Lovelanguage: Baking

Chapter 18 - Sweet Dreams

Nathan dreamt badly that night. He dreamt that he went to his lecture with Julie, but when he wanted to take her hand she looked at him horrified, he looked down at himself and saw to his horror, that he had went to Uni without his clothes on, his strechmarks and overhanging belly even more exaggerated than they are in real life. There was an angry mob approaching ready to hunt him out of the campus. But instead they started to question and interview Julie like hungry paparazzi, what she was doing there with an ugly pig like that. Dream-Julie looked scared and ran away. He wanted to run after her and apologize for getting her into that situation and for having to see him like that, but his feet were impossible to move, he was stuck there and when the mob ran after her he got trampled.

That shook him awake and he opened his eyes. It took him a little until he understood where he was, on the sleeping couch in Julie's apartment. With his heart still beating fast from the dream, he felt that all too familiar feeling creeping up inside of him. That insatiable hunger he get's when he's emotionally charged.

I can't go and raid Julie's fridge it's HER food, she paid for that stuff. And how embarrassing would it be if she caught me. How would I explain the missing food to her during breakfast? Oooh breakfast... how long is it going to be until then?

He looked around the room for the time. The little alarm clock underneath the Desktop said it was 2:26 am. He let out a quiet groan.

Lectures start around 10, so I'd have to wait six and a half hours until we're probably going to have breakfast and it could very well be even later. There's no way I can wait that long! I'm so hungry, I can't! But it's Julie's Food, I can't... I shouldn't.

Nathan couldn't stop himself from getting out of the blanket and walking towards the little kitchen in Julie's apartment. He tried desperately not to make too much noise while opening the fridge. It was well organized and the light illuminated a whole bunch of tasty foods: pudding, yoghurt, two different kinds of jam, milk, chocolate milk and strawberry milk all next to each other in the door. Some leftover lasagne in a box aswell as a box with a few of the delicious, self-baked cookies, she had brought to their first day of lectures, that apparently hadn't fit into the boxes. He felt his mouth water, he had never had this many tasty choices when he felt like this before. He started with the chocolate milk, thinking it would make the least amount of noise. It tasted incredible! He tried the strawberry milk next, it was equally as good.

That blissfull feeling, numbing the stress he had felt from the dream beforehand started to set in as he continued eating, forgetting everything around him.

He didn't know how much time had passed. He was sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by four empty pudding cups, all the milk cartons and a bunch more, currently eating the lasagne, when he heard a confused and tired:

"Nathan?"

Julie stood in the doorframe to the kitchen, wearing those incredibly cute shorts and crop top, holding her arm in front of her eyes, because her eyes hadn't adjusted to a light source like the fridge yet. Nathan was just as terrified as he had been during the dream, if not more. He was still only wearing boxer shorts and there's no way he could cover any party of his enormous body with his arms before she saw them. He couldn't answer.

Julie blinked confused, until she was finally able to see him clearly. His heart felt like it stopped and he definitely stopped breathing, while trying to suck it in as much as possible.

She quickly closed her eyes again.

"Oh I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to look! ... but Nathan? What are you doing on the kitchen floor?"

He stammered frantically:

"I... I had a bad... a bad dream. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... You weren't supposed to... I'm sorry I'll clean up this mess! I'm sorry that I'm a mess! I'm... sorry."