Thin Skin and Barely Bone: Chapter 4
The Screaming Unheard in a Crowded Room
Beauty of whatever kind invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
~Edgar Allen Poe
July 28th, 2011
Dark midnight encased the bedroom with a fully mooned glove crawling in fragments on the soft creamy white carpet where three teenage girls lied, their soft snores echoing in the back of their throat. Or at least, that was the case for two of the girls. The third was doing her best to fall back onto, or trying to find, a path into the woods of slumber, but she couldn't seem to find it. She tossed and turned, attempting to readjust her position underneath her Hollis Snuggie, thinking that was the reason. The realm of her reality was that an ache in her ribcage that stretched tightly against the surface of the protection of her clammy skin refused to go away, an ache that had set in ten days before, following the repercussions of her charging away from the bridge, away from the one and only person who was her safe place to land, her best friend, her lover, her boyfriend.
The ache twitched uncomfortably in Aria's torso like an injured baby bird; a reminder of the possible end of communications with one of the most important people in her life. Tears pricked at the corners of her sunken almond gray eyes as she brought her knees to her chest, clutching them there as if she were a child scared of a storm. And in some ways, just like the lyrics of her ringtone, it was a storm. The storm that was raging in her mind through the seed that had been planted two summers before. Her own personal storm.
Since leaving Ezra on the bridge, Aria was determined to lose whatever weight had Ezra thinking that she was pregnant with his baby. She began running for miles at a time until she coughed blood by the time she was done. She went to the gym in New Hope to avoid questions from friends, classmates, and the rest of the judgmental town. She did sit-ups, push-ups, lunges, and other core exercises for two hours in the morning and two hours at night, her pants of pain from the burning sensation in the pit of her stomach being drowned by heavy metal music. One face lied in her mind when she would work out so much that she would end up throwing up blood: Ezra. Even after what had gone down prior to her new obsession with exercise, he was the one who get her block out the pain.
She never thought that things could ever be this bad. She never thought that things would fall apart like this. She never thought that she would lose control like she did; she thought after a few times she could stop and now she was addicted to the temporarily feeling of being comfortable with her own body. She never thought that she would be thinking about the possibility of her and Ezra being over for good. They argued a lot, but made up almost immediately. They couldn't bear to be away from one another. They couldn't stay away no matter how hard they tried, no matter how dangerous it was, they always made their way back to each other. He always came back for her. It'd been ten days. He wasn't on her doorstep with a bouquet of her favorite flowers, asking for her forgiveness after thinking that she was pregnant. Her phone hadn't seen his contact in over a week. He was either done with her or waiting for her to come to him. He had vanished from her life again.
This was the nightmare that she couldn't wake up from.
Aria missed Ezra more than a kid missed Mickey Mouse at Disneyworld. She missed his sparkling blue eyes that smoldered affection and friendlessness in the depths of the indigo lava. She missed his not so funny jokes that she laughed at just to make him feel good about himself. She missed the wisps of his dark chestnut brown hair falling over the pattern of the skin on his forehead. She missed the laugh that rung in her ears as they were curled up together on the bed, on their sacred ground, when they were asleep. She missed his sweet yet empowering kisses that made her feel complete, whole, and like nothing could ever go wrong. She missed the touch of electricity that he never failed to bring to the surface of her skin. She missed the way he rocked her at night, his lips on her neck and his hands roaming the body that she hated, the body that he hated.
She didn't want to think about the possibility that they may be over because when she did, she couldn't even begin to describe the pain that set in the pit of her stomach. Like an iron as simmering as fire searing the walls of her throat and a hoard of soccer players with freshly sharpened cleats piercing the fragile surface that was her heart. The idea of saying goodbye to the only thing that was stable in her life made her feel like she was losing part of herself, her better half, the only one for her. She had no interest in any of the boys who went to her school; she had tried that. She had tried to date someone her own age and she realized that Ezra couldn't be replaced. He was the one who made her feel like she was floating even with the dreading sense of gravity pulling her down. He had her heart in his hands for the rest of forever. And although that was very Bella Swan of her to wallow in the sorrow of the potential reality of them being over, she couldn't deny that if their relationship was now nothing but ashes. She would fall apart even more than she already had.
With Ezra, Aria could do anything she set her mind to. She could do everything and anything as long as he was beside her, holding her hand and coaxing her through it. Without him was like a living hell. She still remembered the pain of him leaving all those days ago in March after the first time they had made love to each other. The desperation, the anguish, the goodbye had shaken her to her core. She was without him for a week and all of those seven days, she didn't know who she was or what she was doing. She was lost without him in her life.
Giving up on the idea of sleep, Aria pushed herself up into a sitting position. She rubbed her eyes with one of her bony fingers, her shadow in the fragment of the moonlight on the carpet hardly as wide as a broomstick. She paid no attention to it. Hanna and Spencer were sleeping around her on the floor of the youngest Hastings' bedroom, empty cups of coffee, bags of popcorn, and rag magazines. It was one of the first times all summer where they spent some time together. The last time had been at Spencer's Fourth of July party three weeks before and for the friends that had been united against the powers of Mona and the seemingly never-ending searching for the murderer of the fifth member of their group, it had been far too long.
Hanna was busy with a summer internship at a fashion boutique, expanding her knowledge of the English language and cooking classes with Caleb while Spencer was taking classes at Hollis and spending time with Toby. Then of course Emily was in Haiti, building houses for orphans. She had left in order to escape the horde of reporters that would camp in her front lawn to get statements about her dead girlfriend, Maya St. Germaine. They talked to her once in a while when she finally found a way to get a phone connection down there in the ruins of the poor villages.
With her fight with Ezra, the remaining three in Rosewood decided to have a sleepover just like old times. They watched The Notebook and cried together in a linked chained of wet eyes and entwined arms, exchanged current gossip like the latest boob job of Prudence Finn, and then retired early to bed. And by early, that meant eleven o' clock because the tall brunette and witty blonde had to get up by seven the following morning while Aria didn't have any plans and would probably spend the day pacing down Ezra's block, deciding whether or not to make up with him.
She wiped her nose with her t-shirt sleeve as she glared at one of the covers of the magazines. There it was; a picture of a woman with a flawless body, no shame in her features. How did she get to be so comfortable with her body? Aria thought as she started at the cover, her hazel eyes burning a forest fire of vengeance. She took it into her hands and after enough raindrops had made their way down her cheeks, she threw it, watching it crashed against the wall. She waited her friends to wake up in surprise, but they stayed asleep, curled up in their blankets, perfectly at ease as she sat there in a puddle of self-pity, loathing, and anguish, with her arms wrapped around her body, trying to stop it from its shivering. It was mid-summer, but she felt as cold as though her heart was made of ice; strong enough to get through the day, but fragile enough to be broken. Her blood ran in a sluggish race as it went through the streams that was sent from the organ that brat like a drum.
She hated the magazine.
She hated the woman.
She hated herself.
Without even thinking twice about it, Aria pushed herself to her feet and made her way out of the bedroom, her feet almost silent on the carpet as she opened and closed the door behind her. Her shadow followed her as she went into the hallway bathroom, closing and locking the door. She headed straight to the toilet without looking at the reflecting that would trigger the emotions even more. She knew what was there waiting for her to despise and spit at. The slab of glass that sat there would only show what reminded her of why she was doing this.
She flipped the seat up and tied her hair back in a ponytail. This was becoming almost a religion to her; as often as she did it, it was now a practice as she kneeled down and grouped two fingers together and as tears dripped down her cheeks, her eyes squeezed shut, she shoved them into the walls of her throat. She jammed them as far as they would go against her uvula as nose curdling bile from her digested meal of half a turkey burger, popcorn, and coffee began its journey up into her mouth. She tasted everything; everything including the sense of her own despair.
Aria gagged in pain as her rib cage pressed against her torso, the weak bones that were barely there pressing against the thin layer of skin that lied above it. She clutched her stomach with her free and clean hand as the first contents made their way out of her mouth, spilling into the white basin in front of her. She coughed again, allowing her fingers to jam tightly against the walls of her throat once more. The contents of her stomach just kept coming up and coming up. She was kept shoving her fingers farther and farther into the back of her throat, tensing her skinny shoulders in concentration as she braced herself for another round of vomit. It burnt, it hurt, but at that very moment, she felt more confident in herself than she had in over a month. It was temporary and short-lived, but she cherished it as she bent her head over the toilet, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
It poured around her fingers in a mix of phlegm and digested food, the bile burning the inside of her cheeks as the liquid dripped into the toilet, rolling down her chin in a river. A few minutes went by as she continued the cycle again and again. She kept going until she felt disoriented, tired, and yet still unfulfilled. She didn't feel like it was enough; she didn't feel like anything she did was enough. She could literally feel the fat on her body laughing at her from its place on her thighs, stomach, face, hips. Her heart pounded to regain composure from its high speed race as she collapsed against the bathtub, the tears watering her cheeks as if they were a ditch after a rainfall, overflowing and spilling over the edges.
Aria sat there against the tub, her head resting on her knees that were tightly pulled up to her chest. The feeling of self-contentment from just five minutes before had melted away like dew in a stretch of moorland after the morning blew away in the breeze of the twenty-four hour day. She was broken. There was no other word to describe her. She was like glass of a broken window, her feelings scattered in shards around her. She wasn't the girl she used to be. She was molded into a person who she never wanted to be. She didn't ask to feel like this. She didn't want to feel like this. She loathed it. She loathed what she turned into. She loathed who she was. She couldn't think of one thing she didn't hate about herself. The girl who was raised to be independent and be herself had turned into someone who was shaped by the monster –A. She didn't know what she had done to deserve this pain, this hatred, this terror. She couldn't stop this even if she wanted to. She couldn't stop until she was perfect, even if ending up wrecking her reputation, relationships, and her connection to the outside world. She wanted to feel confident and fearless again without the disgust that she felt in the pit of her abdomen, but that wouldn't happen until she was content with whom she saw in the mirror.
The scary thing was that that she didn't believe that she had enough will power to stop.
Maybe a midnight run would help subside the triggering feelings that were lingering in the cool ocean of her veins….
The seventeen year old quickly flipped down the toilet seat, flushed it, and, without looking in the mirror, washed her hands free of the bile. She dabbed her face with the towel before leaving the bathroom in a rush. Aria made her way down the stairs, her blood being pumped throughout her body way too quickly. She was emotionally exhausted but she didn't pause as she slipped on her socks and sneakers, tying the laces quickly as she charged out of the Hastings' home, closing the door almost silently behind her. She flipped out her phone and furiously texted both of the girls, telling them that she took off early because Ezra needed her. There would be questions later, but she would be able to handle them the following day.
She thought about the lie as she turned her phone off and put it away in the pocket of her pockets and began to slowly jog down the street, the warm early morning summer air encasing her in an embrace as if it was giving her a hug. His apartment was five miles away from her moving place on the moonlit sidewalk in downtown Rosewood. Would he be awake? It was almost one o' clock and he could be asleep at peace without her nuisance lying beside him, taking up the majority of it after eating all of the food in his apartment. If she just showed up in the middle of the night, he would be like a grumpy old man the next day. He was hard enough to wake up.
Then again he was a night owl. He was probably still awake, typing a poem about his crazy bitch of a girlfriend and how happy he was without her. Or maybe he was waiting for her to come to him, standing on the balcony and humming their love song to himself, his arms yearning for her return. His dark blue eyes smoldering an overwhelming sense of an indigo ocean, drowning in the moonlight that was falling upon him on his balcony as he leaned against the raining while murmuring the lyrics to "Happiness"; the song they had bonded over all those days ago on September 1st. He was waiting for her.
Happiness is just outside my window
Would it crash blowing 80-miles an hour?
Or is happiness a little more like
Knocking on your door and you just let it in.
That thought was enough. Aria was going to go and makeup with him. She missed him. She needed him. She wanted him back in her life again and she was going to be the one to fix things before things got even worse. Her short legs increased their speed and power as she sprinted down the moonlit sidewalk, the cool of the night washing over her. Her heart struggled to keep up with the pace of her legs that carried her farther and farther up the street. Her breath chilled the warm air around her. She fought to remain focused as her feet tapped and rubbed against the pavement of the sidewalk. She didn't thinking about anything but Ezra. He kept her heart beating, even when he pissed her off, made her cry, and even miserable sometimes. But he made her feel cheerful. He made her feel the urgency to stay alive. He made her feel like before he was in her life, she was empty, but now she was whole.
Without Ezra Fitz, she wasn't Aria Montgomery.
The sense of tranquility washed over the one-room apartment on the third floor, second from the staircase. There was hardly any light remaining besides the hanging lamp in the kitchen, its scarlet glow against the surface of the wall and the illuminating laptop screen on a desk just a few feet away. The young man in front of it sat with the back of his hands supporting his head as he scrolled through pages on the internet. His blue eyes were narrowed as if they were a sliver of the full moon outside his window. His curly dark brown curls tumbled over his forehead and he blinked consistently to stay awake. A half-empty bottle of scotch sat not so far away from his place in the cushioned rolling chair.
It was late. Almost one o' clock on that Thursday morning, but Ezra wasn't even close to going to bed yet. He'd been on the internet for hours, trying to narrow things down about Aria's erratic behavior that she was lying to him about. If she wasn't pregnant, what else would be bothering her so much? Why she unhappy being with him? He knew that sometimes he expected too much of her, that she deserved more than what he could give her, but if she felt like it was too overwhelming to be in this relationship, she was the type of person who tell him what was going. Or…she used to be. Now he had no idea who the seventeen year old was. And the feeling of knowing that he had lost the girl he'd fallen in love with scared him. It terrified him.
He hadn't seen her in well over a week. He was doing his best to give her space, but that was hard, knowing that something was going on in her life that she didn't trust him enough to tell him what was going on with her. Ezra thought that everything that they'd been through in the almost eleven months of them being together that she would feel like she go to him about anything. She didn't have to be embarrassed about anything when it came to telling him things that were bothering. Well, if she wasn't going to give him the answers he wanted, he would go looking for them himself. And although he was scared of what he may find in the depths of the world wide web, he knew that another day without knowing was like telling Aria that he didn't care enough to know.
He was head over heels for the girl, but there had been occasions in the past where she had blown something he said or did way out of proportion, even if it was the littlest thing. Sometimes she made him so frustrated and upset because of how overdramatic she could be about certain things. She would twist his words into something that was so far from what he meant, he didn't even know what to think. Aria made him irritated, clueless, and pissed off. Every time they got into an argument over anything at all, the seventeen year old did the teenager thing and charge out of the apartment and would not return for days at a time. She knew that he would never be genuinely angry with her, but when those disagreements got heated, they both said things that they didn't mean. She was the one of the most confusing women he'd ever meant. Sometimes he'd think that he had her all figured out and then the next minute, he was just as confused as before.
At the end of the day, though, even after all the times she got on his last nerve and made him want to rip all of the curly dark brown hair from his head, he would never regret anything about their relationship. Once she was in his arms with her head on his chest, her breathing matching the musical rhythm of his, he didn't know anything, but being with her. He was in love with the woman who he fallen for in the most unsuspecting place. Something that had started so innocent had evolved into something both beautiful and dangerous. He couldn't imagine his life without her in it. He was fixated on someone who should have never been his. No matter what they went through, no matter what the argument that they got into, no matter how many times she walked out the door and slammed it behind her, they would always find their ways back to one another. They were just two crazy kids who realized early on that it wouldn't be easy, but that it was worth the fight. That they were worth the fight.
So, there the twenty-four year old sat, his earphones fixed in placed in his ears. He refused to listen to "Happiness" when he and Aria were fighting, especially after the one they'd had ten days before. It reminded him too much of her and he would end up drinking an entire bottle of scotch, even though he regretted it the next day because of the nasty hangover and the fuzzy five o' clock shadow that graced his face. So, he listened to other things, such as Ed Sheeran, Matt Nathanson, and Ron Pope. However, tonight one song had been on repeat: "New York" by Snow Patrol. The lyrics were about a separated couple who had the odds against them, but still had the hope that the one day they could be together again. The theme was home and the hope that one's true love will return to them again.
If you were here beside me instead of in New York
If the curve of you was curved on me
I'd tell you that I loved you before I ever knew you
'Cause I loved the simple thought of you
Ezra drew in a sharp intake of breath as the lyrics began again and he resumed his typing on the laptop keyboard, the smooth tabs of his fingers hesitating before they began drumming against the letters. He had searched for any possible thing that he could think of. From pre-menstrual cramps to hiding an affair to the symptoms of personality disorders, he had found nothing that fit what he was looking for. He was losing the stamina to stay away as his eyes began to droop and wander to other places on the desk. His eyes fell upon a brown leathered notebook on top of all of his takeout menus. Aria often left some of her journals there at the apartment. She trusted him enough not to go through them. At that moment, though, he knew that he needed to figure what was going on with her before it drove him off the deep end.
He hesitantly reached over and picked it up into shaking hands, suddenly breaking out into a sweat. For obvious reasons, he was reluctant to do this; after all, Aria trusted him more than anyone else in the world and this was violating her privacy. If she were to ever find out, she would never forgive him. However, if she was hurting and if in those creamy white pages lied the answers he was looking for, he would take the risk of Aria possibly never trusting him again. He was sure that what he was doing was the right thing for her in the long run and if she got mad, she would get over it.
Ezra flipped through it, skimming some of his writing. Some of her writing was about him and he couldn't help but blush when he got to the entry on March 12th, the anniversary of their first time:
March 12th, 2011. 11;36 PM.
Dear Journal,
It's late. It's dark outside and I can hear the raindrops fall onto the pavement out on the balcony.
I'm lying awake tonight next to Ezra. He lost his job at Hollis and he's leaving again. I blame myself. If he hadn't met me, he would still be at Rosewood High and I would just be his student, instead of the girl who keeps screwing everything up for him. I'm not regretting walking into that pub, though. No matter how hard it gets, I will never be unhappy about how things have turned out for us. He is the one for me. There's no going back and I wish for nothing more than to just be with him. It's crazy on how he makes me feel. I fall in love with him more and more every time I look at him.
We finally made love to one another earlier tonight. We waited six months, eleven days, six hours, and twenty-two minutes. It was something worth waiting for and I will never look back and regret giving my virginity to this beautiful man who is lying beside me right now. He didn't do anything wrong or anything to hurt me. There was not one bad moment. Now we're just tangled in skin and in his favorite blanket. There is literally nothing more perfect than right now. I don't want him to leave in two days, but I know he'll be back for me. He can't live without me just like how I can't live without him.
After taking the major boost to ego of his pleasure-giving ability, he flipped to a more current entry. There weren't any in this journal from the past month or so besides one as recent as July 12th. It immediately caught his attention. Instead of the usual black ink that she used to write her entries with, she used red to write down the poem. This chilled him to the core; this was worse than he thought. It was no comparison to the words that lied on the page. What he read in the next moment made him feel like everything he had known disappeared into the early morning sky where the large full moon hung closely with the stars as if they were sharing secrets. The clock gradually turned from twelve fifty-nine to one on the dot. Time was frozen, though. He couldn't feel anything. He was numb as if he had frostbite, all of his limbs turning blue:
July 12ths, 2012
Thin Skin and Barely Bone
The scale keeps topping
My heart is breaking
The mirror reflects my shame
This is my own personal game
It's been weeks since I last ate
I cannot let myself gain weight
My image has to be perfect
Even if I end up being wrecked
The scale mocks me
It tells me who to be
It has its own voice
And it's not like I have a choice
Show me how to be pretty
Though I'm not sure I'm ready
Because this is how I'm shown
Thin skin and barely bone
Ezra didn't even realize that he was shaking uncontrollably, his fingers trembling against the leaf of paper that held the words there. Tears pricked his eyes as he read the words over and over again, choked sobs rolling through a catch in his chest and throat. He finally closed the journal and carefully put it back in place before sitting in his chair and just crying into the palms of his hands. It all made since now; the snappy behavior, the dramatic weight loss, the throwing up in the middle of the night. He didn't know how he hadn't seen this before. He'd failed to protect her. He'd failed to make her feel beautiful. He'd failed to notice the signs before now.
He'd failed her.
Quickly, he snapped up and through the stinging of the tears in the indigo depths of his cobalt blue eyes, he typed in the three words that he never would have thought in a million years that he would be searching for: eating disorder symptoms. He let out a whimper as he clicked on one of the first came up in the Google results: National Institute of Mental Health.
He cringed at the words, but stayed on the page, knowing that if he could figure out what was going on with her, he would be able to help her in any way that he could. If he was scared, he couldn't even begin to imagine what his girlfriend was going through or how she was feeling every morning she woke up and looked in the mirror. He forced himself to read through the rain in the dark smoldering orbs as he began to read what he needed to know, a knot forming in his stomach:
An eating disorder is an illness that causes serious disturbances to your everyday diet, such as eating extremely small amounts of food or severely overeating. A person with an eating disorder may have started out just eating smaller or larger amounts of food, but at some point, the urge to eat less or more spiraled out of control. Severe distress or concern about body weight or shape may also characterize an eating disorder.
Symptoms of anorexia nervosa that may develop over time: thinning of bones, brittle hair and nails, muscle wasting and weakness, drop in thermal temperature.
Usually, bulimic behavior is done secretly because it is often accompanied by feelings of disgust or shame. The binge-eating and purging cycle happens anywhere from several times a week to many times a day.
Not able to read anymore words on that page, Ezra exited from the page, shutdown the computer, pushed himself up to his feet and walked out onto the outside balcony, his hands at the back of his head. He had never felt so helpless in his entire life. He glanced up at the sky and somehow, someway, he felt an overwhelming sense of peace wash over him as he stood there, as if Aria was staring up at it, too. He wanted to talk to her. He needed to talk to her right then. He needed her in his arms where he could help her in any way that he could. He needed to be able to make her feel beautiful. He didn't want her to feel like she lose the nonextistent fat on her body. For the first time he murmured the words out loud:
"Aria has an eating disorder."
Out of nowhere, Ezra sees a glimpse of a shadow passing in the moonlight below the balcony. The shadow was small-framed and fast moving, as if the person was on a run early that morning. The movement slowed as they drew closer, but the twenty-four year old already knew who it. His gaze locked with the sunken almond gray eyes that were twinkling up at him, almost beige in the moonlight. Even after all he had just read and all he was feeling, no one would be able to deny the feeling that he felt in the chambers of his heart was love and affection for the breathless tiny girl ten feet below.
Since the front desk was closed downstairs, barring Aria from entrance into the building, he went down the three levels of the fire escape outside his apartment to get to her. The journey was easy since he worked out every morning. He dropped down the last part of the level, somewhat chilled as he brushed off his hands and made his way to Aria, stepping into an atmosphere that he had never wanted to be in. His smile on his face didn't falter, but his heartbeat quickened and sunk in a deep abyss of terror as he took in Aria's shape, stopping a few feet in front of her.
Come on, come out, come here, come here
Come on, come out, come here, come here
Come on, come out, come here, come here
Come on, come out, come here, come here
Her cheeks were sunken in against her jaw; it had only been ten days but it already looks like she was at least fifteen pounds lighter than they had been before. All of the color from her face was drained, leaving behind almost an albino white in place of the blush that he was so in love with. The lining of the tension was stretching tightly against the skin of her jaw. Her hair had lost a lot of its dark auburn color from its dark blown brunette locks, falling limply against her shoulder; it looked very dry. His eyes travelled to her nightshirt where her collarbones stuck out as if there was no skin and she was just a skeleton. Further down her torso, her stomach was abnormally flat against her jutting ribs that seemed to stretch through her skin, clinging to the fabric of the shirt, threatening to burst through.
His gaze relocked with hers and he took a few steps closer. He was cautious. He didn't want to spook her. However, he couldn't help but get extremely close her, where they were exchanging breath. He looked down at her with a wide grin and murmured, hesitantly reaching his hand up to her face, where she pressed it with one of her own bony hands, resting it against her fragile cheekbones, "Welcome home, Aria." His voice broke and he could stand it any longer. He needed to hug her.
The lone neon nights and the ache of the ocean
And the fire that was starting to spark
I miss it all, from the love to the lightning
And the lack of it snaps me in two
Aria beat him to it. Before he could even think about moving, her arms were around her neck, pressing her to him. He could feel her ribs pressing against his abdomen and he did his best to ignore it for the moment. He buried his face into the crevice of her neck, giving it sweet kisses and murmuring comforting words into her skin. He could hear her crying softly; whether it was out of sadness or joy to being back with him where she belonged, he did not know, but soon she was able to respond to his words, her voice soft and breathless, "I'm glad to be home." When he began to loosen his grip on her, she only clutched tighter to him, whimpering, "Don't let me go, Ezra. Please never let me go. Never leave me again." She swallowed hard and Ezra only pressed her closer, if that was even possible, "Please, Ezra. I can't take it. I'm not strong enough."
"You are strong enough," He whispered back, his words breaking as they fell from his trembling lips. He had never known that he had caused her so much pain for leaving her behind in Rosewood after he lost his job. He blamed himself. He blamed himself for everything that she was now going through because he was her trigger, "I am never leaving again. I am at your side for the rest of forever, Aria. Through every storm, every trial, every tangle that we get ourselves into," A single tear fell from his eyes as he pressed a kiss into her hair, "you are where I need to be. I'm here and I'm yours."
Just give me a sign, there's an end and not beginning
To the quiet chaos driving me mad
The lone neon nights and the walls of the ocean
And the fire that is starting to go out
I hope you enjoyed this chapter and the poem that this entire storyline is base off of. The hardest part for me to write was probably either when Aria was throwing up or when Ezra finally found out the truth about what is going on. It made me tear up a bit. Capturing those emotions was like they were my own and it's hard to get in the mindset. But it's worth it. Very, very worth it. This is a great story and I am enjoying writing it a little bit too much.
I apologize for Aria's Bella Swan moment at the beginning of the chapter. I just felt like it was needed and I am a very cheesy romantic who loves the taste of drama. Oh yes, the days of Romance to Last a Lifetime are far behind me!
As said many times before, I have never experienced an eating disorder myself so if I need to make any improvements or if any of you have suggestions to make the story truer to what it's like having one, please get a hold of me on Twitter, Tumblr, or here on the site.
Thank you so much for the reviews! I think I got 30-32 on chapter 3 and 74 reviews all in all. And then all the support on twitter is overwhelming. All of you are amazing and I appreciate the time taken to give me the feedback. Please continue to review and let me know on y'all like the story! All constructive criticism is taken into consideration and professionally. Can we get to 100 reviews by the next update? Please? Thanks again for the support!
And my Twitter friends who I give links to: please leave a review as well. I love the tweets, but they disappear and I love having all of the feedback in one place, so please leave a review in addition to your tweets. I appreciate it.
See you soon!