Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,79
little redder than they’d been a few moments ago.
“Sorry,” he mumbled quietly. “I didn’t mean to . . .” He moved back to the stove and lit the gas again.
Something strange had fallen over him, I could see it like a dark cloud around his head, same as last night.
“Where did you say you lived before coming here?” I asked curiously. He ignored my question and turned to me with a smile.
“I’m thinking bacon and pancakes,” he said cheerfully.
I looked at him for a moment; it was clear he’d put an end to this conversation, and it was clear that it wasn’t for my benefit either. I took another sip of coffee, the sugar firing up a whole bunch of neurons in my brain that had been lying dormant for quite some time. They tantalized my taste buds and make my mouth cry out for . . .
“Pancakes. Yes. Please.” I sat back down at the table.
“Good choice.” Mark turned back to the stove and, moments later, a large plate was pushed in front of me. I stared down at it and images of my childhood breakfasts came back to me. Breakfast was always my favorite meal of the day and I used to pile the plate with food and eat as much as I could. Kind of like a tranquillizer, taken before an operation to calm you down. That plate of food I ate in the morning was like that to me, something to calm me down before the inevitable day of relentless teasing at school. Ironically, the thing I was turning to in my moments of pain was also the thing causing me to be teased. The vicious cycle continued, and went around and around on itself, like that image of a snake eating its own tail.
“I only eat pancakes and bacon on the weekend,” Mark suddenly said, and I looked up, confused.
“What?”
“During the week I eat muesli with yoghurt and fruit.” He stabbed a pancake and put it on his plate. “Point is, pancakes on the weekend doesn’t make you unhealthy. It doesn’t make you a sugar junkie. It makes you normal.”
I watched as he tipped the syrup over the pancake and it dripped down the side.
“I learned many years ago that being too extreme about one thing isn’t good for your mental health.” He cut the pancake with the side of his fork and popped a piece in his mouth. I nodded at him. That did make sense. He looked at my plate and seemed to urge me on. I sighed.
“Well, here goes,” I said, sticking my fork into a piece of crispy bacon and fluffy-looking pancake. I raised it to my mouth and looked at it. It looked back at me—well, that’s how it felt anyway. I bit into it. It crunched between my teeth and the delicious salty taste was instant, followed by the sweet syrup. It made my body scream out for more. Within minutes, I had devoured everything on my plate and when I looked up, Mark was just watching me.
“Would you like more?” he asked, as if he’d been waiting to ask this question.
I simply nodded. No words needed. Mark slid his plate over to me.
“What about you?” I asked, looking down at the kind offering.
He shrugged. “It’s fine. Looks like you need breakfast more than me.”
I nodded at him and carried on eating, eating as if I hadn’t seen food in years. My phone, and Kyle, had always made me feel guilty about what I ate, and now that they were not here, the guilt was melting away, much like the syrup down the side of the pancake.
CHAPTER 39
I stood on his veranda, looked out over the nothingness and started to feel a little scratchy and itchy all over. It had nothing to do with the warm, full sensation deep in my belly. This was the scratchy itchiness I’d become familiar with over these last few days. It was that uncomfortable feeling of having nothing to do, nothing to fill those moments and gaps of silence with. The gaps that I would usually fill with my phone.
When nothing was happening around me, I would pick up my phone. I’d scroll through it with no intention of looking at anything in particular. I saw nothing. I read nothing. I stopped at no pictures. But just the act of doing it and knowing that there were people, right below my fingertips, that I could reach out to at any time, usually made