Right when Bradyn walks through the door, the yelling starts.
He is already expecting it so he isn't really too concerned when it happens. Instead he just stands there and takes it. He knows it was wrong of him not to let anyone know where he was, but it was an accident. It wasn't like he purposefully withheld that information from his mom. Nonetheless he let his mom vent and speak her mind.
Once she's done he apologizes twice and then hands over his phone. He's only allowed to have it when he leaves for school and school is the only place he's allowed to go. She never specifies the length of time he'll be grounded for and he doesn't bother asking. Maybe he'll get released early for good behaviour.
—-————————————————————-
It's been a week and it seems as if Bradyn has been gone for a month. He texts her during the school day but other than that it's like he doesn't exist.
Her parents left without saying goodbye yesterday so she's completely alone in the house again.
She misses Bradyn and, naturally, she's been filling the void with food. Courtney finds herself eating a lot more than she usually does lately. It's mostly out of boredom. It started as snacking in between meals until the snacking became so frequent that she blurred the lines between the start of one meal and the end of the next. She just kind of eats away mindlessly throughout the entire day now.
On one particular day, Courtney decided to push her limits and was surprised at just how much she could really devour now. If you would've told her last summer that she'd be eating six burgers in one sitting without even batting an eye she'd think you must be insane but she sits on her bed now packed full of an ungodly amount of food restlessly switching positions to try and get comfortable.
There is no soothing the ache in her tummy that she helplessly tries to work out with her palm.
'Why do I do this to myself?' Courtney moans.
The food always feels so good on the way down but it's the digesting part that warrants to be the most troublesome.
Recently she finds that the majority of the time her body doesn't even digest fully anymore. She can't remember the last time her stomach rumbled because it was empty. She's never really felt empty, per say, but rather just varying levels of full. Courtney would wake up in the morning bloated and still feeling as if her meal from the previous day hadn't fully digested yet.
A burp bubbles up in her mouth leaving an aftertaste of what lies in her depths below.
Courtney goes on her phone as an attempt to distract herself from the discomfort and lands on old pictures of herself in her camera roll. She's pictured standing next to a couple of her old cheer teammates, embracing and laughing. She can't believe she used to look like that. She looks down at her legs. The girl in the picture was the size of her left thigh now.
Crazy how much can change in a few months.
She goes to swipe across the screen but at the same time her screen goes pale and a red and a green circle show up at the bottom. She accidentally answers the call before she has any time to react. When she sees Griffin's name at the top she panics.
Fuck.
She doesn't really want to talk to him right now. Not like this. But she can't really hang up the phone either. That would be rude. She did answer the phone so hanging up now would look bad. She hesitates for too long so Griffin speaks into the silence.
"Hello?"
Courtney snaps back into the present and responds, "Hey."
Her answer seems a bit forced to him, like she's surprised or something, which doesn't make sense seeing as she's the one who answered the phone.
"Hey Courtney, what's up?"
"Nothing, just sitting in bed."
Griffin chuckles a little because she sounds as if she's guilty of something... or being held hostage, "Cool, yeah I was going to text you but I thought I'd call you instead."
great.
Courtney rolls her eyes and puts a hand on her head. Not that she didn't want to talk to him, but right now just wasn't the best time.
"I just wanted to solidify plans for our date."
Date!?
He's being hyperbolic right? He must be joking. There's no way that he'd want to be seen in public with her. It isn't really a date. It can't be... but then again he did ask if she had a boyfriend.
If she's being honest she really thought Griffin suggested they hang out just to be polite. She didn't think he truly meant it.
She's reading too far into this. He's saying 'date' in a friendly way. Like in a passive way.
"Yeah sure. What do you wanna do?"
"Are you free Friday?"
"Yeah."
"Cool. I'll order you an uber for 5pm so you can meet Murphy for 5:30."
"Murphy!" Courtney squeals at the memory of the Albrecht's old pilot. She completely disregards how bougie his request sounds.
He laughs, "Yeah. You remember him?"
"Of course I remember him! He flew us to so many family vacations." Courtney gushes at the memory, temporarily distracting herself from her enlarged state.
Griffin brings them back on track, "So, yeah, I'll fly you out at 5:30 and pick you up from the hangar at 6:30. Then the limo will take us to dinner downtown."
"Wow, sounds fancy. Where are we going?"
Griffin drones on for a bit about this fancy French restaurant he's been obsessed with lately and Courtney drifts in and out of thought. This all felt like they were playing pretend. It's too good to be true. She can't actually go on this date with him. She'll just have to make up some excuse the day before so they don't have to go through with it.
The adrenaline of the whole situation starts to wear off and she becomes soberly aware of the pounds of lard pressing violently against her insides. While he's talking she tries to take slow breaths and groans quietly under her breath.
At least he distracted her from the pain for a little bit. She should probably think of ending the conversation soon so she can wallow alone before passing out for the night.
Griffin notices that Courtney hasn't said anything for a while and apologizes for his rambling, "Sorry. I didn't mean to steamroll the conversation like that."
"No no it's fine." He notices the change in enthusiasm in her voice.
"Is everything okay?" He asks cautiously.
"Yeah *hicc* everything's fine." She lies into the receiver. She didn't mean to hiccup in the middle of her sentence but it sort of just slipped out. It made her slightly embarrassed and in a rush to end the phone call.
The pain isn't getting more tolerable If anything, it's getting worse. Her insides are filling up with gas and it's making the skin on her belly feel like it's going to tear open. She's losing patience and the longer she's on this phone call the less restraint she has.
"Okay... Well, I'll text you on Friday then?"
"Sure, sounds good." She forces out quickly.
She hovers her finger over the 'end call' button, prepared to say a quick goodbye and hang up but Griffin interrupts.
"Courtney... Are you sure you're okay?"
She doesn't have the energy to hide it anymore so she just blurts it out,
"No, not really." She laughs nervously, "Like, I'm fine. My stomach just really hurts."
Griffin is intrigued now and eggs her on, "Why does your stomach hurt?" He asks. Knowing full well that he can probably fill in the blanks with a bit of imagination. He just wants to hear her say it.
Courtney breathes out, hopelessly.
"I ate too much." She whines, "I ate too much and now my stomach hurts and I'm bloated and I can't move or it hurts but even when I'm not moving it still hurts and I don't know why I keep doing this to myself I can never help myself I just keep eating and eating because I love eating until I don't love eating and I just want Bradyn to come over and rub my belly but he can't because he's grounded."
Her rant is interrupted by a burp, and a long silence hangs in the air for a moment before Griffin says quietly,
"I'd rub your belly."
"What?" She questions whether or not she heard him correctly.
Griffin clears his throat and distracts her with a follow up question, "What did you eat?"
This is an equally odd response to the situation but she humours him, "I don't know... everything?" She groans and then whimpers twice.
"Fries?" He wants her to be more specific.
"Mhm." Is all she manages to get out.
"What else?"
She uses all her will power to remember the lengthy list of what was now sitting stagnant in her gut.
"Uh... I think it started with a box of froot loops, then some cookies, a burger... or six, half a cake, ice cream, banana loaf, bacon, corn dogs, candy, chocolate, leftover pizza..."
She takes a moment to figure out what's next and some chicken tenders gurgle in her stomach as if they're offended that she forgot about them.
"Chicken tenders, two bags of Doritos, a box of donuts, and then–" Courtney takes a break to hiccup and then groans in response.
Griffin waits in anticipation and when she doesn't offer up the next item immediately he prompts her, "And then what?"
"And then... At one point I started dipping slices of bread into a jar of mayonnaise... and when the loaf was done I started scooping the mayo out with my hands."
The image of her slurping thick, white, gelatinous sauce from her fingers replays over and over in his head.
"You really ate a lot, hey?"
"I knoww" She whines.
Griffin can just imagine Courtney sitting there, unable to move. She was a lot more gluttonous than he thought.
When she goes silent this time he doesn't force her to speak. He just listens to the sounds audible over the receiver. Every once in a while she moans or whimpers quietly. Maybe he should've FaceTimed her. He'd give anything to see what she looked like right now. He wonders how much weight she's gained since he saw her last time in that ice cream place. Even then she was sexy. He can't wait to see her in person.
She had the perfect body type. She held her weight in all the right places. He remembers how her pear shaped stomach looked tucked away in that purple top and the way her muffin top bounced when she pulled her pants up by the belt loops. She was so warm when he hugged her and his arms seemed to just sink into her sides. It would be a pleasure to sit in front of her on Friday and watch her eat.
The sound of her voice whining his name interrupts his thoughts.
"Griffiiiin."
"What?" She can hear his grin through the phone.
She must've rested her phone on her stomach because the sound of sloshing and some gurgles make their way to his end. Griffin breathes out and listens more carefully. Her stomach gurgles again and he has to keep himself from touching himself.
She feels like she's drowning in her own body.
"Griffin, I'm gonna go."
"Okay. I hope you feel better soon."
He listens to the dropped call tone. He can't wait to see her on Friday.