Page 90 of Guy's Girl
I think I will never be cured. I think I will always feel disgusted and ashamed about myself, regardless of whether I’m bingeing or purging or just sitting on the couch, existing.
***
Ginny loses track of how many days she’s spent at Eszter and Imre’s house.
Today, they’re going to Jozsef’s house. “He has a pool,” Adrian says.
“That sounds nice,” Ginny says.
She’s lying. With every day that passes, she is utterly convinced that Adrian will wake up, take one look at her, and decide that this is it. This is the day that she’s gained too much. That her arms have grown too thick, her face too wide. How could he possibly be attracted to her when she’s no longer the pin-thin girl he wanted to fuck in the first place?
It hasn’t happened. Not yet.
But the idea of him seeing her in a bikini is so terrifying she can hardly breathe.
***
Jozsef is a delight. He mixes Ginny and Adrian drinks and puts out snacks like they’re a normal bunch of adults without any eating disorders between them. Ginny hasn’t drunk anything sincethat night, so she sips hesitantly at the gin cocktail he hands her, which comes in a green plastic glass with a pineapple spear.
Adrian sits on the side of the pool. He wears dark blue trunks with little white palm trees. The shorts are a normal length, but on his long vine of a body, they look too small. His hair is damp and curly from the water. Stubble peppers his chin. It is in that moment, as Ginny paddles slowly through the pool, that she first thinks the words in their entirety:
I love you.
As soon as the thought occurs to her, she wants to take it back. She wants to wipe it from the fabric of her mind. But something is building inside her. A tight, strangling feeling, like a belt wrapped around her chest. She watches Adrian laugh with Jozsef, concentrating on the soft pink skin of his lips. It hurts to look at him, but it would hurt more if he wasn’t there at all.
Is this what love feels like? Is it just pain and confusion? Ginny cannot fathom why people actively seek this feeling out.
Does he love her, too? She can’t tell. Really, she can’t. She sometimes thinks that Adrian has entire conversations with her that take place only inside his head. At times, he’ll reference a subject about which they have never spoken. Mention it in passing, as if it’s a well-established idea between the two of them when in reality, she has no idea what he’s talking about.
It’s almost as if he believes she is capable of reading his mind.
Here’s how love works: first, you think it. You are staring at someone, and the words pop into your head unbidden.I love you.You cover them up. You try not to think about them again.
But you do, of course. You think of them the next time you see that person. And the next. And the next. TheI love you’s stack one atop the other, building until they take up all theavailable space inside your head. Soon enough, you have no choice. Soon,I love youwill come spilling out, whether you like it or not.
***
Tonight is Ginny’s last night in Budapest. She has to tell him, she decides. It’s now or never.
She doesn’t want to do it when they’re in bed together; it’s too much of a cliché. Plus, it didn’t work out well the last time she tried to have a serious conversation with him in bed. So, she decides to do it after dinner, when his grandparents go for their evening walk.
She’s fucking scared. But she thinks he feels the same way that she does.
She thinks everything is going to be okay.
Well. That was
I don’t
***
Here’s how it happened:
She’s sitting on the couch. Eszter and Imre are out for their walk. Adrian has his head stuck behind the flat-screen TV that was just delivered to the house, something fancy that would allow his grandparents to access Disney+. He’s been at it for a half hour, while Ginny pretends to read the only English book in the house: an early edition Hardy Boys mystery. In reality, she’s just running her eyes over the lines, planning a speech in her head, taking in absolutely nothing.
“Adrian,” she finally blurts out. Then she squeezes her eyes shut.
“Yes?” he says, head still behind the TV.
