Fat // Harry Styles

chapter thirty-seven

chapter thirty-seven

THERE WAS A nagging in the back of my mind throughout my stay in the hospital. Miraculously enough, I was eating. Small portions, but it was food nonetheless. There were a few times where I doubted everything and felt like heaving everything up, but then I would think about the potential child and I would think about Harry and I wouldn't feel so nauseous anymore.

I was worried, though. About what I would look like during pregnancy, if the baby lived. What I would look like after. It's inevitable that women gain weight when carrying a child, and it's difficult for most to lose that weight afterwards. I didn't want that excess weight, and it frightened me that I wouldn't be able to shed it. That I'd end up in the hospital again yet with a feeding tube and a hundred times worse.

Harry said it would be easy to lose it when I confided my fears with him, considering we were being honest and I was determined to stick to that this time. He would help, and he would watch me closely so that I ate and stayed healthy and sane. He kept telling me he didn't think I would fall again since I'd picked myself back up, but people can fall numerous times.

Shockingly enough, Lacy was the first to find out about it. She had come in one day while Harry was visiting (the look on his face was priceless when he saw we were talking as if we'd been friends for years), and somehow she had guessed. I couldn't believe that and thought maybe she had looked at my file, but she said people don't just get motivation out of nowhere like I had done.

"They could," I told her. "What if they just had a dream about motivation and they woke up with it?"

"It doesn't work like that," she had said, while Harry was still speechless looking back and forth between us. "Something has to make you want it, Delilah."

"I think you're telepathic, or a privacy invader."

"I can't be both?"

I gave her a look, which made her laugh.

"Lucky for you," she'd said, "I'm neither. Just intuitive."

She came by a couple times a week, and every time it was on her lunch break and she'd ask if I wanted something. I denied for a while, but now it didn't seem so awful. She promised to bring me back a large fry and sweet tea, and I swear we might've actually been long-lost best friends. She wouldn't let me pay her.

When she left, Harry turned to me. He blinked a couple of times, then squinted. "You didn't exactly fill me in on everything."

"Oh, right." I nodded. "Lacy's cool."

He was staring at me as if I had volunteered to swim with ravenous sharks. "Cool? I mean, I'm not against it at all, but... an explanation would help clear this up."

So I told him how she had come into my room about two weeks ago with her plan to imprison Justin. Harry had agreed before I'd even gotten the full sentence out. I also explained how Justin had fooled her into thinking we had dated before, split up, then were "roommates." He just shook his head.

"And I'm pretty sure Nat likes her," I added towards the end. "Every time he sees her now, his face goes all red and flushed and he can't talk straight. It's pretty hysterical, honestly. You wouldn't expect a military man to get so nervous."

"Flustered," Harry corrected me. "It happens when you like someone."

I couldn't help but smile a little, remember how he had practically said the same thing to me months ago.

Goodness, time really flew by, didn't it?

Marty came twice a week, always in the morning. It wasn't so weird talking to him anymore, and truthfully, I sometimes looked forward to it. He was nearly as genuine as Harry, and he always stayed quiet so I would keep talking, only throwing in remarks and additional questions every now and then. He said once that it was nice to see me finally trying, finally accepting help.