Evermore :||: Nick & Charlie

Chapter 1: Will I Know What to Say?

Nick's POV

Life will get easier. That's what everyone wants anyone to think. Ups and downs, rocky times, cracks in the road, they don't mean anything if it all gets easier, right? Well, I thought the same thing too.

Life was simple, safe.

But growing up, I quickly realized that it's nothing but a facade I used to try and numb my own pain.

My boyfriend, Charlie Spring, has opened up to me about some pretty serious mental health struggles. I started noticing some things surrounding his eating, or lack thereof. We went on a school trip to Paris and yeah, it was fun, but that's when I started to really worry about Charlie the most.

He passed out while we were there and to say that I was terrified would be putting it lightly. Before that happened, I noticed that he didn't eat a lot, but I didn't really think anything of it. I started to keep an eye on it, just in case, and sure enough, I was right to be concerned. Only, I didn't know how bad things truly were until that day when he passed out.

The whole time, I had my own things I was worrying about. I was trying to find a way to come out as bisexual, which seems so inconsequential now, but nonetheless, it was still terrifying and eating me up inside.

Charlie noticed, of course he did.

He suggested that I put that plan on the back burner after a pretty intense panic attack I had in the weeks leading up to our Paris trip. It's not that I didn't want to come out, I just didn't know how people would react, I guess.

While on the trip, I was also trying to meet up with my dad, who has never been the one to be reliable. He blows me off all the time, and any time I missed a call, it felt like he'd punish me with more silence, if that was even possible.

These things were keeping me distracted and stressed, making me overlook some of the things I started to notice about Charlie. After that day in the Louvre, and meeting up with my dad, I felt like I needed to bring up my concerns about him with him.

After learning that it was hard for him to eat, my issues seemed so insignificant. I made it clear to him that I was worried about him, but in a weird way, he just seemed to play it off as if nothing was wrong in the first place. I didn't want to pry, so I let him do it.

At Tara's birthday party, I ended up coming out to a room full of friends, and some strangers during a game of truth or dare. Not really the best way to come out, but it worked for me. 

When we got back from Paris, I started to worry about Charlie even more than I had before. I looked through pictures of us on the trip and noticed that every single time we would be somewhere with food involved, his plate would look like it was barely touched, or touched at all. After a very explosive dinner at my house with our families, my mom brought up the fact that Charlie didn't eat very much, which sent me into a spiral of research.

I looked up everything.

Statistics, types, causes, you name it, and I probably have some sort of knowledge on it, which lead me to wondering what the main cause of Charlie's eating disorder is. He's been through some horrific things in his life, most of them in just the past year, but I didn't know the exact reason.

I needed to know.

Eventually, after coming out to my dad, the thought of what kids thought about me at school just seemed less scary to me, so I decided to come out over Instagram.

Our prom had arrived and I tried everything in me to ask him about it, but I didn't know how without upsetting him or making him feel like he was a burden, which he often feels like. I had a conversation with his best friend Tao Xu, and that only made me more terrified as Charlie hadn't opened up to Tao about anything, not even the bullying he went through.