Christmas was practically a month long affair in our family, especially now that we all had families of our own to celebrate with. Isaac and Nikki had started a new tradition of hosting an ‘adults only’ party early in December. In theory, it allowed us all to get away from the kids and have a more adult sort of party; in reality, with so many newborn babies to be constantly checked on and nursing mothers who couldn’t drink, it didn’t really turn into that raucous of an event.
Still, it was a nice, quiet night for the six of us and a few of our friends. I should have been more excited about it than I was, I supposed, but it seemed that lately I didn’t get excited about anything. Even the twinkling lights and Christmas decorations we passed by on the drive couldn’t seem to make me smile, when normally I found myself filling with glee like a child during the holiday season. I tried to paste on a smile anyway as we arrived at Isaac and Nikki’s house with presents and sparking grape juice in tow.
The party was already in full swing when we arrived, if a group of adults sitting around playing card games and listening to Christmas carols could be considered full swing. There was some of that childlike glee about it, but at the same time, it wasn’t very exciting at all. When had we all become so boring? When we settled down and started having kids, I supposed. It was different when Taylor was the only one of us with children; he was something of a novelty. Now we were all in the same world of mortgages, diapers and all the tedium of daily life that I had thought being a rockstar would exclude us from.
“Come on,” Kate said, giving my arm a squeeze. “Let’s go say hi to Nat and Tay.”
“Okay,” I replied.
I was surprised the two of them had even come to the party; Natalie had only just been released from the hospital after a long but ultimately successful birth. As we approached them, sitting alone in a corner of the living room, I could see that they still looked like they hadn’t slept in days. They probably hadn’t. Still, there was a small smile on Natalie’s face that almost hide the ordeal they had been through over the last few days.
“Hey you two,” Kate said. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring that little man with you.”
“I wanted to,” Natalie replied. “But this probably isn’t the best place for someone so little. Diana and Walker are watching him. And honestly, I’m ready to go home and sleep already.”
“I had to drag this one out of bed to get him here,” Kate said, giving me a nudge. “I swear, he sleeps more than the baby.”
“That’s a little bit of an exaggeration,” I replied, but it wasn’t really. I just didn’t have any energy these days.
Before Kate could contradict me, I felt a hard, but friendly, slap on my back. I turned my head and saw Isaac standing next to me.
“Glad to see you guys made it!” He said a little too loudly, and I could smell the alcohol fumes coming off of him. “Grab a beer, make yourself at home. Oh, and some of those sausage balls Nikki always makes. They’re the best.”
“I’m good,” I replied softly.
Isaac rolled his eyes. “Of course you are. Do you eat at all anymore?”
“Of course I eat,” I snapped. It was pointless and stupid to even answer him. I ate plenty, sometimes in horrible binges that left me feeling worse than before. But it didn’t matter what I said or didn’t say; Isaac would think whatever he wanted to think.
“Hey,” Kate said softly. “It’s okay. We’ll just get a little snack; we haven’t had dinner yet.”
I shook my head, but I knew I had lost the argument. If Kate was siding with Isaac, then there would be no escaping it. I would have to eat. I let her guide me to the kitchen, thankful to get away from the jokes about my appetite or lack thereof that I knew my brothers were still telling.
The kitchen was filled with food and the smell of it was like an assault on my senses. I headed straight to the cooler on the floor and grabbed a bottle of cider, while Kate surveyed what food was available. She picked up a plate and began filling it with dainty little portions of everything available.
“Do you want a plate, too?” She asked. “There are still plenty of those sausage balls left.”
I shook my head. “Maybe in a little bit, but not right now.”
Kate nodded, pursing her lips. I knew she understood, at least on some level, that I just couldn’t eat, and she rarely pushed that hard. “Well, how about some broccoli salad? I think the dressing is just oil, so it’s still healthy enough.”
“Just a little serving. One of the small plates,” I replied, heaving a sigh.
It was just broccoli, I reminded myself. A vegetable. Vegetables were good. Cider was good, too, I decided, and took another large swig from the bottle. Somehow, I had already drained it halfway, just in the course of this small negotiation over what to eat. I grabbed another bottle as Kate filled the plate and handed it to me, and I just barely managed to give her a smile and a thank you. I really was grateful that she wasn’t pushing the issue any further.
We made our way back into the living room with our food and drinks, and I resisted the urge to make a huge show to Isaac of the fact that I was eating. I was sure he would just make some joke about how I was turning into a vegetarian. A part of me wished I had just stayed in the kitchen; it was easier to eat if no one was watching to judge how much or how little.
The cider made me feel warm inside for the first time in what seemed like weeks, though, and by the time I had finished the second one, I was feeling a little fuzzy, too. I supposed that was a pleasant side effect of not eating much—it turned me into a really cheap drunk. That didn’t stop me from drinking more and more, though, until the whole room was spinning.
“Well, someone’s in a good mood for once,” Isaac said, grabbing my bottle to stop me from tipping it over as I leaned in to look at Kate’s Uno cards. She had joined a game with a few of the other women after finishing her little meal, while I found myself drifting around the fringes of the party, getting progressively closer to shitfaced.
“I’m always in a good mood,” I slurred, the words sticking on the back of my tongue.
“Just leave it,” Kate said softly, pulling the card I’d pointed to and putting it in the table.
“I’m leaving it. I have left it,” I replied. “He’s the one who keeps picking it back up.”
“Maybe if you’d eat a little something more often, you’d stay in a good mood.”
My only response was to glare at Isaac. Why did it always come back to the food thing? He was more obsessed with what I ate or didn’t eat than I was. And unlike Avery’s misguided concern, Isaac only offered condemnation. Why did he want me to eat? Did he want me to gain weight?
“What did you eat?” Isaac asked. “One carrot stick?”
“And washed it down with half your alcohol, from the looks of things,” Taylor remarked, and I hadn’t even noticed he was paying attention the this conversation at all.
In fact, I realized, the entire room had gone quiet, everyone watching this strange and pointless confrontation. I hated being the center of attention, especially when the conversation centered around my weight. I didn’t need more people thinking about or talking about my body. I already knew what it looked like; their opinions were unnecessary.
I set my cider bottle down on the card table with a decisive thump and turned to leave. I couldn’t handle all their eyes on me, and all of the alcohol seemed ready to make a second appearance anyway. Before anyone could stop me, I had run to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. My knees hit the tile with an awful crunch and I crawled to the toilet from where I had landed just inside the door.
I hated this. I hated the way everyone was starting to see it and starting to talk about it. I was finally close to where I wanted to be, so near to perfect that I could almost taste it, and no one wanted me to get there. Hadn’t they all joked about my weight before? Now they hated that I had lost it. It didn’t make sense at all. There was nothing I could do to please them.
Was I doing this to please them, though? I didn’t think so. It just seemed like it would be a nice bonus. But it was becoming apparent that I would always be out of step with everyone else and never good enough no matter what I did. All I could do was to try please myself and be the person I wanted to be, yet somehow even that seemed so elusive, so out of my grasp.
At least my overindulgence in alcohol meant that I didn’t have to force myself to vomit. That happened all on its own, the one thing that had gone right the whole night. Still, there was little to come out but the alcohol itself, which burned just as much as it had going down. My retching quickly turned to sobbing, whether from pain, emotions or both, I really couldn’t say.
“Zac?” Kate’s soft voice just barely carried through the door and the awful sounds I was making that I really hoped no one else at the party could hear. “Is everything okay in there?”
“No,” I replied honestly, the sentence punctuated by a painful hiccup.
“Is it too bad for you to unlock the door and let me in?”
“Probably.” I sighed and flushed the evidence down the toilet. “But I’ll do it anyway, I guess.”
I scrambled to the door and unlocked it, but didn’t bother to stand the rest of the way up. Instead, I sank back against the wall as Kate opened the door just far enough to let herself in. That far down the hallway, I couldn’t see the rest of the party at all, and I was thankful for that.
Kate sat down in front of me, cross-legged on the tile. “So what’s going on? You really were chugging those drinks pretty fast, weren’t you?”
“I guess so,” I replied, staring at the floor.
“I’m not going to tell you that you should have eaten more.”
I sighed. “But I should have.”
Kate didn’t acknowledge that, but I knew it was what she wanted to say. I couldn’t say that I agreed, but I supposed if I had filled my stomach up with a little more food, all that alcohol might have settled better and I wouldn’t have made a laughingstock of myself at the annual adult Christmas party. There were a lot of little things I could have done differently, but it was too late to dwell on them.
“Can we go home?” I asked weakly.
“I already told everyone that we were,” Kate replied. “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll leave. It’s okay. The party was kind of a bust this year anyway, brotherly arguments aside.”
“I’m sorry I ruined it,” I mumbled.
“You didn’t ruin it, baby,” Kate said. “Everything will be better in the morning, once we’ve all gotten some rest and you’ve gotten over the hangover you’re probably going to have.”
I groaned. The thought of getting through the next five minutes was hard enough; I couldn’t fathom the next morning at all. But I knew that in the great scheme of things, it was minuscule. It was one small task I could accomplish, especially with Kate by my side.
She offered me her hand and I took it readily, letting her pull me to my feet. Her strength surprised me, or maybe it was my weakness. Maybe both. On shaky feet, I let her walk me out of the bathroom and hung my head as she made our goodbyes. The party had mostly broken up anyway, and I knew that no matter what Kate said, it was partially my fault.
Once again, I had made a mess of everything when all I wanted to do was get everything right. But at least I still had Kate.