell of cinnamon that was seeping through the bathroom door. His stomach growled—a low, liquid sound that rumbled through him—and the hunger that had been his constant companion for months rose up like a wave. It washed over the shock, over the confusion, over the faint, trembling fear that was trying to surface. The hunger was bigger than all of it. The hunger was always there, patient and eternal, waiting for him to give in.
"Daaaavid." His grandmother's voice had taken on a playful sing-song quality, the same tone she'd used when he was a child refusing to come in from the backyard. "The rolls are getting cold. You don't want them cold, do you? They're best when they're warm."
David's stomach answered for him, a gurgle so loud he was sure she could hear it through the walls. He let go of the sink, and his hands fell to his sides. The numbers on the scale were already fading from his memory, dissolving like the steam that had once blurred the mirror. He could picture the cinnamon rolls waiting for him on the counter—golden, swirled with brown sugar, dripping with cream cheese frosting that pooled in the gaps between the layers. He could feel the warmth of that first bite, the sweetness melting on his tongue.
He opened the bathroom door. The hallway was dim and cool, and he walked down it slowly, feeling the weight of his body shift with each step. The floorboards creaked beneath him in a way they hadn't before, and he found himself breathing harder than he should, his chest rising and falling beneath the thin cotton of his sweatshirt. He was wearing the same clothes he'd worn yesterday. Had he slept in them? He couldn't remember changing. He couldn't remember much of anything from last night, except the milkshake and the cobbler and his grandmother's hand resting on his stomach.
The kitchen was bright and warm, filled with the golden light of the morning sun. His grandmother was standing at the counter, and she turned when she heard him enter, her face breaking into a wide, delighted smile. She was wearing a fresh apron—pale blue with little yellow flowers—and her hair was pulled back in a loose bun. A plate of cinnamon rolls sat on the counter beside her, the frosting glistening in the light, and David felt his mouth begin to water.
"There he is," she said warmly. "I was starting to worry you'd slept right through breakfast. Come on, sit down. These are fresh out of the oven."
She pulled out his chair at the kitchen table, and David lowered himself into it with a grunt that he tried to turn into a cough. The chair protested beneath him, the old wood creaking, and his stomach pressed against the edge of the table, forcing him to sit back a little further than he used to. His grandmother set a plate in front of him—two cinnamon rolls, each the size of his palm, the frosting pooled in thick white puddles—and a glass of whole milk.
"Eat up," she said, settling into her own chair with a cup of coffee. "You've got a big day ahead of you. All that work."
David picked up his fork. He was full. He was so full, so achingly, impossibly full, and he'd just seen the number on the scale, and he should not be hungry. But the rolls were warm and the frosting was sweet and his grandmother was watching him with such tender expectation, and his stomach growled again, the sound rising up from the depths of him like something alive.
He took a bite. The sweetness flooded his mouth, the bread soft and pillowy, the frosting coating his tongue. His grandmother beamed and took a sip of her coffee.
"That's my good boy," she said softly.
David ate the rest of the roll. Then the other one. And when his grandmother slid the plate across the table with her hand resting briefly on his shoulder in a lingering press of warmth, he ate that one too. The scale was forgotten, a distant shadow that had never really landed. The number was still there, lurking in the back of his mind, but it was quiet now, drowned out by the taste of sugar and the warmth of his grandmother's smile.
"More milk, sweetheart?"
He nodded, and she refilled his glass, and the sun climbed higher in the sky, and the rolls kept coming.