Sta.sh
As usual, Peter was the first one in the conference room. Everyone else dragged their feet in getting there, but Peter was punctual by habit. At least this way he could get a seat down the table and away from his boss Dave, but not so far away that he'd probably get called on frequently to make sure he was still paying attention.
"Hey Pete, what up?" Gina said as she breezed into the conference room. Gina was one of his fellow sales reps and a bright presence in the office. Though she got her work done, Gina was usually good for some light banter to break up the tedium of the day. She had wavy brown hair and green-brown eyes with skin that had slight tan. She was pretty attractive, though Gina was a pudgy kind of girl. She was short and compact with some added pounds on her frame. Gina knew how to party too. He'd seen that firsthand at some of the sales team "meetings" on Fridays after 5:00 at the nearby sports bar. Some of the pictures that had been posted on the kitchen bulletin board of Gina at said events were pure gold.
"Not much, you?" Peter replied.
"I want to tear my hair out over Baxter" Gina groaned, referencing one of her major clients, "Mary is driving me absolutely nuts. She sends me like five questions a day and I'm all like, 'Dude, you need to slow this down if you want me to answer anything.' I mean it's five emails a day. It's absolutely ridiculous."
Peter smiled sympathetically. He used to have Baxter as one of his clients and was well aware of the fact that their point of contact could be borderline insane. He wasn't too disappointed that he didn't have to deal with them anymore, though he wished that Gina hadn't gotten that hot mess dumped on her desk. There were a lot more annoying people on the team who deserved the Baxter account a lot more than she did.
"Yeah, sometimes I just ignored Mary's emails. She figures about half of them out on her own," Peter replied.
"Can I just ignore all of them?" Gina asked with a mischievous grin. She suddenly got up from her seat at the conference table and headed back towards the door. "I'll be right back."
"Where are you going?" one of the other sales reps asked as she came into the conference room.
"I'm gonna go get the rest of that Chinese food from lunch," Gina explained.
"Didn't we just eat like an hour ago?" the saleswoman pointed out.
"Fat girl's gotta eat," Gina said unapologetically as she passed by Peter's chair.
Peter raised an eyebrow at the comment as he followed Gina's bouncing bubble butt out the door. The black pants that Gina was wearing today were rather tight, presenting an enticing view of her posterior. It was a pretty fine ass, Peter had to admit. It was so nice and pert and round. Yeah, a little on the big side, but still hot. He quickly broke off his gaze. That was probably a sexual harassment lawsuit in the making if he wasn't careful.
A few minutes later Gina came back in, balancing a couple of paper takeout boxes and a fork. She plopped down in a chair opposite from Peter and opened the boxes, immediately releasing twin clouds of steam into the air. She inhaled the aroma deeply. "God, I love Chinese food," she said.
"What've you got?" Peter asked.
"Sweet and sour chicken and Mandarin fried rice," Gina said as she dug in with her fork, "I had some wantons, but I ate all of those already."
"Okay, guys, let's get things started," Dave, the sales team lead, said as he came into the conference room and took his seat at the head of the table.
The meeting fell into the usual tedious pattern. Though Peter kept one ear open to follow the agenda, he definitely didn't give it his full attention. He was much more interested in watching Gina with the leftovers of her lunch—out of the corner of his eye so as not to make it too obvious. Gina kept up a continual parade of food into her mouth as she listened and took notes. The longer she ate, the more amazed Peter was at how much Gina was consuming. This was no mere snack. She was having a whole meal. And this was on top of a lunch that hadn't even been a couple hours ago. Curiously, Gina exhibited no shame as she inhaled the chicken and rice. Then again, Gina hadn't been all that ashamed when she'd called herself a fat girl a few minutes ago.
As Gina listened and chewed, Peter noticed that there was a definite softness around Gina's chin. The movement of her jaw had drawn his attention to it, making him wonder if that little bit of extra flesh had been there for a while or if it was a recent development. It wasn't exactly a double chin, but if she kept up eating like this Peter was pretty sure she'd have one before long. Gina's chubbiness around her neck was actually kind of cute. She already had a round face so it fit her well, Peter reflected. Yeah, it fit her well.
Halfway through the meeting Gina's fork scraped the bottom of both of the cardboard cartons. She had absolutely inhaled her food. Peter was dumbstruck. He tried to turn his attention back to whatever useless information Dave was spewing forth at the moment, but he found himself continuing to glance over at Gina as she took notes. A couple of times she happened to look over at him and their eyes would meet for a second and Gina would smile. Peter could tell she thought the weekly sales meeting was just as much of a colossal waste of time as he did. The fact that they silently bonded over this fact helped to make things pass somewhat quicker, but not much. It was still Friday afternoon after all.
"Okay, great work guys," Dave said, finally wrapping things up, "Have a good weekend."
Everybody began to gather their things to get back to work for a couple hours before they clocked out, Peter included. He wanted to return a couple calls so he could leave in good conscience. Before he could even get out of his seat, he heard his name called.
"Pete, you got a couple minutes? I've got a few questions about the Baxter account," Gina said from across the table, "You've worked with them before, so I'd appreciate your expertise."
"Sure, no problem," Peter said without any hesitation. It seemed those phone calls weren't quite so important and his conscience not quite so nagging anymore.
"Great, let me just get some notes from my office. Be back in a sec," Gina said, standing up.
Peter's eyes were drawn towards Gina's bulging middle now that it wasn't hidden by the conference table. The ring of flab pressed tightly against the tan fabric of her button-up top. It was a pretty solidly thick tummy she had on her. He wondered how stressed they were given the jelly belly they had to hold back, but Gina moved too fast for Peter to get a look. Not only did Gina seem unashamed of how much she ate, she also didn't hide her body beneath loose or baggy clothes. Peter had always known that Gina was a firecracker with the way she'd tell jokes (some of which were wildly inappropriate and equally hilarious) around the office and how much she could knock back at the bar. On a daily basis he usually heard her laughter cascade the entire length of the halls in the office. Yet somehow it now felt like he'd underestimated her, like there was something to Gina he hadn't ever noticed before.
Peter decided that it wouldn't do to keep staring at Gina when she came back. They'd be the only two people in the room and it would be pretty obvious if he did. Peter knew he needed to get his mind on something other than Gina. The only thing he had on hand was his smartphone, so Peter flipped through his email. He was going through his news alerts when Gina came back into the conference room. Peter forced himself not to look over at her. She seemed to be just finishing a conversation with someone in the hall.
"…think I'm getting too fat for it," Gina finished offhandedly.
Christ, it took all of Peter's self control to not whip his head around at hearing that. He needed a new topic of conversation, fast. "You hear that Thornton's gonna run for President?" Peter asked. He'd just read about it so it was as good a diversion as any. "Finally announced it."
"Eh, good for him I guess," Gina said disinterestedly, "I don't really care for politics that much."
Peter looked up and found Gina setting down a small stack of papers—and a large bag of mini Hershey chocolate bars. His jaw nearly hit the table. She'd just had an entire second lunch and now she'd brought along enough candy to get through an evening of Halloween trick-or-treating in a moderately populated neighborhood?
It must have been clear that Peter was eying all that chocolate. "Want some?" Gina offered, turning the opening of the bag so they could both reach inside, "Had to raid the emergency stash. I'm starving today."
Krackel, dark chocolate, Mr. Goodbar, and regular classic Hershey's milk chocolate all mingled together inside the two pound bag in dainty, individual foil wrappings. Gina had already grabbed a handful and had unwrapped one so she could pop it into her mouth. To be polite, Peter grabbed a couple from the bag as Gina flipped through her notes.
"So, about Baxter, the problem with them is that they can never get their act together. I mean, they start off saying that they want to commit to $1.5 million a year, but then…"
Peter found himself only paying half attention. He knew that he was going to have to actually listen to Gina so he could actually answer her questions, but the fact was that he couldn't take his eyes off Gina's cleavage. She had the top two buttons of her blouse open—had they been undone before?—and that showed off a lot of cleavage. So much so that it was pushing the bounds of the professional attire standards around the office. There was a lot of bosom on Gina and praise the good Lord for that. As Gina talked she shifted in her chair occasionally, treating Peter to the sight of that magnificent rack bouncing ever so slightly, but oh so seductively. It was only through superhuman effort that Peter realized that Gina was coming to the end of her question and was able to launch into some sort of coherent reply that hopefully addressed her issue.
As the meeting progressed Gina kept reaching for more and more of those bite-sized chocolate bars. The short sleeves on her blouse showed off plenty of her upper arm, which wobbled and wiggled every time she went for more of Hershey's finest offerings. It was only a slight jiggle, but still noticeable.
Pretty soon Peter bowed to the inevitable and finally looked at the buttons. After all, his curiosity had already been piqued by those magnificent melons, which had weakened his willpower considerably. Peter found by way of several glances that those buttons were under quite a bit of duress. Rather than sit contentedly and happily in their holes, the buttons were pulled taut. Clearly there wasn't as much fabric as there aught to be in that shirt.
"Okay, I think that just about does it, thanks," Gina said wrapping things up, "Hopefully I can get Baxter under control and then maybe I won't have a mountain of papers on my desk because I can actually do the rest of the job."
"You'll get it down soon enough," Peter said, "You're asking the right questions and it'll get easier once you get used to their quirks."
Gina looked at her watch. "Damn, I was hoping it'd already be 5:00."
"If only we were so lucky," Peter said sympathetically as he gathered his own things.
"I was really hoping we could just head straight to the bar from here," Gina said.
Peter looked up to find Gina smiling at him. That was when he knew that she knew. And he smiled back.
Neutral 
