Agreements With Mr Rich Boy | ✓

49 | Desperate Men

(TRIGGER WARNING: eating disorder)

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, I could feel my limbs start to go numb from tiredness and my eyes feel like I'd been punched repeatedly.

The clock by the table read 2:04.

Mum had drifted off to sleep again.

I could hear Miles talking with someone outside, a voice oddly familiar.

"What happened to the meeting with the art show director?" Michelle asked, I realised, as I poked my head around the door. She looked as beautiful as ever, maybe a little tired with her dark circles and sunken cheeks but my brain was too busy focusing on her words to think much more of it.

They were both sat on the chair adjacent to the room.

"Art show director?" I asked, drawing both of their attentions to me. When neither of them made a move to answer, and Miles looked down bashfully, I connected the dots myself. "You gave up organising that art show you've been talking about to pick me up from the airport?" I questioned.

He shrugged as if it wasn't the biggest opportunity of his life. "You needed me."

"Michelle?" I asked, tearing my gaze away from Miles. "What're you doing here? I thought you were with Houman?"

"Yeah," she said with a humourless laugh, getting up. "That didn't work out so well." I watched as she wobbled on her feet for a moment.

"Michelle?" I asked as she continued to sway slightly. She didn't answer. I was tempted to look at Miles but almost just as I turned my head, she'd crumpled into a pile on the floor. "Michelle!"

I placed her head on my lap, watching her eyes seem to roll for a moment before she's blinking rapidly. I don't really know what to do as I tell Miles to go get someone.

"No," she says, and I feel her hand on my arm. I look to her panicked face. "I'm fine."

"I'll get some water and food," Miles said, turning on his heel and heading round the corner to where I imagined a vending machine was or, remembering passing the large thing earlier, the water machine.

We stayed for a few moments in silence. She had picked herself up into a seating position, and now we were both leant against the wall, opposite the chairs. I waited for her to initiate it, for her to tell me what the hell that was. And by her inability to look me in the eye, I knew she knew I wouldn't accept a dismissive lie.

She looked at me, green eyes wavering. Her mouth opened as if to say something, but she clamped it closed when a nurse poked her head round the corner from a room.

"You alright, lovelies?" She asked, ageing face wrinkling further as she smiled.

I looked to her then to Michelle. She seemed to withdraw into herself, pushing her body further and further into the wall. "Yes, thank you." The nurse nodded before hearing a call from her room and returning to her patient.

Again, we remained in silence.

Any progress we made seemed to have obliterated at the nurse's interruption, no matter her good intentions. It was as if upon seeing her, Michelle remembered where she was. I noticed how she held herself here— a sense of familiarity and yet, like she'd rather be anywhere else.