Come to Me
by Richard Jasper
The newly-minted MBA looked at himself in the mirror.
"Damn fine looking if I do say so myself," Eric Keith told the mirror.
He was right, too.
The 23-year-old had wavy sandy brown / blond hair, kept short and trim but nonetheless stylish. Smooth forehead, high cheekbones, a sexy short neatly trimmed golden brown beard, pouty red lips, large green eyes, long dark lashes, eyebrows that were thick and manly but not bushy.
"Very manly," he added.
Especially the reddish brown curls poking out of the top of his tasteful Calvin Klein dress shirt.
But…
"Too skimpy."
At 5'9" tall, Eric weighed all of 140 lbs. He never did cardio and he'd been lifting since he was a junior in high school. He was well-proportioned and sleek, hard and toned, with a great six-pack. But size eluded him.
"Too busy to eat, I guess."
Now that he was on his own, living in the big city and crunching numbers for a high-flying tech company, Eric was determined to make a change.
He was going to live in the gym but more than that he was going to eat and eat and eat.
Come to me.
That's what the voice said.
Eat big.
Lift big.
Get plenty of rest.
Eric planned to take him – the voice, whatever it was, was unmistakably male – up on it.
***
The months went by.
At the end of one particularly long day at work, Eric leaned back in his desk chair and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d.
RIIIIP!
The shoulder seams on the cute shirt he'd bought on sale at Banana Republic completely gave way!
"Damn," Eric said, stunned.
He'd been eating for months it seemed, at least three in fact, and it never seemed to make any difference.
"I wondered when that was going to happen."
Eric looked at Clarissa van Dorn, his cubicle-mate.
"What do you mean??"
Clarissa, who had figured in the first five minutes of their working together that Eric was gay, just rolled her eyes.
"I wondered when one of those ridiculously tight shirts you like to buy was going to explode, that's what! What are you trying to do -- imitate Kellan Lutz?"
Eric just spluttered.
"The workout are paying off, hon," Clarissa continued. "And those ridiculous protein shakes, too. Maybe you should, you know, go up a size? And while you're at it, get on the scale! You're always complaining about not growing but it's clear that you are!"
Per Clarissa's instructions, Eric stood very straight and let his hands hang down by his sides when he was exiting the office. So long as he moved carefully, you could really see the splits. And once he was in the lobby he ducked into the men's room, removed the shirt leaving just the white v-neck he preferred as an undergarment, and quickly sneaked out the side entrance.
Walking down the street in the financial district, surrounded by peers in business attire, Eric was more than a little self-conscious. The white v-neck was snug! When did that happen?
Turning his head slightly, Eric caught his reflection in a window – and stopped stock still!
"Damn," he said.
The guy in the window in the white shirt wasn't huge, not by any means, but he obviously worked out and he had some small bulges in all the right places. They weren't big but it was clear that there were delts and traps and pecs under the white cotton and the sleeves were snug around firm, well-proportioned biceps.
Come to me.
The voice echoed in his head.
Weigh yourself.
At home, Eric stepped on the scale for the first time since he'd started his new diet and exercise program.
155 lbs.!
"Hmmf," Eric said aloud. "I guess it's working."
Just not as fast as he'd been hoping, of course.
Not 5 lbs. a week, much less 5 lbs. a day. Eric had been reading muscle fiction since he'd learned what his willy was for and he was still waiting for that magical transformation to occur.
"I can live with 5 lbs. a month, I guess."
That weekend he hit the outlet mall and bought half dozen new shirts – all mediums!
***
And so it went.
Every month, another five pounds. A little bit bigger, a little bit thicker, a little bit harder, a little bit stronger.
At six months, Clarissa pulled him aside.
"You're going to need some new shirts soon," she said. "These are getting filled up. I don't want any more wardrobe malfunctions, OK?"
Eric stood up a little straighter, squared his shoulders, flexed his chest.
"Yeah, yeah," Clarissa said. "I know. You have some muscles now."
Considering Clarissa was dating a rookie NFL lineman, Eric figured she ought to know what she was talking about. Of course, Sam was 6'4 and 275 lbs. so, on reflection, it was completely bogus flattery – but he'd take what he could get!
"But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about," she continued. "It's your pants."
Eric blinked.
Come to think of it they were feeling a bit tight in the crotch these days but he was pretty sure his waistline wasn't expanding. If anything, his abs were sharper than ever.
"They're creeping up your leg, you know."
Eric's mouth fell open.
"You're taller than you were six months ago," Clarissa pointed out. "Not a lot but we were pretty much eye-to-eye…and now we're not."
That evening, Eric stared at himself in front of the full-length mirror next to his bed. He didn't remember when he'd bought it but he knew it hadn't always been there. Probably after that shirt explosion. That was about when he decided the bathroom mirror wasn't sufficient. Since then he'd spent 10-15 minutes in front of it every evening.
Measure yourself.
All those fantasies meant that Eric had acquired a tape measure from his mom's sewing basket before his 13th birthday. He would hold the tape so that he could see what 20 inch arms looked like, or a 50-inch chest, or 30-inch quads, the sorts of measurements he dreamed about after good j/o session.
But he never actually measured himself.
Tonight he did.
Weight: 170 lbs.
Chest: 44 inches
Waist: 28 inches – same as when he'd started lifting six months and 30 lbs. ago!
Biceps: 15 ½ inches – really?
Quads: 24 inches
Calves: 16 inches
Neck: 15 ½ inches
For good measure, he measured his dick, too – 5 inches soft! Since when?
Last, he stood straight against the bathroom doorframe, placed a ruler on his head, and awkwardly penciled a mark where the ruler touched the frame. Then he pulled out the metal tape measure from Home Depot and rolled it down to the floor.
5 feet 9 ½ inches!
He checked three times and it was the same each time.
Half an inch in six months? When he hadn't grown taller since he was 15? What was that about?
Come to me.
Eric hit the outlet mall again that weekend, this time looking for slacks as well as shirts (this time size Large!)