STUFFED

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Right when Bradyn walks through the door, the yelling starts.

He is already expecting it so he isn't really too concerned when it happens. Instead he just stands there and takes it. He knows it was wrong of him not to let anyone know where he was, but it was an accident. It wasn't like he purposefully withheld that information from his mom. Nonetheless he let his mom vent and speak her mind.

Once she's done he apologizes twice and then hands over his phone. He's only allowed to have it when he leaves for school and school is the only place he's allowed to go. She never specifies the length of time he'll be grounded for and he doesn't bother asking. Maybe he'll get released early for good behaviour.

—-————————————————————-

It's been a week and it seems as if Bradyn has been gone for a month. He texts her during the school day but other than that it's like he doesn't exist.

Her parents left without saying goodbye yesterday so she's completely alone in the house again.

She misses Bradyn and, naturally, she's been filling the void with food. Courtney finds herself eating a lot more than she usually does lately. It's mostly out of boredom. It started as snacking in between meals until the snacking became so frequent that she blurred the lines between the start of one meal and the end of the next. She just kind of eats away mindlessly throughout the entire day now.

On one particular day, Courtney decided to push her limits and was surprised at just how much she could really devour now. If you would've told her last summer that she'd be eating six burgers in one sitting without even batting an eye she'd think you must be insane but she sits on her bed now packed full of an ungodly amount of food restlessly switching positions to try and get comfortable.

There is no soothing the ache in her tummy that she helplessly tries to work out with her palm.

'Why do I do this to myself?' Courtney moans.

The food always feels so good on the way down but it's the digesting part that warrants to be the most troublesome.

Recently she finds that the majority of the time her body doesn't even digest fully anymore. She can't remember the last time her stomach rumbled because it was empty. She's never really felt empty, per say, but rather just varying levels of full. Courtney would wake up in the morning bloated and still feeling as if her meal from the previous day hadn't fully digested yet.

A burp bubbles up in her mouth leaving an aftertaste of what lies in her depths below.

Courtney goes on her phone as an attempt to distract herself from the discomfort and lands on old pictures of herself in her camera roll. She's pictured standing next to a couple of her old cheer teammates, embracing and laughing. She can't believe she used to look like that. She looks down at her legs. The girl in the picture was the size of her left thigh now.

Crazy how much can change in a few months.

She goes to swipe across the screen but at the same time her screen goes pale and a red and a green circle show up at the bottom. She accidentally answers the call before she has any time to react. When she sees Griffin's name at the top she panics.

Fuck.

She doesn't really want to talk to him right now. Not like this. But she can't really hang up the phone either. That would be rude. She did answer the phone so hanging up now would look bad. She hesitates for too long so Griffin speaks into the silence.

"Hello?"

Courtney snaps back into the present and responds, "Hey."

Her answer seems a bit forced to him, like she's surprised or something, which doesn't make sense seeing as she's the one who answered the phone.