I couldn’t look up. I just couldn’t vare to meet their pity eyes, the last bit of humiliation that I needed would be to break down right in front of my friends and not to mention, one of the world’s biggest designers, who was at this point standing right in front of me probably frowning at the way my hips were popping out underneath the thin belt in the waist of the dress. What a shame; such a beautiful dress shouldn’t be worn by a gross looking body like mine, I didn’t do it the slightest bit justice. I could literally feel how the fat struggled to break through the lace fabric, it probably looked completely ridiculous.


“The colors are wrong,” Elie suddenly said and I instantly lifted my eyes upon him in surprise.

What did he mean? And then I discovered that his glare wasn’t glued to my hips or stomach the way I had expected, but to my face instead. “Yeah, you should dye your hair,” he then added only making my confusion grow even further.

“W-what?” I asked stuttering while trying to take in his words.

“Yes, your hair doesn’t compliment your eyes,” he just said. “If you dyed your hair blonde, you would look so much better. A platinum blonde color would suit that beautiful light blue color of yours…”

“Wait, wait, hold on!” I immediately exclaimed. I could feel my heart beat enhance to a ramming speed, even more than before. “What are you saying?”

“That is so great!” Aida suddenly squealed from the white couch and I turned my scared face towards her. “That’s what I’ve always told you!”

“You… you want me to become blonde?” I asked again hesitatingly. “You’re not serious?”

Em and Aida had mentioned several times that I should try it out and that it would suit me, but I had never had the courage to actually do it. This was absolutely insane having fucking Elie Saab saying the same thing right to my face.

“It would complement the dress much more as well,” he added. Oh, he was pulling out the big guns, he really was. That fucker. I could never bring myself to wear any of his clothes unless I was absolutely sure that I had done everything in my will power to make it look as fantastic as it really was.

“Oh my God, that would look so pretty!” Eleanor now joined in, which was just the worst thing of all. Being a close friend to me and about to get married I knew I couldn’t turn her sparkling green eyes down. But just by principal I astringency remarked:

“I have never dyed my hair before and I don’t see why I should do it now, I’m absolutely fine with the way it looks.”

No one said anything, but I could see the smirks growing on their faces, it was clear that I didn’t mean a word of what I’d just said. I could also feel the smile on my lips when I quietly mumbled:

“I just hope it won’t turn fucking yellow…”

“YES!” Em shouted from next to Eleanor with her hands fisted in the air and I couldn’t help but laugh nervously at the thought of such a big change as this one.

Elie zipped down my dress again and pulled me out of my thoughtful mind. That was it? No extra measurements? No pity glances to make me feel guilty over the waste of time spent on trying to sew me a dress that would look just reasonably decent?

“Your dress I’m going to sew in just a tad, it wasn’t as tight at the waist as I would like it to,” he said and then I noticed the safety pin in the side of the black lace fabric. What the fuck was he talking about?! I had been sucking in my stomach when I did these measurements and even though I did that now as well, it wasn’t nearly as much.

“Oh…” was all I managed to get across my lips, out of my canthus I could see Aida sending me an encouraging smile and a thumbs up but I didn’t respond to it, even though I did feel my cheeks getting warmer.


“Do you guys want to see my wedding dress?” Eleanor asked a few minutes later when I’d put back on my normal clothes. It was clear that she’d been struggling to keep quiet for the entire fitting, she must be feeling so incredibly excited to show it to us and we honestly couldn’t wait any longer either. The truly happy sparkle in her eyes made us all so curious when she followed Elie and Pedro inside the other room.


“Hurry the fuck up, we’re dying in here!” Perrie yelled several minutes later when we had been waiting for quite a bit too long for our taste.

The second after Eleanor walked in right behind Elie. At first I couldn’t see anything but white but after a few moments I started to notice the details of the same lace fabric that had been used in our bridesmaid’s dresses.

The upper part of the dress was a transparent at the very top at her neck and the lace fabric was spread out as tiny little flowers that mostly just added a sparkling effect to it. Around her chest another layer of plain white fabric was placed underneath and the lacy flowers now started blending completely in to each other to make a gathered effect. A simple draping that was placed a little random between the breasts gave the dress a tiny bit casual look and led the way down to a silk ribbon in the waist.
The skirt was a piece of plain fabric underneath and the transparent fabric on top with the lace flowers as well that were now much bigger and travelling across the velvety skirt that was still moving around as Pedro was still correcting the way the fabric was falling around Eleanor’s tall silhouette.

She was more beautiful than ever.


And what was most beautiful was her face. It lid up every time she looked down at it, she looked like the happiest girl on Earth and even if you didn’t know her and were a fan of her great and kind personality you would still get all emotional at the sight of her.

“It’s so ridiculous, I always start crying when I put it on,” she smiled with a small sniffle while lightly drying off her eyes with her finger. The finger that held her glittering engagement ring.
I started to feel the tears build in my eyes as well, it was just so touching to see my dear friend look so genuinely happy and comfortable taking this big step with another person that so many people would be afraid of.

“Eleanor…” Em sighed and even though I didn’t take my eyes off the dress at one point to look at her, I could tell that she had tears in her eyes as well.


After a few minutes of just staring I finally got myself to look around the white couches on the other girls. They were all – including Aida – crying silently. What was it about fucking weddings that made us girls so extremely emotional? It was quite pathetic but at the same time… we really couldn’t help it.

I was the first one to stand up and hug Eleanor tightly.

“I’m so happy for you,” I almost whispered in to her ear and as I felt her arms around me I instantly forgot all the negative and horrified thoughts that had been going through my mind just moments earlier. And it felt so relieving.

I wondered how it would be like to be without all of those damaging thoughts. I hoped that one day I would manage to get rid of them. Cause this truly felt amazing. To suddenly let someone else’s happiness block every negative feeling in my body, finally I felt like I could breathe, this was Eleanor’s time to be the center of attention, something that she hadn’t done much of outside her job as a model. She was always the slightly quiet one that didn’t feel the need to attract attention by anybody others than the ones that would come to her – the ones that really cared about her.

Em, Aida and Perrie followed me close behind to give her a congratulations hug as well and it was easy to tell that they felt the same kind of pure kindness and love as I did.
Man, was I happy to have friends like them…



“Maja, we need to talk about today,” Aida said the minute we had walked back in to our apartment and had hung up our jackets later that afternoon. We were now sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and for Aida and I, also a cigarette.

“Okay…” I nodded feeling very confused at her honest and direct way of talking.

“You really need to get better,” Em said making me turn my face towards her. What? Had they been talking about this?

“What do you mean?” I asked stupidly, I knew exactly what they were thinking about but I somehow needed to hear it come across their lips.

“The dress fitting today,” Aida elaborated. “You were so nervous and anxious about it and even when you got nothing but compliments about your looks you were still acting like a baby.”

“Excuse me?” I asked both surprised and a bit provoked as well.

“No matter how much people choose to compliment you, you still just keep acting selfish,” she said and I started to get more and more irritated for several reasons.
Irritated that they’d been talking about me behind my back. Irritated that she could ever describe me like that. Irritated that she would actually say it to my face. And irritated that she was absolutely right.
But I still felt the stubbornness grow in my stomach as she continued:

“We know that you’re struggling with stuff that we can’t in any way relate properly to. But you also have to understand that it’s killing us to know that you do nothing but hate yourself every single day, and living with you here in London hasn’t been particularly easy for us. Not that you express any of it to us, you would never involve us more than absolutely necessary, but just knowing how you feel about yourself is so sad.”


I wasn’t capable of saying a word.


“You’re our friend,” Em added. “And you mean the world to us. If it doesn’t work for you to get better for your own sake, then maybe try, you know… for us. And… Niall. The people around you. And then I think you will see how big a relief it is to maybe be without it for once.”


Didn’t know what to say.


“And I actually don’t get why you feel the way you do, even though it probably comes from something else than your actual looks,” Aida took over, her voice much louder and stronger than Em’s soft and caring voice. “I mean, look at you! You’ve lost so much weight since we arrived here and yet you still think that you’re disgusting!”

“I…” I stuttered. “I haven’t lost that much weight, I think.”

“Oh really? Have you looked at how your clothes are fitting you?” Aida asked with raised brows, she was a bit angry at this point. “Go to the bathroom and stand up on the scale.”

“What? No, I won’t!” I said frowning at her.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t need the numbers to rub the entire failure of my body in my face!”


There. I revealed it. The problem wasn’t my weight. The problem was me. Though the look on their faces didn’t show the pity that I’d expected and feared, instead Em sat right next to me with a deep frown on her forehead while Aida really did look rather pissed.

“What the fuck?!” she said jumping up from her chair, she had begun to scare me a bit by now. She stormed out of the room and came back a few seconds later with the scale in her hands. She slammed it on the floor right in front of my feet, I silently hoped that she would have broken it completely. That fucking scale. I hate you, scale. I hate you!

“Get up,” Aida commanded.

“Why are you doing this?!” I yelled back at her, not capable of holding back my anger anymore.

“Because you’re being fucking ignorant and stupid!” Aida shouted even louder, I felt a bit sorry for our neighbors to be a part of this heated discussion. I started to feel the tears building in my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them out, so instead I just bit down on my lip.

“Fine,” I said and stood up on that fucking scale, not even bothering taking off any of my clothes as I would normally do, whenever I would’ve forced myself up on that fucking scale. I didn’t look down at the numbers, instead I just stared out the small window in the kitchen that revealed the tiny piece of patio that belonged to the building.

The leaves had fallen off the trees that were now left standing there in the cold butt naked and with no chance of protecting themselves the slightest bit. I couldn’t help incredibly and pathetically related to what they were going through right now. I had been pushed up in the corner, confronted with the most uncomfortable truths about myself and forced to face them all at once.


“What did the scale say before we came to London?” Aida asked standing right in front of me. I tried to read the tone in her voice, hoping that it would reveal some of the terrible news so that I wouldn’t have to get them thrown in to my own face, but I couldn’t actually tell what she thought of it.

“I’m not telling you that,” I replied stubbornly.

“Well, it most certainly isn’t the same, that’s for sure,” Em said and I immediately switched my eyes towards her. Was she… was she smiling? Smiling down at the fucking scale?!

I followed her glance down, down, down… all the way to the fucking scales. The last time I remembered doing this was in Denmark. That had been an uncomfortable experience. It had told me that I was overweight. Not a lot. But still… overweight. Just as huge a stamp as… bulimic.


Now I was… well, let’s just say that I was a bulimic.

I had lost… holy shit… almost twenty pounds.

In the last three months.

I was no longer an overweight.

I was more than halfway towards my dream weight.

And I hadn’t done anything except being depressed and stressed out.

This was insane.


My cheeks started to feel warmer, my legs started to get anxious and before I knew it, I was once again that day full on crying.

“I… I-I’ve lost weight,” I breathed.

“Yes, you did,” Aida nodded now with a huge smile on her face as well.

“A lot of weight,” I added proudly.

“A lot of weight,” Em repeated with an approving nod.

“Does it feel good?” Aida asked watching the smile on my lips grow as wide – if not wider, but God knows that girl has a huge mouth – as hers.

“Very much,” I sniffled as I kept glancing down at the comforting numbers. They weren’t perfect, but comforting. I felt like I could breathe for the first time in what felt like eternity.

“Does that make you happy?” Aida asked rhetorically. I knew where this was going.

“Yes,” I admitted still smiling.

“Do you like yourself more when you’re losing weight?” she asked.

“Yes I do,” I nodded.

“Do you want to reach your goal? You’re not very far from it.”

“Yes I do.”

“Then we will help you,” Em interrupted probably knowing what Aida had in mind with this kind of questioning.

“Yes, we will. We will all eat healthy and exercise, I haven’t been doing that too much lately,” Aida admitted.

“Wait, won’t we have any kind of comfort food or something?” Em asked suddenly sounding genuinely concerned. I couldn’t help but smile at the thought that she was completely addicted to sweets and a piece of cake every now and then.

“The only kind of sin that we can enjoy…” Aida began while walking over to the cupboard in the corner of our small kitchen, ”is this kind.” She pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with an insidious smile covering her face.

“Jack Daniel’s?” I asked confused. “Since when did we start drinking whiskey?”

“We didn’t, I just like the bottle,” she admitted. “Thought that we could use it for some kind of decoration in the living room or something, maybe with some dried roses standing in it.”

“You’re right,” Em nodded halfway laughing. “Then I guess we’ll have to empty that.”



“God, that tastes like shit,” I exclaimed with a cough a few minutes later when we were all sitting in the living room with each of our glass of the amber coloured liquor.

“We just need to get drunk in it and then it will not be that bad,” Aida taught Em and I even though she was having trouble keeping down her lunch as well.

We all burst in to laughter at the sight of us, we were the most pathetic and childish group of friends on the planet, sitting here trying to act adult and all with our fancy glasses that Aida had bought just because she thought they were cool to have.



Two hours later we were drunk like hell. The vinyls kept jumping on and off of the player, we were listening to all kind of music and we’d all gotten our little scrap books out to write down probably ridiculous lyrics in, but at that point everything seemed absolutely genius.

We were laughing hard at every single comment we made and my stomach literally hurt terribly from the tensions in it, but I had never been farer from my depression as now. It felt amazing.
Aida went to the toilet and when she didn’t come back several minutes later, Em and I followed her to discover that she was throwing up. Even that made us laugh, including Aida who was ready to drink another round of whiskey a few moments later after brushing her teeth.


“All right girls, it’s my turn to pee now,” I said and stood up from my chair at some time, I don’t remember when. "I'm going to have the worst hangover at work tomorrow, fuck you Aida.”

“Sorry Gemma,” Aida chuckled foolishly and I couldn’t help but join in. She and Em used to think that I looked a lot like Gemma, Harry’s sister, when we were deep in to the One Direction fandom a few years ago, just with darker hair. It was completely ridiculous, but it had become an inside joke by now that would always make us laugh.

I passed the door to the kitchen on the way and waved at the scale still standing on the floor in there, on the way. “Hello scale,” I said cheerfully making all of us crack up heavily and I had to run the rest of the way to the bathroom in order not to wet myself.

Notes

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