Chapter 17
Emmett’s gut was a gnawing, scratching hole of want. Hunger—the little-h variety—hit him the moment he opened his eyes, a sharp-toothed ache of satisfying torment.
Feel the burn.
Usually he awoke bloated from the previous night’s overindulgence—and he had overindulged, capping off his dinner with Aaron with a drive-thru burrito and half a tray of Lizette’s homemade magic bars. He’d passed out feeling like he’d swallowed a bowling ball.
Now he was ravenous, his stomach shrunken and empty. And because his stomach felt small, he felt small, lighter in every sense of the word.
He went into the bathroom and sat. A hearty shit was usually good for a pound or two. Then he stripped down to his underwear and stepped onto the bathroom scale, giving it a second before he peeked at the number.
He pawed at his eyes. There was no way.
Three hundred sixteen pounds.
He’d lost six pounds.
Overnight.
He stepped off the scale, let it clear, and stepped back on.
Same result.
The third time he tried, he’d lost another pound.
“What the fuck?”
“Everything okay in there?” Lizette called through the door.
“Fine!”
He couldn’t tell her, not until he was sure it was real. He put the scale away and squared up to the mirror.
He liked what he saw, but knew better than to trust the feeling; on a three-hundred-pound frame, six pounds barely showed. He was imagining it, his mind playing tricks.
But he couldn’t deny the drape of his shirt, slightly baggier than it had been when he put it on. Had it stretched in the night, or was the Obexity finally working its magic?
Perhaps the bigger question was: If this was day one, how much more could he expect to lose?