Free It's Never Enough: Book 1 in the Never Series by Susan Soares Page A

repercussions was a high I’d never felt before. Having my best friend doing it with me only added to the high. We’d been doing it for months. But we were crossing into a different realm. The binge-and-purge realm. It was scary. Really scary.
    “Oh, God. Here it comes,” Haley said before her body lurched over the toilet bowl and she began to vomit. I held her blonde hair back as she puked. When she was finished, she splashed some water on her face and rinsed her mouth out with mouthwash. “Okay, your turn,” she said to me with a supportive smile on her face.
    My stomach was bloated and in so much pain from all the food we’d eaten. I wanted to get rid of it. I really did. But I wasn’t sure if this was the right way Maybe I could just stop. Maybe I could learn never to binge again. I’d develop a system. I could get it all under control.
    “You’d better hurry up before you start digesting that shit,” Haley said, pushing the bottle of ipecac closer to my mouth.
    With my eyes closed, I took a shot of the vile stuff. A mixture of fear, anxiety, pain, and heat swirled in my stomach like a whirlpool. Within a minute, I was hurling more shit than I thought I even had in me into the toilet while Haley held my hair back.
    She handed me a cool, wet face cloth. “See, that wasn’t so bad, right?”
    “Sure,” I said. My voice and hands shook. “Not so bad.”
    She wrapped her arms around me in a big bear hug. “You’re the best friend a girl could ever have.”
    For how shitty I felt, her words and her hug made me feel better.
     
    ***
     
    The progression happened quickly. Soon after Haley’s stepdad beat her mom for the first time. That’s when she changed. She no longer wanted to binge and purge. She no longer wanted to eat, anything, ever. She dropped down to ninety-seven pounds in two months. While she was disappearing, I was binging and purging over my fear of what was happening to her. I couldn’t eat normally. Every thought I had was about food. I didn’t want to lose her but I didn’t know how to stop her either.
    “Don’t let the food touch your lips,” she said.
    I was at her house and her mom had made a birthday dinner for her. Mrs. Emerson ignored the truth that was right in front of her. That her daughter was anorexic. She’d found ways to hide how bad she really was. The baggy clothing. Hiding food in her napkins. She had lots of little tricks.
    “She’ll be watching to see me eat. So I have to. But it will be the smallest amount I can. And it’s super important to not let the food touch your lips.” She was putting on extra makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes.
    “Why?”
    “It just is!” she snapped.
    I nodded my head and would do what she asked. I didn’t want to lose her. Only eventually I would.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
     
    “There you go my dear,” Eliza said as she handed me my iced French vanilla coffee.
    “Thanks,” I said while admiring her makeup today—dark smoky blue eyelids with orchid lip gloss drenched in glitter.
    I turned to meet Devin’s smile. “We have a problem.” His voice was as serious as a tsunami.
    “What is it?” Never say those words unless you want to hear my heartbeat overtake all other sounds in the room.
    Devin pointed to my self-designated spot “Look.”
    When I turned, I saw that someone had the nerve to be sitting in my booth. “You’re kidding me!” I made a sarcastic huff like a territorial poodle.
    “Shall I inform them of the error of their ways, or just kick their ass?” he joked.
    The woman sitting there working on her knitting as she sipped tea—probably decaf—didn’t seem to need an ass kicking; a pacemaker maybe, but definitely not an ass kicking. “She’s lucky I’m in a good mood.”
    “You are?” Devin draped an arm around me.
    “More so all the time.” I tilted my head to him, and he bent down to lay his soft, warm lips on mine.
    It had been two days since I’d seen him. He worked a few twelve-hour