Hearstopper from the edit room floor

In control

ALL HELLO HELLO ALL! 

First: *TRIGGER WARNING this part mentions food, Charlie's eating disorder quite consistently and supporting someone through recovery in parts, if this will trigger you please 1) go read something else / another section of this story etc 2) come back tomorrow for (hopefully) a brand new part of this shorts book 3) go read my other works 4) take care of yourself xoxox 

Hope anyone reading this in the UK is keeping cool (its HAAAT at the moment) but I am loving it at the time of writing this we have 48 days, 34 business days and 7 Monday's till season two! in honour of being halfway through our countdown I am going to TRY key word being try and post a short everyday until then 

So here's day 1 / day 48 

"What's the meal plan for dinner tonight, love?" I ask because it's Friday night. Charlie has come up for the weekend to visit me at university in Leeds, but I knew when Charlie had something on his mind or something was up. There was a silence that was deafening. Charlie was sitting next to me, but I could hear some new Mac Demarco track playing just a tad too loudly. "Char," I say, and he's still not responding wordlessly. I knock Charlie's over-the-ear headphones off, and he jumps startled. "Bloody hell, Nick, what?" he snaps, running a hand through his hair. This wasn't the usual Charlie reaction I received from doing something like this. Even when we were playfully mean to each other, there'd always be a laugh and a smile from Charlie.

Anxiety, grumpiness, and low response times usually meant a bad food day. "How have you been feeling today?" I asked, spinning around and facing Charlie from my lying position, "Fine, why?" He says shortly and starts picking the bed of his nail. There's a thirty-second beat of silence before "I've actually felt really crap today," he finally admits, sighing. Charlie had come up to Leeds straight from his own university earlier that afternoon because of a lecture, so we'd not spent the entire day together. Wordlessly, I wrap my arms around Charlie and feel him relax almost instantly. "I had breakfast following the new plan completely fine this morning; I managed most of my lunch, but it all went arse over tit by my post-lunch snack," he admits, swiping a silent tear from his cheek.

Charlie sometimes still had days like these, but thankfully, after all this time, they were dealt with quickly, calmly, safely, and together. I pulled him into my lap, holding him tighter. His therapist, Geoff, used to tell us when things like this happened to let Charlie have some control but make things easy and simple for him. "So are you feeling hungry right now?" I ask, and it's as though Charlie's stomach responds by giving an obnoxious growl. "I am starving, as you can hear, but it's like there's some invisible wall," he says, running his hand through his hair in frustration.

We sit there for a few minutes before I break the silence again as Charlie looks up at me. "So if I said you could eat anything right now, what would you pick?" I ask, and Charlie thinks for a second. "Something easy, but none of that crap that I have packed," he says sighing, pointing over to his rucksack that's been abandoned in the furthest corner of the room. Wordlessly but calmly, I stand up and retrieve the rucksack from the corner of the room, placing it on my bed I unzip the bag and find the aforementioned post-lunch, late afternoon, and early evening meals and snacks; a few had been opened and one had been nibbled.

In defence of Charlie, the snacks he had left in his bag were the flavours I knew Charlie hated. Charlie had come straight from university on the train, so I knew he hadn't been able to buy the things he wanted to buy or the snacks he wanted to eat in time, but the half-opened, half-chewed snacks and wrappers showed that he had at least been trying. Charlie watches me tentatively zip up his backpack again and throw it in a further corner his face lightens when the bag has "vanished" and I shrug at him. "Out of sight, out of mind," I say, simply climbing back on the bed and kissing him slowly.