I got off the elevator in the hotel lobby and got swept up in the bustle of the crowd as I headed toward the hall where the NAAFA convention was being held.
I was coming up on one of the sets of double doors when I saw her leaning against one of the posts in the lobby. I'm not sure what caught my eye first...her cute, pink sandals and painted toes, her curvy calves and dimpled knees peeking out from under her skirt, or the dress itself.....kind of a formal sundress kind of thing that hugged her curvy hips and breasts and left her arms bare.
I was jealous of the way the dress was hugging her, but forgot all about it as my gaze travelled up to her sparkling blue eyes and her grin framed by her soft red hair as she caught me checking her out. Caught staring, I smiled back at her and said hello.
"Did they put you out here to attract attention to the convention?" I asked.
"No, just taking a break from the festivities", she replied. "How come you're getting here so late?"
I told her I had been supposed to meet some friends from a BBW group in South Jersey that I DJ'ed for, but that had fallen through. I had combined the trip up to the convention with dropping a friend's son off at Harvard because he was a resident assistant who had to report to school early. "So since I was up here anyway, I decided to come, but it took a while to get him dropped off and get over here and get checked in and shower and change."
"Oh", she said with a giggle, "you stopped to change....I figured you were wearing the dress shirt and tie to stop at Harvard."
"Nah, they're a lot less formal down there now...I got dressed up in case I ran into any sexy redheads I wanted to impress."
She arched an eyebrow at me...."if that's the best pickup line you can come up with, no wonder you're traveling to try to meet women. Where are you from, anyway?"
"Delaware", I replied.
"You drove all the way from Delaware and that was all you came up with? You'd better come buy me a drink and see if you can come up with anything better."
I smiled as she took my hand and led me toward the double doors. As they opened, we heard the band begin to play a cover of Zevon's 'Searching for a Heart' and she said "Dance with me."
We walked onto the dance floor and moved close together. I liked that she was almost as tall as me so that we were looking into each other's eyes as she put her arms around my neck and I put mine around her waist and we began to sway to the music.
"So you DJ BBW dances and now you're at NAAFA....are you looking for a fat girl?" she asked with a grin.
"I'm looking for a smart, funny girl with a good heart", I said. "If she happens to be curvy, voluptuous, fat, whatever term you want to use, that's great, in fact it's usually my preference, but I want to be with a person, not a body."
She hugged my neck a little tighter and rested her head on my shoulder. I could smell her shampoo as I looked down at the milky, freckled skin of her arms and relaxed to the music in her embrace.
The song ended and we walked over to the bar and got a couple of glasses of wine. The room was crowded and we couldn't find a place to sit, but then we spotted one seat over against the wall.