Paint Me Beautiful

my face.
    The girl is looking at me like I'm crazy, taking in my sunken cheeks, my quivering hands, the designer dress that's still damp from the rain outside. She's tiny, super skinny, but she has a massive soda sitting next to her register. Even as she's ringing me up, she reaches over and sucks brown sugar water through her straw. I want to reach across the space between us and just strangle her. Why, why do I have to suffer to be skinny while she drinks soda and stays a size zero? The universe is cruel.
    “ Would you like help out?” she asks me, eyes half-lidded and bored. I somehow take this to mean that she's glaring at me and shake my head, grabbing my cart and hauling ass outside, so that I can throw my grocery bags into the back of Emmett's trunk with as much force as I can muster, not caring that things are breaking, getting crushed.
    I feel so guilty, like I've got a car full of cocaine or something, and hunch over it when people pass, afraid that they'll judge me because I have so many bags, that they'll imagine me eating it all by myself, growing fatter and fatter and fatter, disappearing into my own body. As soon as I'm done, I abandon the cart where it is and peel out of that parking lot, press the pedal to the floor and roll all the windows down, just so I can feel the wind in my air, taste the chill of it against my already cold skin.
    I'm lucky I don't pass out on the way back.
    When I arrive back at the yellow house with the gray roof, the one that looks too quaint to be real, like it's been pulled right out of a Thomas Kinkade painting, I see that all the lights are on. Shit. Emmett is up. I wonder if he's called the police to report a stolen car or at the very least how he's going to react when I walk in that door. Will he be angry with me? Upset? Or maybe he won't care at all. I decide not to linger in case he decides to come out and check on me. If he does, then I will never be able to execute my plan, not because Emmett would stop me but because he won't. Because he'll just look at me and say, Oh, Claire. I can't let anybody know about the binge I have planned. If they find out, then the guilt and the shame of them knowing will take me over that edge and kill me. I know it will. So, I grab the bags with the omelet supplies in them and head into that house with a smile on my face.
    When I come in, Emmett is sitting on the couch with a book in his hand and his lower lip red from where he's worried at it with his teeth. When he looks up at me, he smiles, and I smile back.
    “ Omelet?” I ask him, holding up the bags and trying to pretend that he doesn't look relieved, excited, happy for me. If you only knew, I think. God, Emmett, if you only knew.
    “ I'm glad you're okay,” he says as he stands up and sets his novel aside, walking up to me and sliding the plastic bags from my hands, setting them gently on the floor and taking me into his arms for another one of his cosmic kisses, the ones that threaten to split the sky and crack the earth. I tilt my head back and let him in, savoring the soft feel of his tongue, the warmth of his body, the solidity he's brought to me in such a short period of time. I might have just met Emmett, but in my heart, I know that I can count on him forever, friend or lover or whatever he ends up being.
    “ All I did was go to the grocery store,” I say, but we both know that that's not what he's talking about. He's glad I didn't leave, that I didn't pass out while I was driving, that I didn't end my own life. These are the silent words that ring loud as shouts in that quiet living room.
    “ Good to hear,” Emmett says, leaning back so he can grab my gray eyes with his brown ones.
    “ I used to be interesting,” I blurt out, suddenly needing him to know that I haven't always been like this, that there's somebody else inside of this shell, somebody who can draw dresses in blue colored pencil, who once made a pair of faux leather pants out of black trash bags and duct tape.
    “ Baby,” Emmett says as he moves blonde hair away from my face. “In my eyes, you still are.”

 

    I stand in front of my closet and I rifle throughgarments until I find the one I'm looking for. The Dolce & Gabbana dress I'm wearing is nice, but it isn't right, and if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it flawlessly. If I'm going to jump into the deep end, I'm going to do it in a swan dive, going to fall pretty and perfect.
    I think about Emmett as I pull the bag from the