Noticing she was picking her thumbnail now, I squealed, “You’re pregnant, too!”
Ari dropped back in her seat, holding her hands up in the air. “No, definitely not. That’s a whole lot of hell no.”
“Well, that’s disappointing.”
“My brothers found out about my surgeries,” she whispered, pulling me out of my disappointment.
“Oh, shit. Wait, are you talking about your boobies and your nose?”
Nodding, she pulled her legs up so that she could rest her chin on her knees. “Yeah, Parker told me I should tell them, so I had that awkward conversation with the four of them on Monday.”
Ari had suffered as a teenager with issues with her appearance. She hadn’t developed breasts, and her nose was a problem for her, so after hitting rock bottom, she’d had therapy and undergone a nose job and breast implants.
As someone who’d had the opposite problem, I could understand how it affected you in a negative way, except I wasn’t brave enough to have mine reduced. Some people might sneer at her for doing it, but until you struggle to look in the mirror and consider suicide as a way to get away from the problem, you’ll never understand how bad it can get.
I hadn’t ever considered taking my life because of my breasts, which had hit double D cups when I was thirteen, but I’d gone as far as wrapping a bandage as tightly as I could around them to try and minimize them when I went to school. I’d also been the victim of a lot of random groping, nasty words, and attempted rape.
People would hear Ari’s story and judge her for it, but equally, they’d look at my chest and judge me for the size of them, too. It was a horrible situation and position to be in, but I didn’t care what people thought anymore. I was born the way I was born, and I refused to feel ashamed because of it now.
“How did they not know before?” How did you miss something like that?
“Can you imagine your brother noticing something to do with your breasts?”
“You’ve got a point.” Craig would rather eat his hand than even admit I had boobs or a vagina, so noticing a difference in their size? Yeah, it’d never happen.
“Plus, I stuffed my bra from the age of about fourteen, so they wouldn’t have noticed. With my nose, I also contoured around it to make it look a different shape, but they said they’d assumed I’d just stopped wearing a lot of makeup.”
“Well, hell. That makes sense.”
“My brothers are men, they don’t think about shit like that unless it’s made obvious to them.”
“How did they take it?” Ari’s brothers might be men, but they also loved their sister hugely.
“They were angry and hurt, and when I explained why I hadn’t told them and what’d been said at school, they were livid. It sucked, but I explained how if I’d told them what was going on, they’d have gone to the school to beat this shit out of the guy who said he’d fuck me if the lights were off and I had a paper bag over my head. His saying it to his friends hurt, but they were a small group of kids. If he’d had the crap beaten out of him, people would’ve asked why, and the story about what he’d said would’ve spread to almost everyone. You can block a small group out, but you can’t block a whole school out, you know?” she explained quietly, not meeting my eyes. “I didn’t want to deal with that, and I don’t regret not telling them.”
My heart broke for her.
“They’ll get over it, Ari. They’re a protective lot, but anyone would understand it when they heard your reasons. It wasn’t an easy thing to go through, especially as a teenager when you’re already insecure about what’s going on and have hormones running riot through you. You dealt with it the only way you could.”
“Oh, they’re over me keeping the surgeries from them, but they still want to go and beat the shit out of the guy who said it.”
I didn’t feel one scrap of pity for the wanker.
Just then, there was a knock on the door, and a woman I recognized as being Elijah’s mum from photos I’d see of her, Ronnie, poked her head in the room.
“Sorry, am I interrupting anything?”
Waving her in, Ari got up and hugged her aunt. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Feeling suddenly shy and worried, I watched as Ronnie turned and looked at my stomach. Then, she burst into tears and flung herself at me, almost strangling my neck with the force of the hug.
“I want t-to thank y-you for so much,” she cried into my neck.
Not knowing what to do, I looked at Ari, begging her to help me.
“Aunt Ronnie, maybe sit back a bit, so you don’t crush Sadie.”