Marianne by Elizabeth Hammer (best books to read in life TXT) 📕

“But let’s just drive through. I don’t want to sit in public.”

Patrick pulled away from the curb and drove out of the neighborhood. “So, um... go ahead.”

Oh. Marianne thought she might throw up again just from the nerves. She shifted her face on his jacket to look at him. “I’m sorry for all the times I lied to you.”

“Is that over now?” He didn’t look down at her.

“Yes,” she said quietly. She kind of hoped she was telling the truth.

“Okay so...” He paused. “Is it... How... Gah, I don’t even know what to do right now.”

“It’s okay,” said Marianne, sitting up and pleading with her eyes. But he wasn’t looking at her. How long until he could look at her normally again? “It’s okay. It’s not what you think.”

Patrick drove like a super stiff robot. He glanced down a few times, always with that same panicked, tight-jawed expression. “I don’t know anything about this,” he said when they were a few blocks away from home, “but I want you to give me all the details. Can you do that?” He wasn’t being sarcastic. He was really asking.

“Yes. It’s really—”

“Don’t tell me it’s no big deal,” said Patrick.

“But what if that’s the truth?” she asked.

“If that’s the truth, you’re going to need to sell it good. And I probably still won’t believe you.”

“Okay.” Marianne sighed and started wringing her hands. “We can talk about this, but just... don’t get too serious on me, okay? You have to make a joke out of everything I say, okay?”

He stared forward at the traffic. “Any other rules before you start?”

“Yes,” she said. “You have to believe everything I say.”

“Lies and all?”

“I’m not going to lie,” she snapped.

“I know; that was a joke,” he said, smiling. Almost. “See how obedient I am?”

“Well, that wasn’t very funny.”

“The jokes have to be funny, too?” He shook his head, not smiling anymore. “You ask a lot.”

“So do you.”

He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He stopped at a red light and looked at her, gesturing toward his mouth, “I’ve got nothing funny for that one,” he whispered.

Marianne laughed. “Okay,” she cleared her throat. “Here we go... See I hardly ever do it—and even when I do, it’s not like all crazy and dramatic like how you’re thinking it is.”

His jaw tightened again, and he smiled. “Was I supposed to understand that sentence?”

“I don’t have an eating disorder,” she said seriously.

“So...” He searched for the right words. “It’s just a fun hobby, then.”

“It just a nothing. It’s nothing to me. I only do it because I’m an idiot.” She looked out the windshield as they started driving again, taking a deep breath. This was so hard to explain. “It’s just a cheat. But it’s not a problem. I don’t have to do it. I just do.”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

“Yes.” Marianne smiled and punched him on the arm. “Now you’re getting it.”

He scowled at her. “Leave the jokes to me, such as they are.”

Marianne slumped down and let all the air out of her lungs. “Okay, forget the jokes. Just listen, okay?” She picked at her nail polish. “It started because I ate way too much this one night. I was all depressed that I’d blown my diet, so I just thought, ‘Hey, get rid of it,’ And I did.”

Patrick turned to pull into the coffee shop drive-through. “When was this?”

“Uh...” Marianne spoke slowly and unwillingly, but she’d promised to tell the truth. “The day you moved in.”

Patrick nodded slowly.

“Oh, don’t read anything into it,” said Marianne. “It didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Much,” he said.

“At all,” said Marianne. “So I cheated that one night, and then—”

“Black coffee?” he asked, with an edge to his voice at the word black.

Marianne nodded without letting any contempt show on her face. Was this an omen of what Patrick was going to be like from now on? Overprotective and assuming? She could just see him at her next birthday, forming a cake out of lettuce leaves and putting candles on it. He wouldn’t want to tempt her to purge, of course.

Marianne waited to talk until they had their coffees and were parked in a spot facing the busy street. “Anyway... I cheated that one night, and then I did it a few times after just because it’s so easy. Bam. The mistake is gone. See?”

“How many times?”

“But you see how it’s not psycho, right? Just cheating.”

“How many times?”

Marianne blew her bangs out of her eyes. “I don’t know... six times?”

Patrick leveled his eyes on her. “Six?”

She counted back in her head to make sure. “Yeah, I don’t remember exactly. But probably six times.” Even Marianne was surprised by her count. It had seemed like more.

“That’s a lot of cheating for two months, don’t you think?”

She drew out her words so he wouldn’t miss any. “I don’t have an eating disorder.”

“How do you know?”

Marianne looked out the windshield. “Say what you want, but I’m the one who’s me. I’m in my brain. I know why I do things, and I don’t do them because of some psycho compulsion.”

“But if you were psycho, you wouldn’t really know it, would you?”

She gave him a dirty look. “Do you want me to tear your face off? Is that what you want?”

He smiled. “I don’t think you’re psycho. But just because it didn’t start as anything psycho, as you put it, doesn’t mean that it can’t catch you.”

Marianne let her face show him what an idiot she thought he was. “You don’t just stumble your way into an eating disorder.”

“No?”

“Noooo.”

He crossed his arms. “Well, then how do you get one?”

Marianne sputtered a few times before answering. “You... you get traumatized when you’re little, and then you just start blacking out and doing crazy stuff for no reason.”

“Wow,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “You really sound like an expert on this subject.”

“Fine. I have no idea what causes an eating disorder.” She pointed down at her palm like it was a book. “But I looked