The day before college started, my long-distance boyfriend Ethan suddenly told me he’d been playing dice with his friends—and had lost me to a guy named Adrian.
Before I could even process what he’d said, he pulled me into a Discord server for incoming freshmen. Over a hundred people.
The next second, an old, ugly photo of me was dropped into the chat.
In the picture, I was so heavy you could barely make out my neck, and my walk looked ridiculous.
The chat exploded.
“Oh my god, Ethan, *this* is your online girlfriend? She looks like a pig. Fat AND ugly.”
“Congrats to Adrian—you just won yourself a three-hundred-thirty-pound girlfriend!”
“According to the game rules, Adrian has to do the couple’s challenges with her tomorrow.”
Then Ethan slapped down ten thousand dollars, betting I wouldn’t dare show up at tomorrow’s freshman party.
I watched the messages scrolling past and smiled.
None of them knew.
To meet Ethan in person, I’d dropped from three hundred thirty pounds to a hundred and ten.
None of them knew that in the past two months, more people had asked for my Instagram than in the previous eighteen years of my life combined.
Quietly, I placed my own bet—three thousand dollars that I would show up on time.
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 12 The next day, our university’s freshman group chat completely exploded. The photo of me and Adrian holding hands from the night before had gone everywhere. Someone put my high school photo side by side with a current one and captioned it in the most attention-grabbing way possible: […]
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 11 I couldn’t sleep that night. I lay in bed, turning over and over, my head full of everything Adrian had said. I honestly couldn’t remember the incident he’d described, when I’d supposedly helped him. But he’d remembered it for ten straight years. My phone lit up. A
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 10 The composed expression I’d been holding onto finally cracked a little. This past year, I hadn’t just lost two hundred-plus pounds. I’d lost countless meals I never got to finish. Countless nights when I was too exhausted to stand. I’d imagined meeting Ethan a hundred different ways.
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 09 The third task ended. Adrian bent down and lowered me gently. When my feet touched the floor, my hand was still on his shoulder. He didn’t let go right away. His hand rested at my waist. “Steady?” I nodded. “Mm-hm.” Only then did he pull his hand
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 08 Before Adrian could respond, Serena stood up and grabbed him. “Ethan, it’s their task, don’t ruin the game for them.” She was pleading with her mouth, but her fingers were digging into Ethan’s arm. Ethan shook her off. “I know it’s a task.” He looked at me,
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 07 Every eye turned to Adrian. When they’d designed the challenges, they’d been giddy with anticipation, competing to see who could invent the most humiliating scenario for me. Because in their heads, Adrian was going to feed cake to a three-hundred-thirty-pound girl, hold her hand for a photo,
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 06 The whole room went dead silent. “What?” “Olivia?! *The* Olivia from the group?” “You’re kidding, right?” Nico’s eyes bugged out, mouth opening and shutting, unable to string a sentence together. He instinctively pulled up the high school photo of me and held it up, comparing frantically. The
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 05 The instant the door swung open, the countdown hit zero. The room went dead quiet. Dozens of pairs of eyes locked onto me. Someone froze mid-sip, glass raised. Someone else still had the tail end of a laugh caught on their lips. Nico, the one closest to
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 04 On the day of the party, I slept in until noon. There were already hundreds of unread messages on my phone. The chat was arguing about the seating arrangement. Someone had deliberately posted a photo of an extra-wide chair. “Reserve this one for Olivia. A regular chair
Fat Girls Are Not A Bet Chapter 03 Ethan and I had met in a competitive online game. I was still in high school then, three hundred thirty pounds. The boys in my class had a nickname for me: “land whale.” The girls pretended not to join in, but whenever I walked past, they’d drop