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Maybe I couldn’t trust them.
And so here I was, the soundtrack that had haunted me since I was a little girl, once again blaring loudly in my head.
The lines around my eyes, were they too pronounced? Were they supposed to show like that? And my cheeks. They were rounder today. I’d gone back and forth between binging and not eating lately. The fucking chubbiness…it was tangible proof of my lack of self control. My lips were too thin. Today was a fucking lipstick shoot. They were going to take one look at my old, fat face, and my scarecrow lips, and kick me out.
I screamed. And the echo of it waseverywhere, breaking open the cracks in my heart until they felt more like fucking ravines. I was dying. That was the only explanation for how much all of this hurt. Humans were meant to be able to withstand pain, but not like this. Not pain that bled you out.
There was just shame sitting with me in the car as I drove to the shoot. Because the only reason I hadn’t purged myself this morning, the only reason I hadn’t hovered over that toilet until my insides were aching and bloody…was because I was going to be late.
I was right back to being the weak basket case that I’d always been.
And deep down, I knew it wasn't Ari's fault. I knew I needed to fix myself. Knew I needed to stop doing this.
I just didn't know if I could.
When I walked out of the shoot hours later, I was defeated. Every shot had been bad. The photographer had tried everything. But there was no spark, there was no life.
How could there be?
I felt like a walking corpse.
My phone buzzed, and for a second…my heart lifted.
But it wasn’t Ari. It was Clark.
And I had no use for him.
I pulled into the driveway of the house I couldn’t stop myself from returning to.
And I wept.
* * *
A few days later I was staring at the television blankly, watching who knows what, when Ari suddenly stormed in, holding up my phone.
“What’s this?” Ari spit.
“Give that back!” I snarled, lunging for it.
But he held it up over my head.
“Clark’s texted you twenty fucking times this week. Why haven’t you told him to fuck off?”
“So what if he’s texting me? What are you gonna do, Ari? You gonna plant drugs in my car? You gonna block his number without telling me? Replace it with your fucking own? Or track my phone so you know when we talk? Oh wait, are you going to put him on the fucking no fly list?”
“Maybe!” Ari yelled.
I flinched and stepped back, agony slipping through me. It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to me.
"How could you do this to me? To us?" my father raged before he released a harsh sob, the sound absolutely terrifying.
"It's not what you think, John. Nothing happened," my mother's voice quivered.
Why was I thinking about that right now? Was it because my parents had once been the embodiment of a perfect love too? Until they weren’t.
My mother's betrayal had shattered that illusion and left me with scars that still throbbed with pain. Now, I couldn't help but wonder if history was repeating itself.
Deceit was an awful thing.
