Sweet Fall (Sweet Home 2)

Her lowered eyelids and flushed face told me she didn’t believe me.

Shifting closer again, I was almost right against her body. “Pix, tell me why you were homeschooled.”

“I can’t—”

“Tell me why you were homeschooled.” I interrupted.

“No, I can’t—”

“For f**k sake, Pix, tell me why the hell you were homeschooled!” I shouted a little too loud.

“Because I was anorexic! There, are you happy!” she screamed and fisted my shirt. “Because I was anorexic,” she said a second time, water filling her eyes. “I was anorexic…” She trailed off and those threatening tears began pouring from her eyes.

Anorexic?

Fuck. I had no clue what to say to that shit.

Lexi’s forehead met my chest, and she cried into my shirt. I wanted to hold her, but I’d promised not to touch her. But when Lexi sobbed, I couldn’t resist. So, lifting my hands, I slowly wrapped them in her hair and held her real close.

Lexi hadn’t even flinched at my unwanted touch. That kinda made my heart swell in my chest.

“Shh, Pix, calm down. It’s okay,” I soothed.

“It’s not, Austin. None of this shit is okay,” she whispered. “I’m getting too sick of fighting it off. Of fighting him off! I’m about done.”

That made me freeze and, pushing her head back from my chest, I met her bloodshot eyes. “Fighting what off? About done with what?”

Lexi hiccupped from crying too hard and said, “The temptation of the inner voice… the desperate temptation to go back there, to freely give over the reins.”

Panic ran through my veins at the desolate tone of her voice. “You mean you’re still fighting this shit? When you mentioned high school, I thought you meant you were cured.”

Lexi’s face frosted over and she hissed, “There’s no such thing as cured. I hate that godforsaken word! I’m not cured. Not with this, this goddamn awful disorder.”

“But—”

“Just like you and the Heighters. Your connection with it never ends. You got into that gang young and it stays with you for life. You said so yourself.” Her statement stopped me short. “What was it you said when I mentioned lasering off your tattoos, about ridding yourself of the Heighters? Oh yeah, it don’t work like that. It’s the same with me and eating. The temptation to avoid food is always there. And will always be there.”

I thought back to Lexi’s weirdness with Cass about her hug after the game. At her reaction to my offer of a drink and, specifically, the way she stared at the bastard Coke can.

“The Coke,” I whispered out loud, and Lexi huffed out a small laugh.

“Yeah, the Coke. Twelve ounces of soda. One hundred sixty calories. Zero grams of fat, but forty-two grams of carbs and forty-two grams of sugar. If consumed, it would take twenty minutes of hard jogging to work it off. But I wouldn’t just stop there. I’d have to jog another ten minutes more just to be sure I hadn’t calculated anything wrong. Plus, then I’d be about one hundred calories in the negative. Because ten minutes of jogging roughly works off one hundred calories, and the more calories burned means more pounds off the scale. I live by the measure of that scale.”

Stunned, my hands slipped from Lexi’s head, and she smiled coldly at my reaction, lifting her hand to cover her mouth with the pulled-down sleeve of her shirt.

“Great isn’t it, Austin? Living with that. Thinking like that over everything: food, drink, exercise, every part of everyday life, forever. Hating brushing your teeth every morning and night because toothpaste probably has calories, doesn’t it? So after brushing your teeth, you drop to the cold tile floor in the bathroom and do fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups just in case a few wayward calories slipped into your stomach and jeopardized your goal.”

“Fuck, Pix,” was all I could offer in response to her outburst. She seemed breathless with the exertion of her confession.

“Welcome to the freak show, Austin. I’m here all week,” Lexi said sadly.

I stared at her in sympathy. “You’re right. You are a freak,” I said bluntly, and the hurt that transformed her face almost cut me.

Lexi moved immediately to jump off the bed, but I reached out and grabbed her arm. It was the first time I noticed how frail it was under my hand. I could clearly feel the bone beneath my fingers, and not that much flesh around it.

“I said don’t touch me!” she shrilled, jerking back her arm, and, losing my shit, I jumped off the bed, staring her down, and proceeded to rip off my shirt, baring my chest.

“What… what are you doing?” Lexi asked, petrified, as her eyes fixed on my chest, then back up to my hard stare.

Grabbing her hand, I smashed it to the skin of my torso and leaned in until I was a hairsbreadth away from her mouth. “Yeah, I said you’re a freak.” Lexi flinched at my words, but I added, “But so the f**k am I.”

Gasping, Lexi’s eyelashes fluttered in nerves. I began pushing her hand along the plains of my stomach, my chest, and slowly ran them down to my hips and across to the skin just above the waistband of my jeans.

A pink blush spread on Lexi’s cheeks, and I said softly, “I got scars, a whole f**kin’ lotta them.”

Taking her index and middle fingers, I ran them just under my Day of the Dead tattoo on my ribs. “Slashed with a pocket knife by a rival gang at age fifteen for encroaching on their turf.” The pads of Lexi’s fingers drifted over the raised scar, and she sucked in a shocked breath.