When Different Worlds Collide ✔️

Slip- Erik's POV

Erik's POV-

Kat sighed once again as she played with the food that was in front of her. She had been distracted ever since Monday, and it was worrying me. She continuously kept saying that nothing was wrong... but something obviously was. She just didn't want to talk about it yet.

No one but I could see the subtle hints in her face that she wasn't taking care of herself once again. There was makeup on her face once again, trying to cover up the dark circles under her eyes. Her skin was beginning to lose its liveliness that it usually had, fading into a sort of weird translucent sort of white. On top of that, she began wearing the baggiest clothes that she had picked out when we had went shopping just a few weeks before.

I was worried that she was beginning to slip a little on her ED recovery. I tried to ask her about it, but she promised me that she was still eating and was not purging afterwards. I really did want to believe her, but her behavior was bothering me. She wasn't acting like the Kat that I knew. She was acting like the girl that everyone else thought that they knew. I didn't particularly like that version of Katherine... It wasn't her.

I watched her take a few bites of the fruit medley that she had brought from home with a wince and a frown. I watched her gulp down water after swallowing it. Then I watched her war with her own mind.

I simply took the fork from her. She stared up at me with wide eyes as I watched her. I stabbed a pineapple chunk and held it up to her lips. She just stared down her nose at the piece of pineapple.

I brought the pineapple to my own lips and ate it. I then offered another piece after finishing the bite. She nibbled on the piece of cantaloupe, making me finish it.

However, it was better than nothing, so that was how the rest of lunch went. I fed her little bites, and she begrudgingly ate them. It wasn't perfect, but that was okay. She was trying, and that was all that I wanted her to do.

----

"So... Are we gonna talk about it?" I asked as I pulled up to her house after work.

"About what?"

"You're really going to make me spell it out?" I deadpanned.

She sighed and shook her head. "I'm just stressed and exhausted," she finally admitted after a long silence.

"Kat, talk to me. What do you need? What's going on?"

She closed her eyes and hung her head, "It's nothing really... I'm just tired."

"Try again," I told her firmly as I pulled her face up to look in mine. "I know you better than that. This isn't just tiredness."

She chewed on her lip as she stared at me. I felt her whole body sag when she finally let out a long deep breath and leaned into me. I could feel her tension and pain as I let her lean into me across the console.

"Let's go inside, make you comfortable, and get you into bed. Then you can talk to me, Kat. You can tell me anything, love. I won't judge you," I told her.

She followed my instruction and followed me up to her house as if she was a zombie. She really was tired, but I knew that there was more to it than that. That was just part of the problem. There was much more than just the tiredness going on.

She took her jeans off as soon as we walked through the door. She then went to the bathroom with her pajamas and changed the rest of the way in there while I straightened her bed and turned down the blankets for her. I found it a little odd that she had went to the restroom to change when I had seen her before, but I understood that she was self-conscious. I understood and wanted her to be comfortable, so I didn't question her on it when she exited the bathroom in an extremely large hoodie and shorts.