Nick and Charlie

Chapter 6

!TW - Mention of Eating Disorder and Anxiety!

I wake up and realize that Nick is next to me in bed. Tired as I am, I get up from the bed and try my best not to wake him up. Silently I try to close the bedroom door behind me and go down the stairs. Downstairs, everything is calm and quiet. I walk into the living room to sit on the sofa when I see a sleeping Tao and Darcy there, lying on top of each other - when the hell did they get here? How did they get here? I have so many questions right now. But I decide to also let them continue to sleep and I go into the kitchen instead. I sit down at the dinner table. Here I sit for a while in my own solitude before the silence is being broken by a voice.
"Slept well?". I look up and see Nick walking into the kitchen. He sits down across from me at the dinner table and yawns.
"Yes, after the bad dream anyway. How about you?" I say, thinking back to how he looked just a few minutes ago when he was sleeping in bed. He laughs a little before answering.
"After the others had fallen asleep, I got a good sleep" he says, referring to Darcy and Tao lying in the living room and I understand what he means - neither of them are particularly fun to take care of as drunk.

After that we continued talking about everything until we heard footsteps in the house. Into the kitchen comes Tao. Without saying a thing, he pulls out the chair next to me and sits down.
"How are you?" Nick asks ironically. Tao shakes his head before ironically replying back with a "just fine, why?". Nick smiles at him.
"When did you guys get here yesterday?" I ask Tao. He looks at me and shakes his head.
"I have noooo idea, neither me orDarcy were particularly sober" he replies tiredly.
"Did you guys have fun?" I asks and Tao nods in response.
"Well, the little I remember," he adds with a smile.
"What about you guys? Did you have fun yesterday?" Tao asks, looking at me and Nick. I think back to yesterday and how I felt. I quickly feel the anxiety spread in my body, but before either of me or Nick can answer Tao's question, a happy but tired Darcy enters the kitchen.
"Good morning people" she says cheerfully when she sees us. She sits down next to Nick, on the last available chair at the table. Now that everyone is awake, we decide to sit in the living room instead and the rest of the morning was spent talking and hanging out with good friends.

When Tao and Darcy had gone, me and Nick spent the rest of the day in bed. We watched movies, took naps and just cuddled. After the morning's nightmare, the rest of the day went unexpectedly well - until now. Dinner.

We are called by Sarah to come down because dinner is ready. When I get into the kitchen, I see the food on the table. Lasagna. Lasagna is one of my worst fear foods. The fact that everything is together makes it more difficult - I can't take thing by thing. But at the same time, I don't want to be rude to Sarah, who has been cooking dinner for us. I mean, if course both Nick and Sarah help me a lot in this journey, but they neither know or have noticed my safe and fear foods yet.

It's a tough meal. I don't want to eat anything. My knee bobs up and down while the fork doesn't even come close to my mouth. I just sit and look at the food, trying to persuade myself to eat - but I can't.
"You okay Charlie?" Sarah asks me, placing a hand on my leg to ease the anxiety. I look at her and then at Nick on the other side of the table. I shake my head, look down at my legs and feel the tears coming.
"It's okay darling! Is it the food or something else that bothers you?" Sarah asks. I don't answer the question, don't want to destroy this nice dinner. Sarah gets up from her chair and tells Nick to sit next to me instead, which he does. He puts an arm around me and I start to cry into his chest. He hugs me tightly and says that everything is okay.