"Be careful what you wish for." Your buddy's words echoed in your head as you did your best to sit back at in the empty spot you snagged on the couch. It was useless though; if you pushed his words out of your mind, they were immediately replaced by the knowing smirk you caught on his face as he said it. Leather cushions groaned as you eased further and further into them, trying way too hard to be casual. You lied to yourself, assuming the more cool and detached you looked now, the less obvious your staring at her earlier would seem.
You had always been among the taller of your circle of friends and enjoyed a level of personal pride in standing head and shoulders above most people in a crowd. As you moved through the party guests standing shoulder to shoulder in the main floor hallway that familiar rush of being just intimidating enough as they parted for you the way they always seemed to. Glancing through the kitchen doorway as you passed, your attention was caught by the last thing you expected to see, the back of someone's head bobbing as high above the crowd as yours...but surely not higher?
Your heart started pounding as the mental math began to accelerate and you were so distracted by the rapid fire comparing of her eye line to various reference points on people you recognized that the words from below your left shoulder didn't even register in the moment, "Be careful what you wish for."
As soon as both your eyes attention were snapped over and down at your grinning friend beside you and his remark, it suddenly dawned on you that you were tragically unaware of just how long you'd spent staring at the back of her head. Glancing casually back across the kitchen, your worst fear was confirmed as at some point she'd not only noticed but even turned to stare directly back at you...again, you'd been too absorbed to notice.
You did your best to play it off like the whole thing was no big deal and completely unintentional, frantically scanning the floor plan from your elevated POV in the hopes of finding a place to sit and pretend that was always the plan and you were never staring awkwardly or anything, everything was deniable and under control. A muffled text notification from your back pocket brought about another chorus of leather creaking as you shifted your wait to retrieve your phone but whatever the message said would stay a mystery.
"Well?" The single word from high above your seated position seemed to usher in a vanilla scent that washed over you just as you glanced ahead to see knees, and then thighs, higher still was a black skirt, a black skirt shaded by a pair of breasts that dared you to stare even a split second as long as you'd already done uncontrollably. It was only when she repeated the question that your gaze had finally been pulled fully skyward to the partially obscured and fully unimpressed face that stared down from even higher than that.
"Let's go, stand up. Don't tell me you're getting shy now. I'm giving you what you wanted, unless you were staring slackjawed for some other reason earlier?"
The confrontation, the shame, the surreality, it all combined to strike you completely dumbfounded and without words and your sudden inability to speak only made all three of those things worse in the moment.
"You know you're not the only one with a knack for sizing people up." Her deep breaths of exasperation were openly mocking you, challenging you to not notice the way her massive bust swelled each time. "I get it, you're so used to being the tallest in the room, you can't help it. See, here's the thing though...when you do it, it's out of fear, fear that someone might be taller but when I do it...it's out of curious because I'm always wondering if I'm the tallest yet"
For the umpteenth time tonight, your body betrayed you when your eyes widened without warning. "You catch on quick and before you ask, yes I'm serious and no, doctors can't seem to agree. If you want to roll the dice, you better do it quick while you still have a hope." She slowly drew in the deepest breath yet and overwhelmed bra cups slid upwards as the woefully overmatched top slid down. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you've stopped growing but I haven't so best sack up cowboy because I can't guarantee where this ride is going to end."
Crouching slightly at the knees and leaning forward cautiously as if she was well aware of her shifting center of gravity, she pinched the phone out of your hand and proceeded to slowly enter her phone number. "You may have noticed that this dress, one of my favourites and among very few I had left that fit me, is about to give up the ghost right here in front of everyone and it's not my first rodeo so I'm out. Enjoy the rest of your evening and I'll be in touch, I feel another milestone coming on and I can't wait to see the look on your face."
True to her word, it was about 2 weeks later when you received a picture message from the number she'd added your contacts. Your mouth went dry as you examined the selfie from Anna, standing straight with her hair pulled back she was clearly drawing your attention to the door frame behind her. Based on how little of it you could actually see, you could only assume that was still wearing the same outfit at the party and had conspicuously outgrown it. "One of the only things she had left that fit" you recalled as you looked over at the door frame to your bedroom and you damn well you were nowhere near needing to duck under it.
