Page 108 of Love in the Dark
Everything your parents are saying is true.
I can feel my hips stretching, the fat at my stomach growing, repercussions of my inability to control myself.
Shameful.
Deep, burning shame.
That's all I feel.
You don’t even deserve to live.
I shut off the lights and get in bed knowing the voice has me back in its clutches.
Nights are the worst. I don’t even have the comfort of the outside world’s noise to drown it out. No, it gets to yell at me until I beg for the escape that is the nothingness of sleep.
I close my eyes and let the thoughts of self-loathing take me into a fitful sleep, knowing that I’m going to wake up and do the same thing all over again tomorrow.
???
“Nera! Come here.”
“Yes, Coach,” I say, jogging over to where Krav is standing. I didn’t sleep well after getting home last night, so I’m moving a little slowly at this practice.
This is the final hour of my workout and our only one-on-one time as everybody else filters out.
I was hoping Krav would go easy on me, but he seems intent on making this entire session painful. Sadism shines in his gaze when he sees me approach.
I falter, my eyes widening in horror before I mask the expression away quickly when I realize what he’s holding in his hand.
A scale.
“Time to see where you are,” he grounds, the tenor of his voice combined with the accent sounding completely merciless.
There’s no use fighting him. He’s just obeying orders. My father’s or my mother’s, I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. Today’s one of those days where dread lives freely in my heart. The rest of this workout, hell, the next few weeks even, depend entirely on how this weigh-in goes.
He places it on the ground and I step on, holding my breath. Hoping that what I’ve been doing in the bathroom when I’ve come home from Tristan’s will have balanced out my eating.
The numbers cycle through and eventually settle. The blood in my veins freezes over when I see the final weight.
I’ve gained half a kilo since he last weighed me a few weeks ago. I was supposed to lose that much in order to stay on target with the goals he and my father outlined for me.
I don’t dare look up and meet his eyes. Not when I can feel the polar vortex rippling off him.
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
His tone is terrifying and I know I’m in for real pain. I fight to burrow myself in that place in my mind where I go for practices like these.
“No, Coach.”
There’s no point arguing, that’ll just make it worse.
“Two hundred pushups.”
Without hesitating, I drop to the ground and get started. He walks slowly around me, his feet staying ominously in my range of vision. My throat is thick with tension but I push past it. Seconds later, I feel a cold weight added to my lower back.
“Wha–”
“Keep going,” he orders.