STUFFED

16 Missed Calls

It's too late.

Bradyn is past the point of stopping.

Shit.

She watches as his body tenses over top of her. She makes eye contact with him and it's a weird moment. She can see the fear in his eyes. She can tell that he knows exactly what is going on but there's no way of stopping himself. Bradyn's eyes roll back into his head and he groans much too loudly.

Courtney's eyes go wide and she reacts quickly. She presses a hand over his mouth and presses down as hard as she can.

Bradyn goes to take a breath in but it only suctions her palm harder onto his face. He starts to choke.

Courtney pries her hand from his face and they scramble away from each other.

Bradyn is furiously trying to do up his pants. And Courtney is trying to find something to cover herself with. She finds a t-shirt and puts that on and then pulls up some leggings. In hindsight, the leggings were a bad idea. She has a hard time getting them on on a good day, never mind in a panic.

In the midst of the silent chaos she trips and lands on the ground hard. The depth of the thud surprises her. It sounded as if she had tipped over her entire dresser.

Both her and Bradyn freeze where they are. They look at each other in fear. Not knowing what to do.

"Courtney!?"

Her mom yells from downstairs.

"Go, go, go, go, go, go!" Courtney ends their game of freeze tag.

"Go where?!" Bradyn whispers harshly back at her.

"Just... hide!"

"Where!?"

Courtney looks around for a brief second, "Closet!"

She pushes him over in that direction and then watches as he stuffs his huge frame into her tiny closet.

Courtney grabs both sides of the sliding doors and goes to close them. The doors almost meet but stop when Bradyn sticks his hand between them. She opens them back up, scared that she crushed him by accident.

"What are you doing??" She whisper yells at him.

Bradyn reaches out, squishes her cheeks in one hand, and gives her a kiss.

Courtney smiles. Her scared panic turns into an excited panic.

"Don't get caught" are his last words to her before she completely closes the closet.

Once Bradyn is safely tucked away out of sight she decides to put on more clothes. She hasn't seen her parents in months and she knows that they'll react poorly to her bloated figure. Courtney throws on some sweats and a hoodie before walking downstairs.

The entire situation makes her smile way too hard. She contorts her face into something neutral looking before walking downstairs. When she makes it to the kitchen, her parents don't even pay attention to her.

She just stands there for a while, not saying anything.

They continue to go about their business as if she's not even there. If this goes on any longer she's going to end up hurting her own feelings so she speaks up.

"Hey."

Only her dad raises his head slightly in her direction. He looks at her for two seconds, gives her a half-hearted smile and then returns his gaze back to his computer. Courtney's mom doesn't even look in her direction. She continues to talk as if no one even said anything.

Courtney half expected her dad to do a double take and realise how much she changed, but he didn't. Maybe he didn't notice. It was kind of dark.

She listened for a couple minutes as they spoke madly about work. Deadlines, pensions, meetings, itineraries. Her parents are travelling doctors so they have a lot on their plates. They never really had time for her. Courtney half thinks that she was an accident. As far as she can remember she's always had a babysitter or a nanny taking care of her. She never had a typical childhood experience. No bedtime stories, no arts and crafts, no family board games. The only family vacations they went on were with the other trust fund babies and even then Courtney thought they brought her just so they didn't look like bad parents. When she got old enough to stay home alone the nannies sort of just, disappeared. There was no way these job obsessed people meant to throw a kid in the mix.