Page 97 of Power Play

I hate you.

The thought came with the familiarity of something rehearsed.

I hate you.

My fingers tightened around the counter.

I hate you.

“You don’t deserve him,” I whispered beneath the bathroom fan.

Ryan thought I was smart. He thought I was funny. He looked at me like there was something beneath the clothes, makeup, and carefully chosen answers worth taking the time to understand. He didn’t know I could leave his apartment after he made me feel beautiful and stand naked in front of my own mirror searching for evidence that he had been wrong.

He didn’t know how quickly every compliment became something I had to disprove. He didn’t know I had eaten half a taco the night before and spent an hour afterward promising myself I would make up for it today. He didn’t know I could measure my waist four times and trust the largest number simply because it hurt the most.

“You’re lying to him.”

A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it.

I lifted the hem of my shirt and caught the skin at my stomach between my fingers, pulling at it while disgust tightened behind my ribs.

“Fat.”

The word broke on the way out.

I turned slightly toward the mirror, searching for an angle where I might finally look acceptable. My fingers found the same place again, harder this time, and tears filled my eyes while I stared at a body Ryan had touched like there was nothing wrong with it.

“Disgusting.”

My breathing changed before I fully noticed it. The next breath stopped halfway into my lungs, followed by another that came too fast and never reached deep enough. Pressure gathered behind my ribs while heat crawled beneath my skin.

I knew what was happening.

That didn’t mean I could stop it.

I closed my eyes and tried to breathe the way every therapist, article, and concerned friend suggested when anxiety was treated like something lungs could reason with. Slow breath in. Hold it. Let it out.

My chest refused to cooperate.

“Charm?” Ryan called through the door, his voice closer now. “Everything okay?”

I pressed both hands flat against the counter and focused on the cold stone beneath my palms.

The bathroom fan hummed overhead. Water dripped once from the faucet. Ryan shifted outside the apartment, and the faint scuff of his shoe against the hallway floor reminded me that he was waiting while I came apart.

I named five things I could see. The mirror. My lipstick. A hand towel. The gold cap on my perfume. The closed drawer hiding the measuring tape.

Four things I could touch. The counter. My shirt. The tile beneath my feet. The necklace against my chest.

The exercise gave my thoughts somewhere to go, but my body remained trapped inside the panic. My hands tingled, my vision tightened, and every breath felt like proof the next one might not come.

I pressed my palm against my sternum.

“You’re fine,” I whispered. “Stop being dramatic.”

The words sounded like my mother even though she had never said them during a panic attack. She didn’t know I had them. Nobody did. I understood how to become composed before anyone saw enough to ask.

Ryan knocked again, softer this time. “Open the door, princesa.”