Tell him please I don't feel too well

Ella was fidgeting like usual as she sat across from Nick. But for once, she wasn’t fidgeting towards her rubber-band. It was her eyes that were acting shifty this time, Nick noticed. They kept glancing towards the back of the restaurant; the kitchen.

For breakfast, Ella had decided to get a cheeseburger. It wasn’t exactly a “breakfast” kind of food, but Nick didn’t care about that. He actually found it cute; the shy girl was hungry, so she wanted a cheeseburger. It didn’t matter that it was still early in the morning.

“Are you sure you don’t want to get anything?” Ella asked timidly, her eyes shooting across the table. She was feeling self-conscious that she was the only one ordering food. There was little Ella hated more than being the center of attention, even if it was only around one other person.

“I’m fine,” Nick assured her with an understanding smile. “I already ate. Just relax and enjoy your meal! I’m happy just being in your company.”

Ella’s blush intensified. Fortunately, a faerie arrived with her food before she had to respond to his sweet words. Her eyes leapt down to the burger on her plate, and she felt her stomach gnaw insistently at her, rumbling.

She couldn’t help licking her lips, and Nick couldn’t blame her. Ella’s “breakfast” looked pretty damn delicious, a burger with three patties and a mountain of fries, and a chocolate milkshake the size of a gas can for a drink.

“You sure you can handle that much?” Nick joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Ella’s eyes widened and a look of horror flashed across her face. “What’s- what’s that supposed to mean?!” She stammered, her hand shaking towards her rubber-band.

Nick realized immediately that he’d said the wrong thing, though he didn’t know why, and tried to backtrack. “No, sorry, I just meant, that’s a lot of food, so…”

“I’m not some delicate flower,” Ella said sulkily, wishing she could take the words back even as they passed her lips. “I can eat a cheeseburger.”

Why did she have to be so hostile? She knew Nick didn’t mean anything by what he said! But it just leaked out of her, because she was frustrated that people underestimated her all the time.

Ella felt the pressure of Cinder in the back of her head. She wasn’t losing control, though, it was more like **** was being exerted on her skull. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, letting the savory aroma of cooked meat and salt flood into her, and felt herself start to drool.

Without another second of hesitation her hands snapped forward and seized the burger, and the next thing she knew she’d sunk her teeth into it, feeling those delicious juices flood her mouth.

“Mng! Ong! Gawd!” Ella moaned in delight as she took bite after bite. Every burger she ate somehow tasted better than the last, she couldn’t get enough of it! She practically crammed the cheeseburger down her throat, just to get more of it into her-

“Ella!”

Nick’s outburst caused her to freeze halfway through her meal. Her eyes shot up to look at him and she felt her heart stop beating.

Oh… oh no… he… he saw me… I didn’t mean to, it just tasted so good, I… oh no! Shaking, Ella slowly set what was left of the burger down on her plate, and **** herself to swallow what she still had in her mouth. Shame blossomed across her face and she sank back into her chair, horrified by what Nick had just seen.

This was supposed to be a date! She was supposed to be showing Nick her best self, trying to get him to like her. And instead of eating her meal carefully and diligently like someone with a modicum of decent manners, she’d torn into it like a feral animal!

For a moment Ella wanted to die. Then she saw the look of concern on Nick’s face.

“I’m sorry for shouting so suddenly like that,” he said contritely. “But you were eating so fast, I thought you were going to make yourself sick! I know the food tastes good, Ella, but, um…”

Nick wasn’t sure how to finish his sentence. He was concerned for Ella’s health given how fast she’d devoured that burger, but he felt like if he drew attention to it, he would just be shaming her. And the way Ella was looking at him…

“I-I’m sorry.” Her face was a fluster of heat and shame. “I… I forgot my manners, I just…”

Now they were both apologizing. Concerned that the date would stall out like this, Nick tried to pivot slightly. “I don’t mind a girl with a healthy appetite, just to be clear,” he assured her. “But wouldn’t it taste better if you savored it a bit more? It’ll be gone before you know it like that.”

He tried to laugh it off, like everything was a joke. And the awkward laughter from Ella showed her attempt to do the same thing.

Of course, Nick had no idea that Ella would have just gotten another burger in that case.

Ella’s hands were stained with ketchup and her face was, too. It was a minor miracle she hadn’t gotten anything on her pretty dress. Taking a deep breath and calming herself down, she wiped her face with a napkin and tried to clean up, even though she knew that by doing so she was only drawing more attention to her appearance.

Her stomach rumbled. She still felt hungry, but now she felt unsettled, too. Nick saw the queasy expression on her face, and bit his lip. What was the right thing to do here?

“I’m sorry…” Ella blurted out suddenly, looking down at her lap. Her fingers rubbed against her rubber-band, entwining with it as she grappled with the urge to snap away her building issues. She felt like she was going to burst into tears. “I ruined it, didn’t I…?”

Nick stared at her in shock. “What… ruined? Ella, don’t be silly!” He said, shaking his head rapidly. “You didn’t ruin anything! Come on, it’s just breakfast!”

Her head snapped up and she looked at him in surprise. “I… I didn’t?” She asked, timidly, not sure if she could believe him or not. “But… I made a mess of myself, I looked like a massive cerda, a pig, I just… I…” She was starting to babble, and she hated doing that.

“Ella, I don’t care about stuff like that,” Nick assured her. “Come on. You think Gina has any table manners? It’s fine. You’ve spent all morning looking like you were starving. And besides, I’m not one to talk. When Mary cooks for me, I can’t help but eat like there’s no tomorrow, her food’s so good. I was just worried you were going to make yourself sick.” He almost finished with “again” but he caught himself, knowing that Ella would hate to be reminded of that night.

Unfortunately, that was the only thing on her mind right now as her stomach churned impatiently. Half of her wanted to keep eating while the other half knew that if she did, she’d just end up puking it back up later. And the two sides were at war trying to figure out which was better for her in the long run.

And Ella was unfortunately caught in the middle.

The wary girl gazed at her half-eaten cheeseburger, which still looked and smelled sooooo delicious. She licked her lips in spite of herself, but instead of taking another bite, she **** herself to take a sip of milkshake instead.

That helped soothe both sides of her stomach, at least. She let out a sigh and sank back in her chair, glancing warily up at Nick.

“Is everything alright, Ella?” Nick asked her seriously. Nervousness was nothing new for her, but the way she looked at him right now…

She fidgeted. “It’s, I just… I didn’t have a lot to eat last night… Rose was watching me, and I didn’t want her to make fun of me for eating so much…” Ella also had wanted to look her best for her date today, but she didn’t mention that part.

“…So you’re a little hungrier than normal, I get that,” Nick said with a thoughtful nod. “Well, like you said, this much food’s no problem for you, yeah? In that case, um… why not just take it slow? Give the food a little time to settle in your stomach? And we can just talk for a bit.”

Ella’s eyes immediately shot back to her plate. She really didn’t want to do that. …Well, talk, yes, but wait for the food to settle? But she was hungry now!

“Do you want to throw up?! You should take better care of yourself, puta!” She could imagine Cinder chastising her like that, even if she had never once communicated with her other self. But she knew that Nick was right.

She didn’t want to make a mess and throw up on her date with him. That would be absolutely mortifying. So she fought the urge to rip into the rest of her burger, and decided to nibble on a couple of fries instead to stave off her hunger.

A massive improvement compared to her usual eating habits, where she’d shovel them down her gullet by the handful.

Nick was relieved to see Ella take his advice, but only to an extent. The stirring discomfort in his chest hadn’t faded, and he could still feel a tension in the air, with the shy latina as the source.

Should he talk to her about it? Or just let it go for now? Their relationship was in a delicate stage, and the last thing he wanted was to give her another reason to put up a wall.

But Ella’s health was more important than their relationship.

“Ella, can I ask you something?” His serious tone made her flinch, much to his chagrin.

“…What?” Ella fidgeted in her seat and looked warily up at him. She knew what was coming, but she still dreaded it.

“It’s about… your eating habits,” Nick said, knowing that there was no delicate way to bring the subject up, so he might as well go all-in with it.

Ella felt sick to her stomach again.

“Wh-what do you, um… I… look, I’m just hungry, that’s all!”

Nick remembered his discussion with Kim about her own eating habits, and how it made her treat food the way she did. The more he thought about it, the more similarities he saw between the two girls and their situations.

“If you’re hungry, that’s one thing, but eating like that isn’t healthy,” he said, trying his best to express himself with the concern and thoughtfulness he felt, instead of trying to come across as some patronizing jerk. “You could make yourself sick.”

Ella flinched. She’d done that many times already. “…I know,” she said with bitter resignation in her voice. She lowered her head shamefully. “I know, okay?”

Nick bit the inside of his cheek. “Is it because… of how you grew up?”

He was setting foot into a minefield here. Nick had no idea just how sensitive of a subject this was for Ella, but he’d brought it up anyway. I know she was hoping we could have a nice date together, and if I could, I would have tried to avoid this conversation until much later. But I can’t just sit here and watch her **** herself like this.

Ella looked like she was going to be sick. Nick braced himself, waiting for Cinder to take over.

“Thwap!”

But Ella managed to hold her at bay by snapping her rubber-band. Her eyes were wide with surprise, like she hadn’t expected that to work. She sat petrified in her seat, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and a solid minute of silence passed before she finally managed to find her voice.

“…I hardly ate at all when I was little,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Her eyes widened even more; she couldn’t believe she was actually saying this. But it just poured out of her, from a deep, dark place at the bottom of her stomach, and she couldn’t hold anything back.

The words needed to come out. They were forcing their way to the surface and demanding to be heard. Even as Ella tried to keep from spilling her guts.

“My stepmother would send me to bed without dinner if she wasn’t satisfied with my performance during the day, which happened a lot,” Ella said bitterly. Her sweet features twisted with poisonous venom as she begrudgingly recalled those dark times. “And I had to start work at the crack of dawn, so I didn’t have time for breakfast. The only meal I could count on every day was lunch… and only after I cooked for everyone else first.”

Nick honestly had no idea what to say. As someone who was growing increasingly aware of his tendency to say the wrong thing, he didn’t have a clue what the right thing to even say in this situation was. “I’m sorry” didn’t really seem to do her situation justice.

And yet, of course, that was exactly what popped out of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said, kicking himself mentally as he did. “That sounds really hard.”

No kidding, of course it was hard! Are you stupid or something!? He rebuked himself.

But as moronic as his statement may have been, Ella didn’t seem to take it that way. She looked at him in wide-eyed amazement, like she never would have expected him to empathize with her like that.

“I… it was,” she nodded, biting her lip. “It was so, so hard, and I… I always felt so hungry, every night… I would toss and turn on the moldy mattress I had for a bed, trying to sleep while my stomach was… urgh…”

She rubbed her belly and winced. Just remembering those dark days brought the uncomfortable feeling back.

And Cinder pounding in her skull didn’t help matters.

“Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!”

Stop it! Don’t come out right now! I know it hurts and I’m scared, but I need to do this! I need him to understand! If he gets it, then maybe he won’t look at me like some piggy girl with the manners of a wild dog!

Ella felt like she was going to die under the pressure of Nick’s compassionate stare. She wanted so badly to just embrace the caring emotions she felt from the sweet man, but how could she do that when she didn’t deserve them?

“So that’s why you were eating so fast…” Nick said, understanding dawning on him. “Because you’re still stuck in that mindset.”

“Uh… what?” Ella raised her head, perplexed. “Mindset? What… huh?”

“…Sorry, sorry,” Nick said, quickly shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have-”

“No, what were you going to say?” Ella gasped out, her eyes widening. “What- what were you going to say?”

She chewed on her lip and looked frantically at him, **** to connect.

The intensity of her stare left Nick stunned for a moment, and he shifted in his seat, deciding to explain.

“Ella, do you know what an eating disorder is?” He asked her seriously.

She shook her head.

“…Well, it’s something that develops when you have a bad relationship with food. Not, like, an allergy, but with food as a concept… ugh, I’m not so good at explaining this…” Nick grumbled, rubbing his head. If only Dawn was here. She could have put this in words Ella would understand.

Instead, Nick’s poor attempt at explaining just left Ella looking and feeling even more confused than before.

“…It’s like this, um, because… because when you were growing up you were deprived of steady and reliable access to food, you developed a twisted relationship with it,” he said, trying to explain a little better. “You never knew for sure when you would get your next meal, and you never got enough to feel full, right?”

“…Yeah…” Ella winced.

“So because of that, you developed bad eating habits, like eating whatever you could get your hands on as fast as possible before anyone could take it away.” Nick was just guessing with that, but he had a pretty good feeling that was the case. The way Ella had torn into that burger, it was like watching a wild animal devouring a kill.

Ella nodded again, and snapped her rubber-band. She could make it through this without Cinder, she could!

“…And then you came here, and you could have all the food you want, whatever you want, whenever you want,” Nick said, raising his arms and looking around the restaurant. “But are you really embracing that? I’m not sure you are. You finally have the chance to eat whatever you like, and that’s great! But the way you’re acting, it’s like you’re still afraid that it could all get taken away from you. And that’s the eating disorder.”

Ella’s problem, in many ways, was the opposite of Kim’s. At first, Kim had been **** to indulge herself. Then once she did, she went too far the other way with it, like Ella was now. Ella had never hesitated to indulge in every tasty morsel she could find; and as a result, she’d made herself sick at least once that Nick was aware of.

“…So it’s my fault,” Ella said quietly, looking down at her plate. “Because I was so hungry I kept stuffing my face like a piggy, until I made myself sick…”

“No, it’s NOT your fault,” Nick asserted. “You have an eating disorder, Ella, and that’s nothing you should feel guilty about!”

Ella looked up at him with wide eyes, peering in curiosity at Nick from past her bangs.

“It… it isn’t?”

“No, it isn’t,” Nick asserted. “Trust me, lots of people have eating disorders, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. With how you grew up, I’m surprised you’re handling yourself so well, in fact!”

Ella wasn’t. She really wasn’t. If Nick knew half of what she’d been doing…

“I… I don’t, um… I just… the food, it’s all so good… I’ve never had food that tasted this good before… I just can’t help myself, so…”

“So you eat until you make yourself sick. Ella, that’s fine.”

Nick paused.

“…Okay, it’s not fine, I guess, it’s actually pretty bad. But the important thing is that you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s like… you’re sick. Like a bad habit! Like chewing your nails or something. You just have to break it somehow.”

Of course, that was the obstacle they had to overcome. Nick may have been able to identify Ella’s eating disorder because of how obvious it was now that he was paying attention, but that was a far cry from being able to fix it. He wasn’t a psychiatrist, and he had no experience with eating disorders himself.

So how could he help her?

Ella saw the worry and concern all over Nick’s face, and it made her feel anxious. She wished she could be better so he wouldn’t worry, but how could she?

“Um… thank you… for being so concerned about me,” she mumbled, looking down again. The burger was still half-eaten and there were plenty of fries left. But for once, she didn’t feel hungry.

Was this what it meant to let food settle? This was the longest Ella had ever gone without emptying her plate. It was a weird feeling. Her stomach churned, not quite satisfied, leaving Ella not quite satisfied either.

But… Nick had been concerned about her. He was trying to help her. And that left her feeling full in a different way.

She actually managed to smile when she looked up and met his gaze, even if neither one of them had any idea how to fix her.