I wanted that pain. The feel of my legs giving out and my lungs on their last breath. I wanted to escape into a world where I could hurt myself rather than letting everybody else do it for me.
I saw Dallas glance at me again from the rearview mirror and realized…
He saw too much.
The food was left untouched in front of me with two sets of eyes on me for very different reasons. One of them was more intense than the other. I broke apart a piece of bacon and fed it to Ramsay while Theo watched silently across the table. He didn’t like it when the dog was close by while we ate. It’d been a little while since I’d seen Ramsay, so I wanted to spoil him like I knew Theo did when I wasn’t here.
“You haven’t eaten,” he noted.
I glanced at his plate. “Neither have you.”
“It’s the real maple syrup.”
My lips twitched. Moving my eyes from Ramsay to Theo, I rested back in my chair and picked up my fork. Wet pieces of my hair fell against my cheek that I refused to move because they shielded part of my vision. I’d taken a much longer shower in his master bathroom than I’d intended, but the scalding water felt so good against my sore muscles. I stood under the too-hot water until my skin was red and prayed that every bad feeling I had about myself would wash away. But when I stepped out, I looked at myself in the mirror before I could grab a towel and frowned.
Frowned at my body.
Frowned at my thoughts.
I’d wanted to put my fist through the reflection that taunted me, but I didn’t. I didn’t want Theo to think I was losing it. That my anxiety had peeked, that the medication I was on wasn’t working, and that I’d have to admit to Ripley I probably needed something different. Something stronger. Stronger medication meant the problem had peeked like the hill and valley my disorder was.
Shifting in my seat, I poked at the section of pancake that had the most chocolate chips. “I take it work has been busy?” He hadn’t reached out in a few days, which was fine by me. It was easier to avoid him when he was avoiding me first. The guilt didn’t eat at me that way.
“Della—”
“I get it.” I smiled. “You wanted space. But you invited me here, which means you didn’t want space right now. So…how’s work?”
He leaned back with his hand around his coffee cup, pulling it along the table with the black liquid threatening to slosh out the sides. “It’s been busy, but it wasn’t busy enough that I couldn’t check up on you more often.”
“I don’t need you to check up on me.” My voice was suddenly defensive, irritable. Why did he always make it sound like I was a child who needed to be monitored? “But I wouldn’t have minded getting more than a text saying you hope I’m well. I mean honestly, Theo.” My appetite was there, taunting me, especially after the session I had at Tiffany’s. I’d burned a lot of calories and needed to eat. To refuel. In hindsight, I should have asked for eggs, or just gone to Denny’s where I could have walked out easier if I decided I’d had enough. Dallas left after Theo dismissed him, which meant I’d have to wait for a lift if I walked out now before the conversation could go somewhere I didn’t want it to.
There was no reason to snap at Theo when I’d been pulling away from everybody too. The texts he sent me were fine. The pictures of Ramsay he sent me were fine. Everything was fine. Great, even. How I wanted it to be.
“You’re right.” It was a smooth, quiet voice that greeted me, causing me to look up at him in surprise. What did I expect? Him to argue? To ignore me? Maybe lecture me? He’d done all those things in the past. “I’m sorry, Della. But what I wanted to talk to you about is part of the reason why I felt it was a good idea to let you live your life without me complicating it for a couple days while I figured out how to tell you.”
“Who said you were complicating it?”
“You’re dancing again.”
I blinked. “Not much.” Lie. “Plus, Tiffany has been making me.” Lie. “She said it’d be good for me.” That wasn’t so much a lie. If it weren’t for her, I would have been holed up in my apartment painting. She gave that to me like an unwrapped gift. Painting and dancing. Two forms of expression. If anything, Theo should be happy for me, not sad like he’d taken something away by always being near.
His head cocked, eyes wandering over my face for a moment too long. “Was she wrong? I saw you in there. You were lost in the music like you used to be. It was refreshing to see.”
I blushed. “I was lost in my head counting the steps. Which, like I told you before, I messed up. I’m not that great at contemporary yet.”
“Nobody would have noticed.”
My nostrils flared as I stabbed my food and lifted it. “Everybody would have.”
He let me chew and swallow before saying anything else. I didn’t like his eyes on me right now. Not when my stomach was twisted with an explanation that I couldn’t grasp myself. Why did I dance when Tiffany wasn’t around? It seemed simple enough. To prove I could. But deep down it was more. When I looked in the mirror as I moved my feet, my hips, my arms, it was like I was watching the old version of me. The one I didn’t hate so much because she still had her mom cheering her on and her family together. She was happy. Lost in a world of music because there
