this love • gracie abrams

032 misplaced

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
misplaced
•

TO summarize the past two weeks of charlotte and gracie's lives could be represented with four things: a mirror, a bottle of vodka, a microphone, and a five minute phone call.

charlotte's only been shoving the thought of having an alcohol issue further and further into the back of her mind with each new excuse she was able to give herself. feeling lonely cause gracie's gone? seems reasonable to drink. long day of filming and need to unwind? drink. nervous about how gracie's doing? drink. nailed a scene? why not drink to celebrate? really, anything goes. just the other day she was scrolling her for you page on instagram and saw a picture of her father, so she knew she had to have one to cleanse her mind and body from what she just witnessed. with all this free time she has after work without gracie around, she's had a lot of time to spend her evenings just alone with her thoughts. which is good sometimes, but not for her when she does it for too long and finds something to get overly worked up on.

she found herself frequently stalking her moms instagram and whatever recent pics she could find to try and zoom in on her fingers and see if she had her wedding ring back yet, but every photo had her with gloves on given the cold. or a tactic. she was unsure. then she'd be texting with mac trying to sound casual by just asking how the shows went so she could sneak in a question asking what they had for dinner after to make sure gracie was eating. next she'd be stalking every concert video on the internet to make sure a surprise song wasn't a unreleased newer one about herself. all this worrying would ultimately lead to a headache, which what would again lead her to grabbing a drink.

but it was fine, nothing serious.

the same amount of drinks charlotte had in a week could amount for the amount of times gracie stood in front of a mirror in a day. twisting and turning, sucking in and out, tugging and pinching. the outfits her stylist had brought her for tour often consisted of tight fighting cropped shirts or see through materials, so it made it difficult for her to focus on the songs sometimes when she knew how much of her body was on display. even though deep down she knew no one in the crowd was looking that closely or giving a shit, her brain was still good and tricking her into thinking that's what they were staring and recording her for.

there was one moment when she went to the barricade and reached over to give a girl a hug when she was bawling her eyes out during camden. the girls arms tightened around her torso and the second they pulled apart, gracie wondered if the girl would remember feeling her body like that the rest of her life, how gross it felt. but through all of these she sang, and the worst part was that sometimes she couldn't even focus on and see the good energy of her fans with all that was in her head.

but just because that's been a thing now doesn't mean she isn't doing as best she can. she hasn't purged. she's been eating before and after shows. she still feels guilty about it but she's not going hungry. and she really feels the difference too, having enough power to get through her morning workout with getting dizzy was fucking euphoric. she's been doing the journal thing too, writing down her favourite parts of tour so far, like when a fan gave her a handmade scrapbook or when she covered 'comfort crowd' by conan when someone requested it and everyone freaked out. abby saw her writing in it before bed the other night and curiously asked what it was about but gracie just shrugged and told her it was nothing. she thought it'd be better to sit with these moments on her own for a little bit to really feel how happy they made her.

she zoomed chloe a couple nights ago too and opened up about how what went down with charlotte before tour. they talked out how it all made her feel from start to end and chloe gave her a bit of insight on why charlotte likely reacted that way, despite how horrible it made gracie feel. but she needed to hear it. it just made her not want to ever purge again knowing how badly it must've hurt charlotte to hear about it.