Hungry for More (2012) by Chelsea Scott, D. Oland, J. Welch

some chocolate candy that had been shipped from home. Then she finished off Tad’s share of the Chinese that they had ordered for dinner, along with a frozen pizza that she kept hidden in the back of the fridge. Now she was wolfing down ice cream, directly out of the carton- a carton which had been full the day before, but was almost empty. There was no way to deny what was going on. She had been in too much of a frenzy to stop and throw anything away. She was surrounded by wrappers and plates and cartons and crumbs.
    Bridget wanted to die.
    “Someone’s feeling hungry?” Paul joked uncertainly. Bridget was not in the mood for humor.  Her bottom lip started to tremble and her eyes filled with tears.  “ Bridget?”
    Paul’s voice sounded truly terrified when a few stray tears trickled down her cheeks.  She smeared them away and wondered if she could make a run for her room.  
    “Why aren’t you at work?” Bridget demanded.  It was the second night in a row that Paul had come home to find her humiliating herself.
    Paul opened his mouth to answer, but then he shut it again.
    “It doesn’t matter.  I’m here now, so you can tell me what’s wrong.”
    “Nothing’s wrong!” Bridget snapped.  She wanted to sweep all of the horrifying evidence of her binge into the trash, but worried that doing so would draw even more attention to the revolting amount that she had eaten.
    “Bridge, people don’t normally cry when I walk into a room,” Paul said gently.  “What has upset you?”
    Wasn’t it obvious?   Bridget felt like shouting at him.  How could he be so dense?  How could he expect her to say it out loud ?
    “I feel horrible,” she sniffed.
    “I’m not surprised! Do you have any idea what kind of crap they put into this stuff?” Paul asked, reading the back of a discarded wrapper.  “You might as well just poison yourself and be done with it.  Seriously, Bridge t .  I know I’m a jerk about the fridge rules, but I’d rather you use up my Alba truffle than eat this garbage.”
    “You don’t understand,” Bridget said in a small voice.  “I can’t help it!”
    “You can’t help what?” Paul asked, sounding like he honestly didn’t understand.
    “I can’t stop myself!” Bridget croaked.  “I can’t stop myself from eating.” She hated that, of all the people that she could have told her dirty little secret, it was Paul that she was confessing to.
    “You stop yourself just fine when it’s my food,” he pointed out. There was an unmistakable hint of bitterness in his tone.
    Bridget looked up.  He probably already thought that she was a drunk, and now he saw that she was a junk food addict too.  He couldn’t possibly think any worse of her if she confessed her real issue, could he?
    “That’s only because I can’t eat in front of people,” she sniffed. She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
    “You can’t- what?”  Paul pulled up a stool and sat down beside Bridget.  “What are you talking about, sweetheart?”
    “Please don’t make me say it again,” she begged. Then she began crying in earnest.
    Paul panicked.  He didn’t have any experience with crying women.  The other women who had passed through his life were too tough or too emotionally sterile to ever break down into tears.  What was he supposed to do ?
    He had a vague recollection of his mother rubbing his back when his older brother had knocked him off his bike.  Paul seized on the idea. He reached out gingerly and began to rub his knuckles up and down Bridget’s spine.  He didn’t have a clue what to say , but Bridget didn’t appear to object to his silence.
    She settled slowly. Eventually, she was just sniffling softly into her handkerchief.  Paul found a box of Kleenex on the counter and handed it to her.
    “I’m s-sorry,” she stuttered.  “I’ve never told anyone about my problem before.”
    Paul wanted to tell her that she didn’t have a problem, but he could see