Compelled (a Hat Films Fanfic)

Wedding

I knocked on the open door frame out of courtesy's sake before walking into the bedroom. The sound was loud enough for Amanda to hear over whatever was coming out of her headphones, and she looked up to give me a small smile before stopping whatever she was working on. "Hey Ross Hornby," she greeted warmly, closing her laptop that sat in front of her crossed legs on the bed.

"Sandy wanted to know if we wanted to go out to eat tonight?" I asked, only flinching slightly when I mentioned food anymore.

We were in a small cabin only minutes away from Derwentwater lake. Amanda and I had already gone swimming twice since we arrive yesterday, and we seemed to have left the horrid August rain and thunderstorms back at Bristol because the forecast called for sun the entire week. Sebastian and Sandy would be getting married this Sunday in a small church in Keswick, and they graciously let us stay in her parent's summer cabin 20 minutes from the city. It was a bit cramped with two couples, plus our other brother and Sandy's cousin and bridesmaid all in a two bedroom cabin, but it was so nice out that we didn't spend much time indoors anyway. At the same time the newly weds would be leaving for their honeymoon, my girlfriend and I would be heading down to Kensington to spend yet another week on The Serpentine, a touristy vacationing lake that were close to quite a few art galleries.

This would be the first time Amanda was away from 'The Center' for more than a week since she started there; she had been going to an eating disorder specialist twice a week all summer, and as much as she joked about how they were all just yoga fanatics and guru wannabes, she has seemed to have gotten better. Amanda has been eating at least once a day for weeks, and as far as I know she hasn't broken that record yet, even with all the traveling.

In the beginning, I had my suspicions that she had just gotten better about hiding her problems from me. It was obvious she thought that leaving school equated to failing out, and as much as she said otherwise I knew how scared she was of recovering and seeing someone. The stigma that she had formulated was that only crazy people saw therapists, and her pride made it hard to get her to leave the house on most of those days.

But, slowly things started to look up. Amanda was having a great time with her steadily growing channel, and her lean towards more indie developers was bringing in a larger audience to the Yogscast as a whole, just as our joining did all those years ago. Now that she was done with school she now had time to work on her art, and lately she has picked up writing poetry and short stories in her free time. Under blessings of her therapist, she also started a new part time job at a comic book store that obtained most of their earning from Magic the Gathering transactions and tournaments. I wasn't crazy about her being one of the only women among a store full of nerdy men, but seeing her come home after every event so excited and full of life quickly changed my attitude to this card game she had gotten into so heavily.

We both needed this vacation in a way. I was completely stressed out from work myself and, though I would never admit it to her face, keeping up with Amanda and her anorexia always took a lot out of me. This time away from work gave us both time to relax and focus on our relationship; we've been so busy that it has stagnated the past few months.

"Uh, I don't know if that's the best idea," Amanda muttered, picking at a pealing sticker on the back of her laptop case to avoid looking at me, her warm smile dropping. I then remembered the breakfast I made her this morning; 350 calories, as I had watched her write it down in her nutrition journal. Of course, that's what it would have been if she had eaten the entire thing, but I knew for her that constituted her one meal per day rule.

"How about you and I go out instead?" I asked, knowing she would be a lot more comfortable without all the other people around.

"Ross Hornby..." she sighed, looking defeated, "I really don't think I'll be able to-"