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I looked down at my own battered hands. I had too many scars to count. Cuts, burns. My hands had survived years of being battered on the rugby pitch, which was nothing compared to getting fingers stuck in blenders and close encounters with sharp knives.
I blamed my mum, getting me into cooking when my hand-eye coordination had been blasted to hell. I had to concentrate, not be stressed, keep focused for my mind to function the way it was supposed to, not that it ever did, and this was a working kitchen. My entire shift was always one huge, stress-induced, disaster-prone trial.
“You all right?” Mark appeared next to me in his immaculate suit, his hair up in a tidy man-bun and eyebrows tightly knitted. Arms crossed, he surveyed our little world. Him and me, we were brothers, partners in crime, a duo of idiots who should have known better, but we worked well together, and there was nowhere else I would rather work than here with him by my side.
“All good,” I said, mirroring his pose.
“The boys out there,” he said conspiratorially. “They’re placing bets on who can get a hook-up with Hugo. There’s good money involved.”
“Hell.” I sighed, rolled my eyes harder than Mabel. “He gay then?”
“I went over and asked him. He just laughed, so yeah. Between you and me, he lives with his long-term boyfriend down in Canary Wharf, so I think all the boys are barking up a dead tree, but I’m not going to tell them. Are you?”
“Nah.” I laughed. I wasn’t. As long as they did their job and made my food look good, I wasn’t getting involved with anything. And anyway, this Hugo? None of my business.
Rolling up my sleeves, I plonked my arse down by my little office set-up and logged into the laptop. I had orders to sign off, menus to plan, things to do. A life to live. Mark shook his head and disappeared back out to the restaurant.
This Hugo? God help him.
Hugo
Imay have complained and sulked and walked backwards and forwards across the highly polished marble floor all day long, squeezing the stress ball in my pocket, but I could have done worse for myself.
The lobby could be crossed with forty-seven steps, squeezing the ball in my pocket one hundred and twenty-two times while I walked. If I detoured around the central flower arrangement, I could make it even longer,clocking up another thirty-three steps in the process. I needed to complete at least ten thousand steps per day to keep myself happy.
Happy. Shit. I wasn’t happy, and I knew it. I had so many little quirks in my head, all these rules I had to abide by to make sure none of my imaginary disasters would actually take place.
My thoughts were interrupted by another text from my sister, Willa, two years older yet I’d always towered over her. In height. In strength, Willa could take anyone down with just a few words out of her pretty little mouth. She was the dark to my light, but we were siblings and everything that went along with that.
ARE YOU STILL ALIVE ARSEHOLE?
Yeah. I knew as soon as I read her shouty message. We had an agreement that I had to check in with her every day or she would get our parents on my back, which would mean Dad having a panic attack and getting in the car to come check on me, and Mum having kittens.
All good. I texted back. I wasn’t sure I was even convincing myself with that little lie.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew how crazy this all was. I’d spent enough time with counsellors. I had solid coping mechanisms in place. I’d completed several successful rounds of cognitive behavioural therapy, learnt to control the symptoms. Exposure and response prevention had been shoved down my throat until I had believed my own superiority over my stupid brain.
I wasn’t superior. I had zero control, and things weren’t good. I was well aware of that.
I had to stop and breathe on the walk upstairs to the staff changing room. Another one hundred and two steps from my desk to my locker. The locker that held my normal clothes and my bag and the rest of my life.
I had a home. A home that didn’t even have my name on the lease.
Lewis.
I shuddered again. I was better than this. Stronger than this. Worth a hell of a lot more than this.
Excuses. I could have written the handbook on them. Excuses as to why I had ended up this way. I’d landed a good job. I had a life that, on the outside, looked perfect. My parents were as proud of me as they could have been. They would have liked me to go to university and snag myself a fancy degree and more than a minimum-wage job, like my sister, but those kinds of life experiences had passed me by, as I’d spent most of my formative years in hospital trying my hardest to starve myself to death.
Eating disorders were no joke. I’d struggled with food since I was a child, but my teens had been awful, and then I’d spiralled. Getting involved with Lewis hadn’t helped, but then it hadn’t been his job to help. Not really. I knew I’d live with this for the rest of my life, I just hadn’t expected it to…
It wasn’t bad. I wasn’t in a bad place. I could handle this. I had to. I wasnotgoing to ring my parents and ask them to collect my sad excuse for a broken body and admit me to another ward where I’d slowly wither away to nothing.
I could cope.
The door to the changing room felt like a wall of bricks, and it slammed shut behind me as I slumped my worn-out bones down on the bench and reached for the water bottle in my locker. My head was cloudy withexhaustion, and I needed energy, needed to put something in my stomach so I’d be strong enough to get home.
Home. Where I lived was no goddamn home. I’d once thought it had been. Another idea crushed to oblivion because I was exactly who I was. It was some kind of miracle that Lewis had put up with me as long as he had.
