Chapter 12: Never The Best: Chapter 12

‘I‘ll tell you what happens.’ My chest tightened, ready to eject all my unpleasant thoughts and self-loathing. ‘You start to believe that’s all you are. A body. An ugly one. You become a collection of flaws for people to critique, to judge, to laugh at. You start to think, ‘If I can just fix myself, if I can somehow become smaller, prettier, better, then maybe…maybe I’ll finally be enough.”

We stopped walking and stood on the beach, with the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean in front of us.

‘It started small. Skipping meals. Eating just enough to get by but never enough to feel full. I told myself that I needed to be more disciplined. I ate too much, ate the wrong things, ate at all—that was the problem. Not eating started to feel like I had control.’

Rhett’s brow furrowed. He put a hand on my cheek as if he was unable to temper his need to touch me.

‘Soon, I was terrified of food. I checked my weight relentlessly. Even if I gained half a pound, I saw it as a personal failure.’

I stepped away from him because his touch was comforting, and I didn’t want to draw relief from him. I couldn’t. He was engaged to another woman, and no matter how much I’d loved him as a teenager and still wanted him now, the truth was that he wasn’t mine. He had never been, even if my sixteen-year-old heart had fleetingly dreamed that.

He let me go.

‘I was diagnosed with anorexia,’ I said the word with fear as if it would break me again as it had in the past. ‘What do you know about anorexia?’ I kept my voice casual as I started to walk again, feeling the sand under my feet. Even though it was summer, the evenings in southern California tended to be cooler because of the sea air. After the Savannah heat, it was delicious.

‘I know that it’s an eating disorder,’ he stated, his voice so low that I could barely hear him.

‘I had…have anorexia nervosa. It’s not about food but about control. It’s about fear. And yes, depression and anxiety are a big part of it. They’re like background noise you can never turn off. The depression tells you you’re not good enough, and the anxiety makes you believe you have to keep proving yourself, over and over, even when it’s killing you.’

I glanced at him, gauging his reaction. His jaw was tight, his hands fisted at his sides, but his eyes were soft and full of sorrow and anger—not at me but at himself.

‘Did you throw up your food and all that?’ he asked tightly.

I shook my head. ‘I don’t have bulimia. I never purged. But I restricted my food to the point where it wasn’t just unhealthy—it was dangerous. And the worst part?’ I chortled bitterly. ‘People praised me for it. ‘You look so good, Pearl! Have you lost weight? What’s your secret?’ My secret was that I was starving myself, but no one cared as long as I was thinner.’

‘Jesus,’ Rhett whispered, running a hand over his face. ‘I…I never would’ve thought….’

‘Of course, not,’ I snapped, a sharp edge creeping into my tone. ‘Why would you? People like you—the ones who always fit, who always belong—you never have to think about what it’s like to have your worth reduced to your reflection in a mirror.’

I knew it wasn’t fair to lash out at him, but I was opening old and new wounds so he could see me bleed. He was here, wasn’t he? He was the only person I could express my anger at. The fact that he didn’t respond with rage or defensiveness, just understanding, made me feel small.

‘I….’ He trailed off, shaking his head as if searching for the right words. ‘I can’t…I can’t imagine what that was like.’

I nodded, acknowledging the truth in his words. ‘You can’t truly understand it unless you’ve lived it. But I’ll tell you this—anorexia isn’t merely an eating disorder. It’s a mental illness. It’s a disease that worms its way into your brain and convinces you that thinner is better, that food is the enemy, and that your value is measured in numbers: pounds, inches, calories. It’s not rational. It doesn’t make sense. But it’s so loud, Rhett. It drowns out everything else until it’s all you can hear.’

He drew me to him and held me. I didn’t resist. I needed his strength, and I drew on it. I leaned my forehead against his chest, took a deep breath, and filled my lungs with salty air.

Rhett pulled away, even though he kept me in the circle of his arms. His looked raw, unguarded. He was in pain. He felt my pain. I’d never felt more seen than right now. ‘Are you…are you okay now?’

I gave him a small, assuring smile. ‘I’m okay. I eat. I do therapy. I work hard to keep myself in a good place. But some days are harder than others. Some days, I look in the mirror, and all I see is the girl I used to be—the one who wasn’t enough. The one who thought the only way to matter was to disappear.’

‘Being in Savannah doesn’t help, does it?’ he intuited.

‘My therapist warned me that there would be triggers. And there are. But so far…it’s been manageable.’

He kissed my forehead gently. ‘That girl you sometimes still see in the mirror was incredible. The woman you’ve become is also incredible. I hate that I’ve played such a big part in making you feel less, and have done nothing to make you see who you are.”

His words were heavy with regret.

‘It’s not just about you, Rhett.’ I pulled away from him. As tempting as it was to dump all my problems on Rhett, it wasn’t true. I wanted to be fair to him but also myself. ‘This is also about how I let myself believe the lies people told me. About how I hurt myself because I thought I wasn’t good enough. You were a part of it, yes, but you weren’t the whole story. I had to learn to love myself.’

Even though he wasn’t holding me, his entire attention was on me, and it felt damn good. ‘When did you start getting help?’

I was about to answer when it hit me just how easy it was to talk to Rhett. No one else in my life, besides Aunt Hattie, knew what had happened to me, what I’d done to myself. And yet, here I was, sharing my deepest, darkest secrets with the very man who had betrayed me, who had once shattered my trust.

What surprised me even more was how right it felt. It was as if this was exactly what I needed to do to restore some order to my universe.

I walked to the waves, letting the cool water lap at my ankles. ‘It took a while.”

“So, leaving Savannah didn’t make it better?”

“That’s just geography.” I kicked at the same waves, making little splashes.

‘I understand,” he murmured.

Surprisingly, I knew that he did. The boy I remembered had always carried the potential for the man he’d become, but back then, he’d been too consumed with fitting in, too desperate to be liked. He’d seen vulnerability as a weakness, and compassion as something that could cost him his place in the crowd.

I took a deep breath and let the walls fall. “It happened in the college library. I was sitting at a table, staring at this textbook, but I couldn’t focus. I hadn’t eaten anything that day or the day before. I’d had plenty of coffee, though.”

I saw Rhett’s jaw tighten, but he remained silent, letting me talk.

“I started to feel lightheaded, like the room was tilting. My vision got blurry, and I remember thinking, ‘Just sit still. Just stay calm.’” My laugh was bitter and harsh in my throat. “As if sitting still would fix the fact that I was starving myself to death.”

I could feel the tears building behind my eyes, but I didn’t stop. There was an urgency, a need to let it out—to finally let it go—and to say it to Rhett. For so long, I’d carried the weight of blaming him for what happened to me, and now, this moment was both agony and release. To tell him my truth and his part in shaping it felt like ripping open an old wound and stitching it shut at the same time.

“The next thing I knew, I’d blacked out. Everything just…faded.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling exposed. “When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. There were tubes in my arms and an oxygen mask on my face. A nurse told me I was lucky. My potassium levels had dropped so low that my heart had gone into arrhythmia.”

‘Arrhythmia?’ Rhett repeated, his voice dry, fear lacing it.

‘I went into cardiac arrest. My heart stopped.”

Rhett looked horrified; his lips parted like he wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words. His hands had come out of his pockets, clenched at his sides. For once, the ever-composed Rhett Vanderbilt looked utterly undone.

“How long?” he asked, his voice thick. “How long were you…?”

“Dead?”