Home for the Summer (BOYXBOY)

37 | Snowglobe

Trigger warning for this chapter! Scroll down to the author's note at the bottom for specifics.

I spent the two hours Nico was out pacing, then crying, then pacing some more.

The entire conversation had blown up in my face. I wasn't sure what exactly I said wrong, but I had to find a way to fix it. After I had cried all I could and my feet were sore from walking back and forth, I watched out my window for him to come jogging down his route. It took over half an hour of just sitting there, rehearsing my words to myself, before he showed up on the concrete and winded down to my house.

I jumped at the front door opening and stood as his footsteps began up the stairs. "Nico?" I called, but no response came, so I opened the door to his bedroom and peeked inside.

"Yes?" He was sliding his shoes off in front of the closet and sucking in air through thick breaths.

"I, uh," I started, moving inside and sitting on his bed. "I just wanted to apologize. I could've handled everything a lot better earlier."

Nico didn't say anything for a moment before glancing back at me. "No, it's not your fault. I was being sensitive."

"You weren't."

"I was. I get like that about... That. And anyway, you were just trying to be helpful." He moved into the bathroom and started the shower.

"So, are we just... Done talking about it?"

"What else is there to talk about?" his voice called out from the other room. "We're okay now, right?"

"Well... Yeah, we are, but I still think we should talk about... ya' know, everything."

The only noise was the running of water for a few seconds before he stepped back in again. "I just... I don't really know how to talk about it. That sounds dumb, but-"

"It doesn't sound dumb."

"I'm sorry for getting upset earlier. None of that was your fault. You were... You deserve to be able to ask about it."

"Okay," I said, crossing my legs under myself. "Why don't you just start at the beginning then?"

"It'll take a while."

I gave him a shrug. "We have the rest of summer."

***

Nico showered first and I fixed us mugs of tea before we sat in my bedroom and just... Talked. Or, rather, he talked, and I listened and tried not to react too harshly to anything he said. The timeline wasn't definite, but I got a shaky outline of how the events of his eating disorder took place.

The end of sophomore year was when his coach started putting the team on diets and workout regimens. He obsessed over it for a long time, until it started getting unhealthy. He tracked his calories and went to the gym for hours everyday. But, after a little, he started worrying that maybe he wouldn't be able to get to the gym, and that developed this fear of gaining weight by eating and not burning it off. That kept circling in his brain until the middle of junior year when he passed out on the ice during practice. Nico was rushed to a hospital where he was told he had a dangerously low heart rate due to his malnourishment. He had to stay there, plugged into a feeding tube and monitored 24/7, for four weeks. According to Nico, it was the worst time in his life.

Eventually, he got to go back home, but things were pretty different. He had a meal plan set out for every day, he wasn't allowed to play hockey until he reached a certain weight, they had to have a counselor at his school to talk with him twice a week. After a little, he adapted, and he started doing better and better. Nico stuck with meals, he started gaining back the weight, he was set to return to hockey in the fall. But then, he woke up one morning and found his mom passed out in the living room. He called an ambulance and her sponsor showed up to let him know that she had to go back to rehab. They didn't know when she would get out.