Leaving me with Gray, who remained sitting on the top step.
“Are you okay?” I asked him as he hovered. There was no other word for it — he was hovering.
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah.” Both of us waited, me a few stairs down as he struggled to express what he wanted to say.
“You should have stayed with us,” Gray said quietly. “If you were spiraling, you needed to be with us.”
“I didn’t know that I was.”
I watched him as he considered me, chewing the inside of his cheek before he abruptly stood and turned to go into his own bedroom. “You’ll let me know if you need me?” he asked softly.
“Always,” I answered quickly.
“Okay.” Gray looked toward my room. “Good luck in there. She was pissed.”
“She has a right to be,” I answered quietly.
“Yeah, what a shitshow.” Tiredly rubbing his forehead, he mumbled a goodnight.
Which left me standing in the landing, wondering if I had it in me to drive another three plus hours home. The answer was taken from me when Gray opened his bedroom door again and watched me.
“Go to bed,” he ordered me, and the fact that he knew I was going to bail was enough to make me head into my own room.
Red was where I left her; she hadn’t moved, and I didn’t know if it was because she was out cold from exhaustion or alcohol. Watching her sleep probably made me a creepy bastard, but she looked so peaceful that I envied the quiet of her mind.
As I slowly relaxed in the comfort of my own room, I felt tiredness pull at me. Locking myself in my bathroom, I considered the toilet bowl and the omelet that sat in my stomach. My nerves were high, and my anxiety was ready and waiting to make an appearance again, but I brushed my teeth, took care of my bladder, and washed my face instead. The bowl was in my peripheral vision, taunting me, but as I rubbed my face dry, I knew I had to resist the temptation.
I snorted in disgust at my terminology.Temptation?What a joke.
I started making myself sick when I was fifteen. I sprouted to over six feet, and I knew I wasn’t finished growing. My dad played defense when he was in the NFL, and although he had been an athlete, he was a heavy one. My cousins were slim and fast, and although I seemed to be growing up and out, and had the physique for it, I didn’t want to play defense.
Our coach in high school heard my plea, and although he wanted me to be the defensive end, I convinced him to let me play tight end. My position meant I was on the offense but was big and blocky enough to defend during the offensive attack. Coach had been impressed but not impressed enough, and I knew I had to shed pounds while still maintaining muscle. I also needed to learn to run faster, and I was lucky that I was cousins with Gray, who ran for fun and was happy to let me run with him.
But still it wasn’t enough. I was still too big, too heavy. The first time I made myself sick after a meal, I’d felt relieved. I had eaten a good meal, but I knew I’d overeaten. It had been my mom’s birthday, and the tease of “it’s just one day” hadn’tconvinced me that I could eat all that sugar and food and not be weighed down by it. Pun intended.
I made myself sick, and I felt better. I had enjoyed the good food, and I wouldn’t see the consequences on the next weigh day.
I was sure it was a one-off.
The next time, I had a bad practice, and Coach was mentioning trying me on defense again. I went to the store and bought so much food that the cashier asked if there was a party they hadn’t been invited to. I ate it under the bleachers in the school gym. Within forty minutes of the final wrapper hitting the floor, I was in the boys’ restroom, violently throwing up.
I felt so bad afterward, I convinced myself I would have been sick anyway. A body wasn’t meant to consume that much junk food in such a short time.
Whether it was stress, puberty, or all in my head, my weight only got heavier, and my speed didn’t increase.
I was never going to be a tight end. I started making myself sick after every second meal, and the weight started to slowly come off me. I had cracked it.
Or so I thought.
My body started reacting to the fact that I wasn’t letting it have any nutrients. I was tired, more so than usual. If I didn’t have school or practice, I was sleeping the day away.
Gray noticed before anyone else. I thought I had been so clever until I walked out of my bathroom one night, and my cousin was sitting on my bed waiting for me.
He had heard me being sick after a family meal, and no amount of trying to convince him that I had eaten something that didn’t agree with me worked. He wasn’t buying my bullshit, and he went and got Jett.
When I confessed it all to them, they then accompanied me downstairs and sat with me while I told my mom and dad. I was at a health specialist’s first thing on Monday morning, wherethey told me I suffered from bulimia. When I came home, Quinn was waiting with a notebook, and she took a hand in my meal planning with my mom.
